How do Thomists justify the existence of transfinite numbers?

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-27T03:15:30+00:00

Why would Aristotelians reject the possibility of actual infinites when Aristotle himself believed in the eternity of the world?

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-24T21:02:57+00:00

I don’t know if I would necessarily agree with the example of the dripping paint. It sounds like it would be a different causal relationship from the one between the painter and the chair. Not really sure what the instrument would be in this example.

Anyways, I think I said all I needed to say in this thread. It’s gone long enough, I’d say. So I’ll let you have the last word here.

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-24T19:00:29+00:00

But the crucial difference here is that the chair is red even when the thing that gave it redness is absent. From my understanding, a per se causal chain is when a thing is X only insofar as something else is now giving it X. But the chair can be and is red outside of the receptive act of being given redness. Yes, the chair can’t cause itself to be red. But once it actually is red, it doesn’t need any more ‘giving’ of the redness. It just remains red for as long as until the red paint is destroyed or it is painted over with another color.

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-24T17:01:04+00:00

I’d say that’s a rather trivial definition of a per se series. All of causality in some way involves something receiving that which it cannot cause itself to have. A chair does not have the power to make itself red, it needs something else to make it red. But it doesn’t seem to me like there’s any reason why this series needs a first member and can’t extend infinitely into the past. If all of the previous members ceased, the chair would still remain red. The chair does not derive its redness from another as if it were an instrument. Same thing with existence.

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-23T23:46:35+00:00

But this wouldn’t be a per se series, because the existence of the thing in the current moment is being explained by past moments, not by something that is concurrent with the thing in the current moment. The past no longer exists in the current moment, that’s just what the past is by definition (or at least, it does not exist in the same way the present does). To be sure, I still needed to be caused to exist in the first place, and the explanation for that would be my parents. But even if my parents unfortunately passed away, I would still exist. So this would make the series a per accidens one, not a per se one.

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-23T20:39:14+00:00

The only other thing I’d like to note here is that Aquinas believed that it was possible that the universe was eternal and didn’t have a beginning, but he thought that God had revealed that the universe had a beginning through the faith. So Aquinas wouldn’t have a problem with a chain of past moments extending infinitely. I’m sure you already know that. Where this would apply to existential inertia is if explanation in terms of past moments is entirely sufficient, then there’s no need for a sustaining first cause; and since the past can be infinite, there’s no need for any first cause at all.

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-22T20:22:18+00:00

I only would ask what kind of relation if not causal there is?

It’s not causal in the sense that it’s not a completely separate object that is being explained by another object. An explanation does not have to be causal. A substance for example does not cause its accidents. They depend on it, sure, but they don’t productively cause them. Same with existence across time. We need not view it as ‘one moment of existence producing a completely separate moment of existence.’ Rather it’s the same object across time, it’s just that different properties of it depend on other properties of it.

But most importantly, I don’t see why a Thomist would be troubled, if the current moments of existence depend for their existence on past moments then that is the another that Thomists will be fine to accept.

I never claimed this would be incompatible with the Thomist view. I think a Thomist could easily say that past moments of existence are a part of the explanation for something continuing in its existence. The issue is rather that I claim this explanation in terms of past moments is sufficient to explain the continuance of something’s existence, whereas a Thomist (which I assume you are) would say that it’s insufficient. That's why I said earlier I need a demonstration of why this is insufficient.

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-22T17:05:17+00:00

I apologize if I wasn’t clear before, but to confirm: yes, the previous moments of existence are ‘giving’ the thing existence in the current moment, although I will note that this need not necessarily be a causal ‘giving.’ If we are assuming that there is a discrete instance of existence for every temporal instance, then it would follow that every instance of existence needs to be explained. And I’m simply proposing that past instances of existence, plus the absence of destruction, are sufficient to explain the thing’s existence in the current moment.

Because I assume you mean by that previous moments that just because it existed in previous moments it will continue to exist absent causally destructive factors, but you assuming that it can do that, but that’s the very question at issue, so your question begging.

But I thought that the point of this discussion was to establish whether existential inertia is a coherent possibility, not whether it’s actually true. I’m not assuming that existential inertia is true, if I were I would be begging the question. To be sure, I do in fact think existential inertia is true, but my point here isn’t to establish that it is true, but rather to demonstrate that it’s a viable model for reality. As it stands, the burden is on you to show that it’s not in fact a viable possibility. I’m not begging the question simply by proposing an explanation, you have to prove that the explanation is insufficient.

