Basic understandings of possibility

Abstract

Three basic acceptations of the possible are presented: the epistemological, the ontological, and the metaphysical. The latter two are presented in some details. They could be distinguished as the processual unfolding of conditions (the ontological reading) and the vision of the process as given and fully completed within each present moment (the metaphysical reading). The ontological dimension can be further distinguished into two different unfoldings of real processes: as the horizontal (temporal) accumulation of determinations and as the vertical (through strata of reality) emergence of both higher entities and higher determinations.