1432.Possibility

SCANNED PDF Possibility is futurity, the indefiniteness/ indeterminateness of what, given the present, not only can be but also must be further defined / determined by successor presents. Thus possibility / futurity is only an aspect of actualities as such, as concretes, i.e., events and individuals, and also aggregates/ composites thereof. Each event/state of an individual has data whose futures it further defines/determines. And it itself will be a datum in events/states of individ uals that are anticipated by its future, although not fully defined/ determined thereby. it is definite/ determinate, in that it has somehow resolved the indefiniteness/ indeterminateness/ / definability/ determinability bequeathed to it by its past for further definition/ determination. But relative to its future, it itself bequeaths a certain indefiniteness/ indeterminateness/ / definability/ determinability that its successor presents will in turn have to resolve, each by its own self-determination.

So every actuality / concrete is, in one aspect, definite/ determinate, while, in another aspect, it is indefinite/ indeterminate/ / definable/ determinable. Relative to its past,

Whereas a concrete is not continuous, but discontinuous, the possible ways in which a concrete can be succeeded, or objectified, by other concretes are continuous, in that they form a continuous range. Any ordinary abstract, then, is simply a stm wider range of continuous possibilities-a species being a wider range than an individuality individual essence), a genus being a wider range than a species, and a category being a still wider range than a genus. (= individual essences).

An extraordinary abstract is the widest range of continuous possibilities conceivable, and therefore an unlimited range. There is literally an infinite number of possible ways in which it can be succeeded or objectified, by concretes as well as, in their different ways, by ordinary abstracts-from categories through genera and species to individualities

The reason, however, why the nature of things is, in the final analysis, tragic as well as beautiful is that, as Whitehead argues, "every occasion of actuality is in its own nature finite. There is no totality which is the harmony of all perfections. Whatever is realized in anyone occasion of experience necessarily excludes the unbounded welter of contrary possibilities. There are always 'others' which might have been and are not" 

So,if God simply as such, as existent, and therefore actualized some/LOW, although in no particular how, excludes nothing and is competitive with nothing, God 'lila actualized, and hence particularized f~this, rather than in tliai, particular lImp, is exclusive and competitive. Consequently, the range of continuous possibilities for succeeding or objectifying God so actualized and particularized is 110t unlimited, but limited. It is Jinlited, namely, by the particular dt' facto order that it lies in the nature of God-not simply as God, and as therefore God of 501l1£' world only, but as God of tilis, that, or the other particlilar world-to impose on every new successor world now in process of coming into being. In this sense, it is not God as "primordiaJ" ("First") or even as "consequent" ("Second"), but God as "superject" ('Third") that is rightly said to be "the principJe of concretion-the principle whereby," as Whitehead says, "there is initiated a definite outcome from a situation otherwise riddled with ambiguity" (PRc: 345).

September 1995; rev. 16 October 2009