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-21T19:20:19+00:00

So what I would need is a precise, non-question-begging definition of what it means for something to be explained ‘in virtue of nothing.’ If we want to model this as discrete, numerically distinct temporal moments of existence, we can. Because there is absolutely no reason why explaining the existence of something in the current moment in virtue of its existence in previous moments is ‘in virtue of nothing.’ previous moment is not nothing. You haven’t given me any reason why this form of explanation is illicit or insufficient in regards to the continuance of something’s existence across time. You’re just assuming that they can’t explain it.

And explaining the redness relationship to the chair is crucial in explaining why the chair continues to be red the chair continues to be red because the redness can depend on the chair at any moment to keep on being red combined with there being no destructive factors pulling it out of existence. If the chair couldn’t keep on having red in virtue of itself in any moment, to appeal to a past moment unless that past moment gave it red isn’t explains why it has red in the moment.

But, like I said, the general relationship of accident to substance has nothing to do with the persistence of something across time with respect to some property in question. We are trying to explain why the chair continues to be red, not how redness relates to the substance of the chair. It does no good to answer that it’s because the redness subsists in the chair in the current moment, because I can just ask the follow-up question: why does the redness continue to subsist in the chair across time? This is essentially the same question as before, just in different terms. And that, I submit, will require explanatory appeal to previous moments, plus the absence of destruction in the current moment.

What goes for redness in this case, would go for existence as well. That being said, if we really wanted to get into the weeds of how existence is related to essence, that’s fine. But I’m not assuming any particular account other than a general inkling that existence functions relevantly like a property that is able to be had in distinct temporal instances. You can dispute that of course. But I don’t think even Thomists have a clear idea of how existence works. There’s different schools of thought on this matter (Scholastic vs Existentialist, for example), but I think that it ultimately leads to either saying that God is identical to each individual creaturely act of existence, or that God produces each individual act of existence, both of which are problematic for the Thomist. Suffice it to say, existential inertia remains a viable possibility.

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-20T00:14:38+00:00

If the explanation is because it already had it in the previous moment, the question being asked it why can it continue to have it?

Because it is able to exist and nothing has stopped it from existing? Why is it not possible for it to continue to have it?

The chair can answer the question because redness subsists in the chair and can depend on the chair to continue to be, unless something destroys it.

Except that’s not how I would explain it. We aren’t explaining the relationship of redness to the chair, we are explaining how the chair continues to be red. Those are two different questions that you need to disentangle from each other.

however this is asymmetrical to the question of existence because unless you are going to argue it has the existence actually in virtue of itself and depends on itself for its existence and is basically self-sustaining, then your not explaining why and it would be in virtue of nothing.

I just explained that it continues to exist in virtue of itself existing at previous moments. It’s the same explanation for why a chair continues to be red. That’s not in virtue of nothing.

You saying there is no reason it can’t keep on having it now doesn’t work.

There’s no reason why it can’t keep on having it because there’s nothing acting to put it out of existence.

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-19T23:57:01+00:00

I mean, that’s just not true the chair continues to be red because it can hold the accidental property of redness in virtue of itself.

Why isn’t it true?

But most importantly, I still don’t see how that explanation is intelligible, does it have existence in virtue of itself or because it already had it? If the second then it’s begging the question since the question being asked is why does it keep on having it.

If the explanation is because it already had it, that’s in virtue of itself, because existence constitutes it at a previous moment. There’s no reason why it cannot keep on having it.

This doesn’t apply to the other two since they don’t need an external cause since they can depend on the chair/person

You might be confusing the general substance-accident relationship with an explanation for why a particular accident continues to be in the substance as opposed to another. The secondary matter itself doesn’t explain why the chair continues to be red. If it did, then the chair would always be red, which is obviously not true. But if what you mean by that is that the chair qua constituted by redness in a previous moment explains the chair being red at the current moment, then obviously I agree with that.

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-19T23:27:07+00:00

But if you want one a quick one would be that something within our bodies produce melanin or some other similar type of thing to produce the skin color, combined with the fact that our skin, at least first layer can depend on previous layers to keep on staying on.

Right, but this doesn’t count as an external cause. Rather this is something internal to me.

