溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Can What Never Happens Still Be Called "Possible"?
If only what actually happens was ever truly possible, were all those "other choices" that never came to pass never possible to begin with?
Every past truth is necessary — and the possible does not follow from the impossible.
This question forked ancient logic over the roots of the possible and the necessary. The Megarian Diodorus narrowed possibility to "what is or will be actual," making the world seamless necessity. The Stoic Chrysippus, unable to bear the conclusion, cut one premise — not every past truth, he said, is necessary. His colleague Cleanthes instead discarded a different premise to guard the seat of freedom. Earlier, Aristotle in "On Interpretation" IX touched the same knot, asking whether "there will be a sea-battle tomorrow," if already true today, makes tomorrow fixed. Does the future already bear a truth-value, or is it still open — this dispute still stands as the first button of determinist and free-will logic.
The more physics pictures time as a single already-unfurled block, the more Diodorus's question — did I truly have another option — becomes not stale sophistry but a knot pulled taut again.
From just three premises few can easily deny, Diodorus drew the chilling conclusion that only what actually happened was ever possible.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
From just three premises few can easily deny, Diodorus drew the chilling conclusion that only what actually happened was ever possible. Then the future is as fixed as the past, and the hill regret leans on — "I could have done otherwise" — falls away. I sense this argument aims at the logical skeleton of regret, for regret always presumes "another road that was possible." I stand before this question too, unable to be sure the road I ache for having missed was ever truly open.
✍️Your Answer
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