Potential- presupposing what is already there
Our application of speculative thought brings us the need to answer very essential questions about how the universe, as an organism, actually looks like, not just how it behaves. On the on hand, we can argue that Being actualizes itself by transitioning from potentiality into actuality. But this idea of transitioning is one very misleading because it presupposes a transformation that was once not already there before. The other model is that potentiality is already actuality, meaning that what it means to be a potential is derived from the subjective avenue of an observer, but there is a spectrum of observers, and where ever you are on the spectrum, is the point from where everything else stands as a potential. Outside of all observers every potential is actualized. For example, when I am in the washroom, I am only potentially in the living room, but just because I am not in the living room while I am in the washroom, does not mean there is no living room.
Starting with the very basic atom as the seed of life entering into conscious beings into finally supreme being. And this spectrum exists as actuality and such an existence is its very activity. Now the opposing idea can indicate in order for something to be an activity, one thing must transition into another. For how can A become B without B being A? This however is false logic one influenced from temporal motion of one object coming into contact with another and thus each gravitational power repeals the other. However in actual existence this cannot be the case because than A would be the essential cause of B and therefore B would only originate from A. But the fact that B originates from A, A must presuppose B for its origination and therefore B must already exists for A to presuppose its existence. In other words to say that A must transitions into B in order to become it, must have already presupposed the variables of A and B to be variables in order for one to become the other, so that the becoming process is something other than the variables it was meant to reproduce.
This brings us back to the scheme of A,B,C… Each of which exists as a spectrum into which the existence of one is presupposed by the other as that presupposition presupposes that they already exists. And so A bringing about B must mean that A is B and C and D and etc. everything that it brings about and so they just all already exists as A. And so the presupposition of one to the other is the mere activity, is the activity that predicates the necessity.
And so if we apply this kind of thinking to life, it must be true that the lowest forms of life exits in relation to the highest forms of life and the presupposition of one into the other presupposes everything in between. And so reality is but this produced of presupposing what is already there, but not in the same manner as it already exists, for that is a separate question. For when A presupposes B when both A and B exists is different then A and B existing and one presupposing the other. In the latter case there is infinite potentiality of shifting and changing of the former case, while the former case remaining infinitely actual. And so this process of development is in fact but a determined process as actuality for that is the necessity, however it is undetermined and left to self-determination as the development process of potentiality.
The latter is just the self confirmation of itself, potentiality is its means for its actuality not in the sense of bringing to existence actuality, but rather to conceive of its actuality, for the actual cannot be brought into existence for it is itself the definition of existence and so coming to existence would already just mean it’s self as existence. And so potentiality is this realm where actuality comes to see itself as actuality. Such a realm is the spectrum of life where an infinite potentiality of events take place to confirm its actuality.
We are but this one event on the spectrum- and event that presupposes every other event- from the very basic nature of the atom- to the very highest nature of God. Both the basic and the highest presupposes each other for every stage to presuppose every other stage. And so there can be being higher and lower than us at every event in the universe- what vaguely identify today as parallel universes. What this is trying to describe is that organic nature as a whole is constitute by this parallel existence of being.
Complex potentiality and actuality
This logic although follows naturally from the understanding is a fallacy by failing to take into account the proper relation of Aristotle’s idea of actuality and potentiality
Actuality is predicate of potentiality because a bird is presupposed by the egg as a result, but potentiality prior to being an actuality, an egg on its own has no conception of bird until it becomes so, that is, it is impossible to discern a bird by just looking at an egg alone.
This same property occurs in the function of a moment in time. We can only know an event to happen after it occurs, Classically speaking the principles of actuality and potentiality have been difficult to understand because they are not apparent for direct observation which turns out to make them unattainable factors for the crude understanding. When actuality is made to be present for direct observation it cannot be anything perceived because actuality is what reality ought to be and therefore is not real at a present moment. For example, the reality is that you attacked that person but in actuality you ought to have not attacked that person, it was too harsh, or rather inversely, the reality is that you did not attack that person but in actuality you ought to have attacked him because he deserves it and you were too cowardly.