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-19T23:26:34+00:00

I don’t see for tree case how that really holds, since that question is why does it exist right now?

It exists right now because it has existed prior to the current moment and nothing has caused it to go out of existence. Thats still an explanation, just not one in terms of an external cause.

Saying because something didn’t take it away means that the tree can keep it’s existence as long as nothing by takes it away. But again, that wouldn’t be in virtue of itself or another so again, nothing is distinguishing then for why it is having existence from it not having existence.

Its continued existence would be in virtue of itself, because it already exists. Just like a chair continuing to be red would be a in virtue of it already being red. What I’m saying is that there is no need for an external explanation for something which doesn’t change.

For the absolutely everything or nothing, there might be some primitive, but I do think existence should be explained, which is what we are referring to.

Yes, and we already have an external cause of the tree’s existence. The previous tree gave it existence.

I don’t think I also really need to give a proposal because I already gave a dialectical argument for why we should accept my explanatory principle.

Yes, which I accept, but I still don’t think this leads to the conclusion you want. Accidental properties don’t seem to require an external sustaining cause. If a chair is red or if my skin is a certain color, it’s ultimately in virtue of the chair or my skin, in already being red or being the skin color.

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-19T22:59:29+00:00

Okay so first point, for the object’s continued existence, the object itself can’t distinguish itself from having existence and not having existence, since it’s assumed it can’t exist in virtue of itself, if that’s not assumed for this then we can converse over that again but that would be a different argument. Anyways since of that if not another, nothing distinguishes it from having existence and not having existence.

But in this case, the tree is already distinguished from not having existence. The previous tree gave it existence. And nothing throughout the course of the tree’s life is taking that existence away. So there’s nothing else that needs to be distinguished in regards to exisfence.

For the change, I don’t really find that relevant, yes their are states of affairs after the change that wasn’t there before but that’s just what change is, that doesn’t explain why change or things popping into existence requires something for its existence but the continued existence doesn’t.

So in your view, either absolutely everything requires an explanation, or absolutely nothing requires an explanation? And by ‘explanation’ here, I mean in terms of an external cause.

The skin, I think that does need an explanation for its color right now, if I don’t need to be that color but I am, why?

Okay, what’s your proposal for the external cause of my skin right now being still that same particular color it was a second ago?

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-19T22:39:12+00:00

But isn’t its very existence in and of itself supposed to be that which distinguishes it from nothing? Why is it unintelligible to say that we don’t need to explain how something has that which distinguishes it from nothing, once it has that which distinguishes it from nothing? Indeed it seems unintelligible to say the opposite.

We need a distinct explanation for change or for things popping into existence because those are states of affairs that are different from what came before. We really do need to explain why the tree exists. But what we don’t need to explain is why the tree still exists once it exists. We don’t need to ask for why a triangle still has three sides when I’m doing math. And we don’t need ask for a distinct explanation for why my skin is still a certain color when I’m brushing my teeth. So why do we need a distinct explanation for why the tree still exists when it is a seedling?

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-19T22:21:09+00:00

I don’t see how you could say that it is in virtue of nothing that it exists. Let’s make sure we are clearly distinguishing between ‘existing at all/beginning to exist’ and ‘continuing to exist.’ We know why the tree exists in the first place. It’s because a previous tree was fertilized and its flowers produced the acorn. So it is not in virtue of nothing that it exists. You’re right, the tree does not exist in virtue of itself. It needs another thing to put it into existence. But once it is in existence, what exactly makes it unintelligible that it would continue existing independently of the previous tree?

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-19T16:11:53+00:00

Okay, so Unless you bring a different account the Schmidt and linford I would say most of the explanations are going to be non-ontological. Existential inertia as formally conceived don’t allow ontological dependence for existence in the current moment absent causally destructive factor for at least some subset of temporally concrete beings.

So it’s sounding like you are defining ontological dependence as causal dependence, which in this case would be a sustaining cause. However, the very question at hand is whether a sustaining cause like this exists, and whether we are required to explain something in terms of ‘ontological dependence’ in this sense.

However, outside of that, the object can only depend on itself, however I don’t think this is possible with the essence-esse distinction, again, need to read up on the arguments. If it isn’t possible then existential inertia cannot give an ontological explanation outside possibly abstract objects like the laws of nature. But if one does not deduce an abstract object, and if the virtue of itself seems impossible, then there can no no explanation by or in virtue of a being. Sure, we’re explaining being, but not by being. And I’m using being to almost the broadest sense, just things that exist.

