Reading "De Interpretatione" 9
- Concha Martínez Vidal (dir. congr.)
- José L. Falguera López (dir. congr.)
- José M. Sagüillo (dir. congr.)
- Víctor M. Verdejo Aparicio (dir. congr.)
- Martín Pereira Fariña (dir. congr.)
Editorial: Servicio de Publicaciones e Intercambio Científico ; Universidad de Santiago de Compostela
ISBN: 978-84-9887-939-1
Año de publicación: 2012
Páginas: 417-423
Congreso: Sociedad de Lógica, Metodología y Filosofía de la Ciencia en España. Congreso (7. 2012. Santiago de Compostela)
Tipo: Aportación congreso
Resumen
I will offer here a non-conventional reading of "De Interpretatione" 9. I will use the Aristotelian distinction between potency and act and his understanding of powers as potencies to favor my reading. There are different proposals in the literature about which is in fact the view that Aristotle is finally defending in this text. I want to propose what I take to be a different reading, along these lines. The future that is contingent exists in potency. It is contingent because predicted things are, in potency, as predicted or as predicted to be not. So statements about future contingents are potentially true and potentially false. That statements about the contingent future are potentially true means that the things they predict can be in the future as they predict; that they are potentially false means that the things they predict can be in the future contrary to prediction. How things will actually be depends on the exercise of powers/potencies. And these can be either activated or not activated in the future.