Part 3
Actuality and Potentiality
(I think that I may have forgotten to mention that I have been and will continue to rely heavily on the American philosopher Edward C. Feser.)
For Aristotle as for Plato, universals or forms are real, and they are not reducible to anything either material or mental. Still, he thinks it is an error to regard them as objects existing in a “third realm” of their own. Rather, considered as they are in themselves they exist only “in” the things they are the forms of; and considered as abstractions from these things, they exist only in the intellect. Furthermore even the intellect rely on the senses in coming to know them.
A. Actuality and potentiality
Contra Parmenides who said that change is impossible because something can’t come from nothing, but that nothing was the only thing that something new could come from, since the only thing there is other than what already exists (i.e. being) is non-being or nothing.
Aristotle’s reply is that while it is true that something can’t come from nothing, it is false to suppose that nothing or non-being is the only possible candidate for a source of change.
Take a blue rubber ball for instance.
It can be solid, round, blue, and bouncy. (Different aspects of its being)
There are ways it is not: square and red, for example; it is not a dog or other things.
But the ball is potentially is: red (if you paint it), soft and gooey (if you melt it), a miniature globe (if you draw little continents on it), and so forth.
So being and non-being aren’t the only relevant factors here; there are also a thing’s various potentialities.