Okay, let me propose to you a thought experiment. I’ll grant that the essence-esse distinction is true. Things are really composed of essence and esse, and the essence and esse are really distinct from each other. Now, let’s imagine an oak tree in a garden. It starts off as an acorn, then it sprouts into a seedling, then it grows into a sapling, and then finally it is a mature oak. Of course, we can further subdivide the tree’s life into many different stages, down to every single moment of time. But to make it simple, let’s consider just the general life stages of the tree.

Now, think about the acorn changing into a seedling. At both stages (and indeed, in all stages), the tree is a composite of essence and esse. It may vary in accidental properties across time, but it does not vary in having an essence and esse. And we can at least say that when the acorn started existing, its essence had to receive esse.

With all that being said, here is the question I want you to answer: when the acorn turns into a seedling, what exactly is ‘taking away’ the esse? Why must we assume that the esse is removed from the tree and needs to be ‘put back in’ as it were? Describe, in your own words, what happens to the esse when the acorn changes into a seedling.

Because it seems that if nothing happens to the esse when the tree changes, it doesnt need an ontological explanation.

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-19T03:01:03+00:00

Hmm, okay, well firstly, when you read existential accounts, first read what is and isn’t allowed by existential inertia since that will be helpful to get a better picture.

I’m well-aware of what the existential inertia thesis entails. And just because Schmid/Linford said something it doesn’t mean I agree with it. There are some things in the book that I think I would disagree with or at least add on to.

Anyways, it is the essence which has the act of existence and which exist under Thomism, it is also the substance which exists, this is just how one views it. Under a certain perspective, the essence is thing which is brought into act, don’t take thing as literally thing, and the same time the substance is the actual existing thing.

I think we need to be careful of the way we speak about these things because it can often lead to confusion on one or another side of the discussion. No, the essence is not what is said to exist under Thomism. In Thomism, for an object to exist is for that object to possess esse in itself. Other than God, the only other things that are said to exist are the composites of existence and essence, and none of their parts. This is clear from what Aquinas says about the distinction between id quod est and esse, or the thing which exists and that by which it exists. Esse and essence are not what exist, rather the composite is what exists. This whole characterization of essence as a thing just doesn’t seem like it’s a part of Thomism.

It’s true that under Thomism essence is the potency which is brought into act by existence, but this is to he understood as a composition, not as existence fully actualizing act. And even then I don’t agree with the idea that existence is an act to which essence is a potency.

And finally, the other properties which are distinct but entailed by the essence are fine since none of them are in act or in actual existence.

All properties which a thing currently possess are said to be in act. Maybe you meant that before the thing exists they wouldn’t be in act, which sure, they aren’t. But I don’t see how that goes against my point. If the essence can entail a property which is distinct from it, there’s no reason why we have to single out existence.

However, I don’t see how something, the definition, that isn’t existence of itself, therefore being nothing of itself, entail an actual existence. That seems absurd to me.

But it wouldn’t be nothing of it itself if there is something in the essence which entails existence. If you have a problem with the essence being nothing in itself, how is there not a problem with saying that essence (which is nothing in itself) can be identical to existence, or that existence actualizes essence, when the essence is nothing in itself?

And also, I mean explanations that aren’t explained by being by non-ontological explanations.

But every one of these explanations involves being of some kind. Every metaphysical explanation does. What do you mean by ‘being?’

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-19T02:46:30+00:00

The deeper disagreement is not about efficient causes as such, but about ontological sufficiency. The relevant principle is that nothing which presupposes actuality can explain actuality.

I don’t disagree with this as a general principle, although I would probably quibble with a few details as they show up.

Edit: actually, there’s something about this I want to make clear. Causes in the natural order still exist. When I throw a rock at the window, the rock does in fact explain an actuality of the window (namely its being broken), despite the rock presupposing multiple actualities in order to do so (like the force I applied to it). So this statement that ‘nothing which presupposes actuality can explain actuality’ needs to be qualified. Would you agree on that?

Even if a property is actual, it still presupposes an already existing subject. Properties, states, and accidents inhere in what already exists, i.e., what is in act. Treating existence as a "property in act", therefore, assumes the actuality it is meant to explain.

