Readiness — Potential Made Accountable: 1 Readiness: From Potential to Second-Order Property

1. Potential Revisited

In our earlier discussions of singularities and over-closure, we spoke of potential: the structured openness between actualisations, the relational space in which phenomena can emerge without exhausting the system.

We now formalise this intuition. Readiness is potential made explicit: a second-order property that describes a system’s capacity to support further actualisations. It is not a thing in the world, nor a metaphysical claim. It is a property of relational configuration, accountable to the horizon in which a system operates.

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2. Inclination and Ability

Readiness is not monolithic. It decomposes into two subtypes:

1. Inclination — the system’s formal orientation or tendency toward particular actualisations.

   • Encoded in mathematics, rules, or norms.

   • Example: Equations of motion that prescribe how a system would evolve if continuation is possible.

2. Ability — the system’s actual capacity to realise further distinctions.

   • Determined by relational structure and horizon of potential.

   • Example: Differentiability of a field or coherence of relational potential across cuts.

A system is ready only where both inclination and ability are present. Singularities, divergences, and other over-closure phenomena occur where ability collapses but inclination persists.

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3. Effective Dimensionality of Potential

We can give this a semi-formal character without invoking metric metaphysics:

• Each system has axes of potential — independent ways in which actualisation can occur.

• The number of viable axes at a given horizon is the system’s effective dimensionality.

• Readiness corresponds to non-zero dimensionality; collapse corresponds to zero.

• Formal systems that continue despite vanishing dimensionality produce divergence.

This reframes “infinity” and “breakdown” as symptoms of exhausted potential, not reflections of boundless reality.

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4. Horizon Exhaustion as Signal

In conventional modelling, stopping is often treated as failure. But in a relational framing:

Horizon exhaustion is not ignorance or weakness—it is information.

When potential space is fully contracted, any further demand for actualisation signals that the current construal has reached its limit. Recognition of this limit is an epistemic achievement, not a defeat.

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5. Readiness Across Domains

Readiness provides a lens that unifies prior discussions:

• Singularities in physics: moments where ability vanishes but inclination continues → divergence.

• Mathematics: divergence arises where formal inclination is assumed but relational readiness is absent.

• Dualism: mind/world separation exiles relational capacity, creating a readiness collapse in epistemic terms.

Explicit attention to readiness transforms pathologies into accountable diagnostics rather than metaphysical drama.

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6. The Path Forward

Readiness is a second-order relational property: potential made accountable.

It allows us to:

• Diagnose over-closure in systems without metaphysical inflation.

• Identify the limits of formal systems before divergence occurs.

• Orient modelling practice around horizons, relational capacity, and epistemic responsibility.

In the next post, we will apply this lens to singularities themselves, showing how readiness clarifies what is really happening when potential collapses and formal inclination is left unchecked.