Actuality is the ideal or the part lacking from the actions of reality that completes it, or that guides to be what it really is, but once it becomes a reality, it is no longer actual, because now it is potentially something else, which becomes in turn the actuality that guides it into being another reality. Potentiality moreover is also a non concrete element when taken as something observed because it is never at the present moment of time which the observation is made.
Potentiality is conceived only after a certain duration of time has passed by in time. For example, it is very difficult to see progress on business or health after one week, but over a duration of months the statues of health or the success of business becomes apparent. The main reason why principles like actuality and potentiality are difficult to understand is because they are not points belonging to a present moment in time and therefore do not constitute a direct object for observation, but they are however fundamental principles of mind and therefore constitutes essential long term and primary past and future durations of time.
Aristotle’s potentiality and actuality is really the difference between distinguished and undistinguished phenomenon and this makes these principles of consciousness . In psychoanalysis the link between the unconscious and conscious contents of the mind demonstrate a proper relation between potentiality and actuality. Take the instance of suddenly forgetting a thought that was a moment ago clear, this Jung argues is the separation of a thought from consciousnesses or the thought becomes unconscious. we find this same phenomenon occurring to the senses. When something slips out of the senses it does not cease to exist any more than a car disappearing around the corner ceases to be a car, it is simply out of sight and we may later come across the car again. In the same way we recall ideas again because they always remain in the unconscious as objects. In fact the distinction between thought and object is a limitation of the conscious part of the brain.
Unconscious thoughts that are lost continue to influence the conscious mind. For example, neurotic individuals appear to behave in a manner done for a purpose; but when you ask them about their actions they are either unaware of them or have something else in mind. Unconscious contents in the mind behave as if they are conscious.
All thoughts are objects and all objects are thoughts but not necessarily all at once and at the same moment in time and this is why time is an enigma. Sometimes we have objects directly perceived but we do not consciously think of them, like something around the peripheral vision. Other times we think about objects that are not directly perceived and therefore appear as memories. These instances are factors relating to the proximity of the observer to the phenomenon, but the phenomenon itself is always the indivisible relation of thought and object, in other words whatever we think about can at some point be directly perceived as an object, like a black hole was only an abstract thought until a picture was taken of it that confirms our thought of it as accurate.
The black hole was always an object, meaning that it was always there in the form of an event horizon and light orbiting the gravitational circumference of an infinitesimal point which light cannot escape and is therefore pitch dark, but our limitation of observing it made it only a potential object, it was “out of sight”, we know from indirect evidence that it is out-there, but not discovered, we do not yet have a direct image of it. This informs that actuality is all things at all times and this is an ideal for human capacity to conceive because it can only pick out some things during some times. This is the same for the events that happen in our unconscious as purely abstract or potential situations from one point in time, occur as the actual events for experience at a different time point, dreams are precisely the contemplation of a potential event in a different time period in time. In the same manner as directly seeing an object and than not seeing it but only thinking about it later.
Distinguished phenomenon is a determined phenomenon while undistinguished is indeterminate, as part of their double meaning, determined means to figure something out with its other meaning to occur in a particular way. Knowing something is identical with occurring in a particular way. The egg is fundamentally undistinguished as a bird and so it is only potentially a bird, when it became distinguished, it becomes actually a bird, a bird comes out of the egg and leaves the eggshell behind. For example, a material cause, is “that out of which a thing comes to be, and which persists; e.g., bronze, silver, and the genus of these are causes of a statue or a bowl” (Physics 194b24). When we associate the term “material” before the predicate “cause”, I.e, material cause, this is to explain why one thing belongs to another (1041a11); that is, it is to explain some predicational fact. This is actually the same function as matter itself being a precondition as a substratum.
Actuality however does not come out of potentiality in the same way as one object comes out of another because potentiality is not itself a thing until it is conceivable as a thing, or rather exhibits an idea. For example man begets man, or rather a person comes out of the womb, but the womb is not responsible for who the person is other than being a passage out for that person.
