A difference does not occur in isolation.
A particular sound is one sound among possible sounds. A particular utterance is one utterance among possible utterances. A particular action is one action among possible actions.
The particular becomes intelligible partly because there are alternatives.
This gives us the next step in our investigation:
How does a possibility become an actuality?
The answer takes us to the relation between potential and instance.
Potential is not an invisible thing
The word potential can be misleading.
It might suggest that behind every actual event there is some hidden object called its potential, waiting to emerge.
That is not what we mean.
A potential is not another thing.
It is a structured range of possibilities.
A language has a potential for meaning.
A musical system has a potential for musical organisation.
A social practice has a potential for action.
A living system has possibilities for states and responses.
The potential therefore belongs to the organisation of a system.
It concerns what can happen within that organisation.
An instance is one particular actualisation of those possibilities.
potential ↔ instance
This is not a relation between two separate things. They are complementary perspectives on the same organised process.
Possibility is structured
Potential does not mean that anything whatsoever is possible.
A language does not permit every conceivable combination of words.
A musical system does not make every possible sound equally available as a musical choice.
A social practice does not make every imaginable action intelligible within itself.
Possibility is constrained.
Indeed, constraint is part of what makes a potential a potential of a particular kind.
A musical tradition makes some things easy to produce and recognise, others difficult, and still others almost unintelligible within its conventions.
The same is true of language and social practice.
A potential is therefore not an empty space.
It is a structured field of alternatives.
Instance as actualisation
A particular event selects one path through that field.
A speaker produces one utterance rather than another.
A musician chooses one phrasing rather than another.
A participant performs one action rather than another.
The result is an instance.
We can therefore say that a potential is actualised in an instance.
The word actualised matters here.
We are not saying that the potential is transformed into a different substance. Nor are we saying that the potential somehow manufactures the event.
We are saying that a particular event occurs as one determinate possibility within a larger field of possibilities.
The instance is particular.
The potential is more general.
Their relation makes the particular intelligible without reducing it to the general.
Language and utterance
Language offers a familiar example.
A sentence spoken at a particular moment is a physical event. It has a particular speaker, time, place and intonation.
But we recognise it as an utterance in a language because it belongs to a much larger meaning potential.
The language makes countless possible utterances available.
The speaker actualises one of them.
The utterance is therefore both particular and recognisable as belonging to something larger.
It does not need to be identical to another utterance to belong to the same potential.
Indeed, its individuality depends upon the possibility of saying something else.
Music and performance
Music makes the same relation audible.
A performance is a particular event.
It has a particular tempo, articulation, dynamic profile, balance and phrasing.
Another musician might perform the same piece differently.
Both performances can nevertheless belong to the same musical potential.
Neither has to be a perfect copy of some ideal performance.
Each is a particular actualisation of possibilities offered by the musical system.
This also explains why a musical performance can surprise us without becoming unintelligible.
A performer can do something unexpected within the potential.
The surprise comes from the difference between what was possible, what was expected, and what was actually selected.
The potential exceeds the instance
No single instance exhausts its potential.
One sentence does not exhaust a language.
One performance does not exhaust a musical tradition.
One enactment does not exhaust a social practice.
The potential therefore always exceeds the actuality.
This excess is important because it makes novelty possible.
A new utterance can be produced.
A new musical phrase can be invented.
A familiar practice can be adapted to a new circumstance.
A new image can be created from an existing visual tradition.
Novelty does not necessarily require escaping the system.
A new instance can reveal a possibility already contained within it.
And occasionally an unusual instance can enlarge the potential itself.
The instance can change the potential
This is where the relation becomes evolutionary.
A new musical technique may be taken up by other musicians.
A new expression may spread through a language.
A new artistic practice may become a convention.
A new social practice may become normal.
What began as one actualisation can alter what later participants regard as possible.
The potential is therefore not a fixed catalogue.
It has a history.
It contains possibilities inherited from earlier actualisations, but those possibilities can be extended, restricted or reorganised by what happens.
So the relation is recursive:
potential → instance → altered potential
The present can change the possibilities of the future.
Potential and expectation
A potential also provides the background against which expectation becomes possible.
A rhythm establishes possibilities for what may happen next.
A language makes some continuations more likely or more recognisable than others.
