ONT Re: De In Esse Predication
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DEIP. Note 6
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| In order to explain these positions, it is best
| to mention that 'possibility' may be understood
| in many senses; but they may all be embraced
| under the definition that that is possible
| which, in a certain state of information,
| is not known to be false. By varying the
| supposed state of information all the
| varieties of possibility are obtained.
|
| Thus, 'essential' possibility
| is that which supposes nothing
| to be known except logical rules.
|
|'Substantive' possibility, on the other
| hand, supposes a state of omniscience.
|
| Now the Philonian logicians have always insisted
| upon beginning the study of conditional propositions
| by considering what such a proposition means in a state
| of omniscience; and the Diodorans have, perhaps not very
| adroitly, commonly assented to this order of procedure.
| Duns Scotus* terms such a conditional proposition
| a "consequentia simplex de inesse".
|
| According to the Philonians, "If it is now lightening it will thunder",
| understood as a consequence 'de inesse', means "It is either not now
| lightening or it will soon thunder". According to Diodorus, and
| most of his followers (who seem here to fall into a logical trap),
| it means "It is now lightening and it will soon thunder".
|
|* 'Quaestiones in Octo libror Physicorum Aristotelis', Liber 1, Question 2.
|
| C.S. Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 3.442,
|"The Regenerated Logic", 'Monist', vol. 7,
| pp. 19-40, 1896.
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