On Existence, Actuality and Possibility

Abstract

If one admits possibility in ones conceptual vocabulary, one cannot maintain that both "existence" and "inexistence" are simple, directly contrasting predicates, such that "existence" is the ultimate predicate, the sumnum genus, so to say. This is because possibility makes sense only when contrasted with actuality, so that one has two sorts of existence straight off. A futile dodge is to argue that possibility is not a mode of existence; for this makes it a mode of inexistence, and then one has two modes of inexistence, possibility and outright non-existence, refuting the claim that "inexistence" is a simple predicate. In either case this makes the pair of predicates in question similar to the pair "yellow-not yellow", where either member of the pair admit of legion subdivisions, and dissimilar to the pair "alive-death", in which case satisfaction of either member of the pair is a yes-or-no affair, "yes" answer for either one implying a "no" answer for the other.