In Aristotle’s philosophy potentiality does characterize the nature of matter as having the capacity to take on any form, but material things he cautioned are by no means the same because air as a physical thing is very different than wood as something physical.
The term “Actual” for Pierce “is that which is met with in the past, present or future”(CP 6.453)
Actuality and reality are indifferent in the realm of science, but the difference between reality and actuality is emphasized within the domain of philosophy. When we say that philosophy is the science of science what do we exactly mean by that? For example biology is the study of life and organisms, in what sense than does philosophy have a place in such a science? Where does philosophy contribute in the sciences if it does not derive the facts. it does however deal with formulating the facts into a concepts. Philosophy has a special obligation in science, in fact we can say that it has the decisive task of finalizing the concept. How? To answer this question let us examine a feature that is shared among all the sciences.
What is that one feature that all the sciences share? If we can identify this universal feature in knowledge than we can rightly say that philosophy belongs to every science and it is the science of science. The feature that is shared among all the sciences is what Hegel identifies as Reason- which he means as fundamental nature of the contradiction. The contradiction is defined by both negative dialectic ( Reason) and positive dialectic (reason). In epistmology every science reaches a contradiction.
Philosophy has the task of dealing with these contradictions of the sciences. The reality of a seed is one thing whereas it’s actuality is another. The holocaust is can be a reality in human history but human history cannot be reduced to that event- thus human history possess an actuality beyond that event that is very much more real because it has the potential to be, while what already happened in time lacks the potential to be in the same way again and so lacks reality in that sense.
Reality is the working out of actuality and thus it is not understood, in this sense, as an illusion- it is not entirely correct to say that reality is just an illusion, although the aspects pointed out of it as always passing away is illusory. It is rather understood as the process but that any abstraction taken from the process and is asserted as the result is a misapprehension to what is actual in reality.
Reality is the synthesis between potentiality and actuality- synthesis in this sense means that reality is the circumstance where both potentiality and actuality coexists as the place where they become each other, but the becoming of each other exists in the realm outside reality, mainly- potentiality exists in the realm of actuality, which is always greater than reality, it is the ideal of reality, what it ‘ought’ to be; and vice versa, actuality exists in the realm of potentially, that reality is potentially actual, this means that it requires a process of making it. And so the becoming of potentiality into actuality exists outside of reality in the sense not independent of it but rather not merely limited by it. And so if the actuality of the flower is the blossom and the flower is the potentiality of the blossom, then the reality is the event where one is either the other. If the reality of the flower is not yet the blossom- then we say that the actuality of the flower is its blossom even if it is. It yet bloomed. The blooming is happening in reality but a factor not limited to it. In physics the reality is the general world we see, quantum is where the potentiality and actuality are working out- the reality such a synthesis. What does it mean to say that something potentiality exists without yet actually existing? For something to potentially exists it means that something is capable of existing.
There is the necessary kind of determinacy for something that is capable of existing to actually exists. And so potentiality is itself an actuality. For example, I am capable of making house and so the house potentially exists in my mind, and the carrying out of the house is the becoming, and the completing the house is the actually existing of the house. When we say that everything potentially exists, we are saying that everything possess capability of actually existing. When potentiality becomes actuality that actuality becomes reality but it still carries with it the predicate of actuality and so it is still becoming the other while being the one. Reality is the concrete manifest of actuality in space and time. But because space and time are relative from the particular, reality becomes realities that conflict with one another and therefore contradicts that all realities are encompassed by actuality. The actualization of reality however does not exclude the enduring process of potentiality taking on actuality, but reality in fact is merely the result from that tension and a result that is itself the process.
When actuality becomes reality it is merely the resolution to the potentiality. When reality takes its mark in space and time it does not replace actuality which is the very mark of space and time. The reality of space and time is from actuality, and similarly like space and time as universal principles, reality is not relative. In the universal what is real is necesssalry actual whereas in the particular what is real is necessary not actual and it is the tension between the one with the the other that causes the effect of motion, motion not just as movement of the object but rather motion as the development of the object; to be actually what it is potentiality and that is the reality of both. Whereas reality is the result of potentiality it is the process of actuality.