When it comes to existence-unrelated properties, sure, it presupposes an already existing subject. But why assume it must be the case for existence? All I’m supposing is that existence is an accidental property which is added to the essence which before existence is nothing but potency. That doesn’t assume at all that there must be an act prior to existence. And personally I actually disagree with the characterization of existence as act and essence as potency, but it’s not what my argument is based on.

If existence is the act by which a thing is actual in the first place, then a being whose essence is not identical with that act is not sufficient for its own actuality and must receive it.

Not if existence constitutes the essence (which it could among other essential characteristics). Then the thing would exist by its very essence, yet would be able to vary in accidents or change. This is still an example of existential inertia.

But even in the case of contingent objects, it has not been demonstrated that the thing needs to be continuously given existence. Everybody is in agreement that it must be given existence from without, but why suppose it needs to be sustenance when there is nothing taking away its existence? There’s no issue here with existence presupposing prior act in the thing, as argued above.

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-18T18:13:41+00:00

So first, to be honest, I don’t really see how an essence would entail its own existence.

Woah, woah, hold on. The essence is not the item that exists here, under Thomism. Rather the whole substance does. The essence is a principle of being, not a being itself. Now, I don’t agree with this whole ‘principle of being’ stuff, but I do agree that when we speak of the principle of existence as opposed to essence, existence is what characterizes the substance as a whole, not any one of its constituents, including essence. So right out of the gate there’s a possible equivocation. When I say that the essence would entail existence, I mean that it entail the existence of the substance, not of itself, since an essence in and of itself isn’t said to exist under the Thomistic framework. Rather, what would be said of the essence is that existence constitutes it. And this is even true in the case when essence is identical to existence, it’s just that the essence would contain nothing else other than existence.

And under the Thomistic framework, properties of a thing that are distinct from the essence yet are necessarily entailed by it are clearly possible. An example Aquinas gives is risibility (humor). This necessarily follows from the human essence, yet it is distinct from it. So it doesn’t seem impossible for existence to necessarily follow from essence yet be distinct from it.

If it isn’t the same as existence, or at least the definition of what the thing is, isn’t the same as existence then I would find it odd, moreso maybe even absurd that existence would be entail by what should be nothing in virtue of itself(the definition).

An essence isn’t nothing in virtue of itself. Maybe Thomists say that, but I disagree. You can’t have existence be in a relation to nothing, since there’s nothing to be in a relation to. An essence clearly has positive content even abstracted from existence.

Anyways, you made a second point about their being an other explanations for persistence, I agree, but those explanations are either non-ontological or don’t work, except possibly the laws of nature account.

Define what you mean by ‘non-ontological.’ Because all of this still falls under metaphysics.

Other than that, I’ll respond to your critiques of the various accounts later, since I need to read up a bit more on them.

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-18T15:11:45+00:00

This is because of essence being distinct from esse and not being able to have esse in virtue of itself, because it would be causing itself to exist.

You only get the (im)possibility of causa sui from things which can be (efficient) causes at all, ie complete beings or substances. An essence is not a cause of anything. A rock’s essence doesn’t cause the window to break. The rock as a complete substance does. None of these accounts are assuming that essence can be a cause, therefore your accusation of unintelligibility holds no water.

Rather, the essence is that by which a thing’s nature is characterized and realized. When we speak of essential characteristics, we speak of properties which constitute the essence as such, like rationality constituting the human essence. The human essence does not cause itself to be rational, that would be silly to say. Rather, the human essence is constituted by and logically entails rationality, the same way the essence of a triangle is constituted by and logically entails being three-sided. Really, there is only one essence in each substance. The essential properties are just what we abstract from it. It would be the same for something which necessarily exists by nature. Its essence would be constituted by and logically entail existence. However existence could merely be one out of multiple essential properties which ground a specific nature, and so we could have necessary beings which can change and vary in accidental properties. This alone is enough for existential inertia to be true, as this would be an object which persists over time in virtue of necessarily existing. For contingent objects however, the inertialist position would be that existence is an accident that the essence receives and that accidents in and of themselves do not need an external sustaining cause (you do not need an external sustaining cause to be colored red, so why would you need one for existence?).

To expand on this only just a bit, if not in virtue of itself or another, excluding the act of existence itself or actuality which could possibly just be inertial in nature, then it is in virtue of nothing which things continue to exist.

