Few questions feel as quietly expansive as “Could reality have been otherwise?” It carries a sense of openness, as though things might have turned out differently at the most fundamental level—that the actual world is just one selection among many equally available alternatives.
This sense of openness is often taken for granted. It feels like a basic feature of thought itself: the ability to imagine alternatives.
But that intuitive move depends on a crucial shift—one that is rarely noticed. It treats possibility as if it exists independently of the systems that make it meaningful in the first place.
Once that shift is examined, the question begins to lose its apparent neutrality.
1. The surface form of the question
“Could reality have been otherwise?”
In its everyday form, the question asks:
- whether the world could have unfolded differently
- whether things might have been otherwise at the most fundamental level
- whether the actual is just one option among many possible worlds
It implies a space of alternatives within which reality is positioned as one realised outcome.
2. Hidden ontological commitments
For the question to stabilise, several assumptions must already be in place:
- that “possibility” exists as a domain independent of actualisation
- that alternatives can be specified without reference to the constraints of a system
- that reality as a whole can be treated as a selectable instance from a larger set
- that it is meaningful to speak of “what could have been” outside any given construal
These assumptions construct possibility as something like a container: a space of options from which reality is drawn.
This is the reification of possibility—treating it as if it exists in its own right, prior to and independent of the systems whose potential it describes.
3. Stratal misalignment
Within a relational ontology, possibility is not an independent domain. It is a property of systemic potential.
To speak of what is possible is to speak of:
- the range of variation licensed by a system
- the structured space of potential that can be actualised under constraint
The question “Could reality have been otherwise?” performs a displacement:
- it detaches possibility from any specific system of constraints
- it treats “reality” as if it were an instance selected from a global space of alternatives
- it assumes a vantage point from which multiple total realities can be compared
This produces a familiar error:
- the system whose potential defines what is possible is replaced by an imagined meta-space in which systems themselves are treated as options
But there is no coherent standpoint from which “all possible realities” can be surveyed or compared.
4. Relational re-description
If we remain within relational ontology, possibility is always relative to a system.
- A system defines its potential: what can vary, and how
- Instantiation actualises that potential under specific constraints
- Possibility is not what exists beyond the actual—it is what is structured within the potential of the system
From this perspective, the question shifts.
It is meaningful to ask:
- could this instance have been otherwise, given the system?
- what variations are licensed within these constraints?
But it is not meaningful to ask whether “reality as a whole” could have been otherwise, as though it were one selection among many in a larger space.
That larger space is an artefact of detaching possibility from the system that defines it.
5. Dissolution of the problem-space
Once possibility is re-situated within systemic constraint, the question “Could reality have been otherwise?” loses its original form.
It depends on:
- possibility as an independent domain
- reality as a selectable instance from that domain
- a vantage point outside all systems from which alternatives can be compared
If these assumptions are withdrawn, the question no longer has a stable referent.
What remains is not a metaphysical openness at the level of totality, but a structured variability within systems.
The idea that “everything could have been otherwise” dissolves into a more precise claim:
- things can be otherwise where systems license variation
- and not otherwise where they do not
6. Residual attraction
The appeal of the question is easy to understand.
It is sustained by:
- the everyday experience of imagining alternatives
- the flexibility of language in constructing counterfactuals
- philosophical traditions that treat “possible worlds” as ontologically significant
- a tendency to extend local variability into global speculation
These factors encourage the sense that possibility must be something expansive and unconstrained.
But this sense arises from a shift in scale:
- from local variation within systems
- to imagined variation of systems themselves
The first is coherent. The second is not.
Closing remark
“Could reality have been otherwise?” appears to ask about the openness of existence itself.
Once that reification is undone, possibility does not disappear.
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