Programme
Calvin Normore
University of California, Los Angeles
Unrealizable Possibilities: Scotus, Auriol, Ockham (and Bradwardine)?
Duns Scotus and William Ockham agree that bivalence is unrestricted, the future is contingent and the past is necessary. They disagree about the modal status of the present. Scotus claims that beings with wills, both human and non-human, have at a time powers for contradictory opposites at that time though only one of those opposites is actually the case at that time. Ockham claims that this commits Scotus to possibilities that are not even possibly actual - a result he finds absurd. This disagreement is rooted in deeper issues about the relation between possibility and power, between natural and temporal priority, and between possibility and actuality. Reflection on these issues led Peter Aureol to restrict bivalence and led Thomas Bradwardine to reject the necessity of the past. This paper attempts to shed light on the differing conceptions of possibility (and actuality) which underlie each of these positions.