Why structure specifies possibility, not actuality
Having dismantled totality and maximalism, ontology can now move from critique to architecture. The question is simple but profound:
If systems do not provide totality, what role do they play in reality?
This post argues that systems are not inventories of what exists. They are theories of possible instances. Recognising this is crucial to preserving both rigor and openness.
1. The Inventory Mistake
It is tempting to think of a system as a container: a list of entities, relations, or states that reality itself must instantiate. This inventory model underpins many classical metaphysical approaches, from Aristotelian substances to modern formal systems.
But the inventory mistake is precisely that: it assumes that a system contains actuality. It does not. Systems constrain, guide, and organise, but they do not instantiate.
2. Systems as Theories of Possibility
A system is more accurately understood as a theory of possible instances. It defines the space within which phenomena may occur, the relations that may hold, and the patterns that may be instantiated.
Examples include:
Physical laws constraining particle behaviour
Grammars constraining linguistic constructions
Social norms constraining interactions
In each case, the system provides a structure for instantiation, not an inventory of what is.
3. Why Inventories Collapse Ontology
When a system is treated as an inventory, the following errors emerge:
Totality creep: the system is mistaken for a global account of reality.
Actuality erasure: instantiation is reduced to compliance with structure.
Loss of openness: the system appears to exhaust possibility, leaving no room for novelty.
Ontology cannot tolerate these collapses. The cut is erased, and actuality disappears into abstraction.
4. Relational Systems and Local Instantiation
Understanding systems as relational rather than enumerative rescues ontology from these traps. A relational system does not need to list all entities to be fully specified; it defines constraints and patterns that any instantiation must satisfy.
Local instantiations occur within the system, but the system itself is not diminished by their occurrence. Each instantiation leaves open the possibility of others, respecting incompleteness as a structural necessity.
5. Gödel and the Structure of Systems
Gödel’s insight, when generalized, provides a useful metaphor: no sufficiently rich system can contain all of its truths within itself.
In ontological terms, this means:
Systems must remain open to instantiation.
Any claim to internal completion is illusory.
Openness is a defining feature, not a deficiency.
6. Systems Without Inventories Are Enabling
Recognising that systems do not contain actuality frees ontology to:
Maintain rigour without demanding totality
Preserve the cut and perspectival instantiation
Allow novelty, adaptation, and emergence
Far from weakening ontology, this recognition provides the scaffolding for disciplined possibility.
7. The Fourth Discipline
Having now rejected totality, maximalism, and inventory-thinking, the fourth discipline emerges:
Ontology must treat systems as frameworks of possibility, not containers of actuality.
This discipline prepares the ground for understanding presence without completion, which will be the subject of the next post.
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