A social practice establishes expectations about what participants will do.
This is why particular events can matter.
A difference is significant partly because it occurs against an organised field of alternatives.
A beat placed where expected may stabilise a pattern.
A beat placed unexpectedly may disrupt it.
A familiar phrase may confirm an expectation.
An unusual phrase may force a new construal.
Potential therefore provides the background against which actuality acquires consequence.
The climate and the weather
Climate and weather provide a useful analogy.
Today's weather is a particular configuration of atmospheric conditions.
Climate concerns longer-term patterns and the range of conditions characteristic of a region.
One storm is not the climate.
Nor is climate simply a collection of individual storms.
They are complementary perspectives on atmospheric organisation.
Potential and instance can be understood in a similar way.
The potential concerns the structured field of possibilities.
The instance concerns one particular actualisation within that field.
The analogy is not exact, but it helps us resist the temptation to imagine potential and instance as two separate entities.
Subpotentials
The movement from potential to instance does not have to be immediate.
A broad potential can contain subpotentials: more specialised regions of possibility.
A language, for example, contains more specialised possibilities associated with different contexts of use.
A musical culture can contain increasingly specific traditions and practices.
A broader social practice can contain more specialised forms of action.
The general relation can therefore be represented schematically as:
potential → subpotential → instance
From the other pole, the same middle level can be viewed as an instance type: a recognisable kind of instance recurring within the broader potential.
The two descriptions reflect the complementary perspectives we began with.
From the potential side, we see a subpotential.
From the instance side, we see an instance type.
We need not choose between them.
The terminology simply reminds us that the middle of the cline can be viewed from either pole.
The actual is more determinate
Potential and instance are therefore not symmetrical in every respect.
The potential leaves alternatives open.
The instance selects one determinate configuration.
This means that actualisation involves determination.
A potential may contain many possible ways of continuing.
An instance commits the system, at least for the moment, to one of them.
A speaker has possibilities for what to say and then says something particular.
A musician has possibilities for how a phrase might unfold and then plays one version.
A participant has possible actions and then performs one.
Actuality is therefore possibility made determinate.
But actuality does not exhaust possibility
At the same time, the instance does not close the potential.
The musician's choice becomes the starting point for further choices.
The utterance changes the possibilities of the conversation.
The social action changes what others can do next.
Each actuality therefore enters a continuing field of possibility.
This gives us another important relation:
actuality opens further possibility.
The instance is not the end of the potential.
It changes the conditions under which the next instance can occur.
The world is therefore not a sequence of isolated actual events.
It is a history of actualisations continually reshaping what is possible next.
Why this matters for mattering
We can now see why potential and instance belong near the beginning of our investigation of meaning.
Something can matter partly because it is a particular actualisation among alternatives.
A difference becomes discernible against a field of possibilities.
A choice changes what can happen next.
A deviation can matter because it departs from an established potential.
A return can matter because it re-actualises something that had become expected.
Mattering therefore depends upon more than isolated events.
It depends upon structured possibility.
Potential gives us the field.
Instance gives us the particular event.
Value will enter when that particular event has consequences for an organised system.
That is our next step.
What this does not yet explain
We still have not explained why one actualisation should matter more than another.
Two possible events can both occur within the same potential.
One may be consequential.
The other may be irrelevant.
A language permits many sentences, but some change a conversation dramatically while others do not.
A musical system permits many possible phrases, but some transform a performance while others pass almost unnoticed.
A social practice permits many actions, but some alter relationships and others do nothing significant.
Potential gives us possibility.
It does not by itself give us value.
For that, we need consequence.
From possibility to actuality, and from actuality to value
We can now see the shape of the argument.
A system has a structured potential.
A particular possibility is actualised.
That actuality changes the subsequent field of possibilities.
Sometimes the change has consequences for an organism, an interaction or a social system.
Then the instance matters.
So the next step is not another theory of possibility.
It is a theory of value.
We began this series by asking how meaning could emerge from a world already capable of mattering.
We can now formulate the first part of the answer:
Mattering requires particular differences within a field of structured possibility.
The potential provides the alternatives.
The instance makes one of them actual.
And when that actuality makes a consequential difference, it acquires value.
That is where we are going next.
When does an instance matter?
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