Aristotle and real possibility
Abstract
Ross, Hintikka, Waterlow and Makin have all suggested that there is something problematic
about Aristotle’s treatment of possibility. I will canvas their concerns and propose
that the problem is not so much with Aristotle as the fact that the notion of
possibility is not a single simple concept. I will present eight different components of
the notion of possibility and suggest that Aristotle may have been aware of all of them.
I will conclude whilst his treatment can appear inconsistent, it is instead, an attempt
to give a complete description of a complex notion.