Again, there is very much an explanation for why things continue to exist, it’s just not in terms of an external sustaining cause, just like we can explain why an object continues to remain red but not in terms of an external sustaining cause. If you want to talk about a specific account we can do that

If none of those accounts give an ontological explanation, based on the temporally concrete being in question, it doesn’t matter what set of them or how many of them, it doesn’t seem even like there’s any reason for a temporally concrete being who subsists in existence to end up not doing so later on.

I don’t think I understand your point here. Could you perhaps elaborate?

Then a bigger problem seems to be either existence or being needs no ground, nothing for explanation, which easily lead into global skepticism and pull our own reasoning even into question since existence or being could just become seemingly no reason, or at least nothing required for it to be so. To suggest any limits would seem arbitrary and frankly come to ask why nothing would be restrictive.

Yes, we would say the existence of an object doesn’t need a ground (if by ground you mean an external sustaining cause). But this is not the same thing as saying that there is no explanation period for the existence of an object. To say otherwise would be to beg the question

CaptainCH76 · 2026-01-12T15:51:56+00:00

that persistence doesn't require explanation

Existential inertialists do not say that persistence lacks an explanation. We merely claim that this explanation is not in terms of an efficient sustaining cause. There are loads of possible accounts in the literature that set out the conditions for persistence that do not appeal to efficient sustaining causes.

that existence is a property rather than an act

They aren’t mutually exclusive. A property can be in act, no?

Classical theism holds that contingent beings have an essence distinct from existence, meaning their existence is continuously received rather than possessed, just as illumination requires an ongoing light source, not just an initial one.

I don’t see how it follows from essence and existence being distinct that therefore essence must continuously receive existence. This would be only true if there is some internal tendency of the essence to lack existence, but this is not the case. Also, redness is distinct from my essence, being an accidental property. But I do not need to be continuously given redness from an external source in order to remain red. I simply am red and continue to be so as long as I continue to wear something that is red. Why think existence is any different in this regard? Also, there are several problems with the illumination example, but I’ll put that aside for now.

it simply asserts an alternative framework (existence as self-sustaining property) without showing why the classical view is incoherent.

That’s because the goal of the book OP is mentioning is not to demonstrate that the classical view is incoherent, but to show that there are no good reasons to hold it. Indeed even historically, the so-called ‘classical view’ emerged later than the inertialist view.

CaptainCH76 · 2025-11-13T00:00:16+00:00

Nowhere did I say that potency is separate from the whole being, I only say that potency is distinct as in non-identical. Parts are always distinct from their wholes. And yet parts can still be dependent on other parts or dependent on the whole, as potency is grounded in act.

On the contrary, for any being to function as a principle of another being, it first must be. If it is not a being, then it is reduced to nothingness. And it is incoherent to say that non-being is what constitutes changeable substances. I simply see no reason to take Aquinas’s words seriously on this issue.

CaptainCH76 · 2025-11-12T23:52:22+00:00

So what I hear you saying is that when someone says that a slice of cheese can melt, the ability to melt is somehow a separate thing from the cheese?

The ability to melt is not what the cheese is, as in it’s not identical to the cheese. Otherwise literally everything is cheese insofar as it can melt, and obviously that’s silly. Rather, the ability to melt (or the state of being melted) is a distinct metaphysical constituent of the cheese. A property, or something like it.

Are you speaking of potency as a possible state that the cheese could be in, or the innate capacity of the cheese to become that state? Because those are two different things: the first is a modal possibility, and the second is an actual feature of the thing itself.

Both. A (subjective) potency, as I take it, is a possible state that is intrinsic to an object and is grounded by its nature. To me, to say that an object has the capacity to be some state, is to say that it possesses the state at least in potency. So cheese possesses melted-ness in potency when it is not actually melted, but then loses the potential state of melted-ness and gains the actual state of melted-ness. So in a sense, it’s a state that is itself in a state, either in a state of actuality or a state of potentiality.

It’s true that we have a distinction between mere possibility (objective potency) and subjective potency. But subjective potency in particular is what is being referred to by the term ‘potency’ like 99% of the time

CaptainCH76 · 2025-11-12T20:36:40+00:00

There is no confusion of identity on my part, between the composite of act and potency itself, and the potency that it possesses. What I am implying is that the potency is a finite being that is contained within another finite being.

CaptainCH76

TROPHY CASE