Where does actuality collide?

In Aristotle's metaphysics, actuality is the mode of being of a thing that is fully at work or realized, translating the Greek energeia and entelecheia, and it is set against potentiality (dynamis), the capacity a thing has before that capacity is exercised. A block of bronze is potentially a statue, while the finished statue, and more generally the activity of a thing doing what it characteristically does, is its actuality. Stephen Menn's 1994 study The Origins of Aristotle's Concept of Energeia traces how this notion of being-at-work took shape. This referent is a way of being, contrasted with mere capacity, and it has nothing to do with a documentary film, with which of the possible worlds is real, or with a grammatical rule about whether an event happened.[1]

Unit

One thing's being-at-work, contrasted with its unexercised capacity

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Argued philosophically by distinguishing what a thing can do from what it is actively doing

In modal logic and metaphysics, actuality picks out the one world that obtains, the actual world, as opposed to the many merely possible worlds in which things could have gone differently. David Lewis's 1970 paper Anselm and Actuality argued that the word 'actual' behaves like 'here' or 'now': it is indexical, so the inhabitants of each possible world can truly call their own world actual, and 'the actual world' just names whichever world the speaker occupies. This referent is a question of which complete world is real relative to a speaker, and it is unrelated to a thing being fully realized rather than merely capable, to a genre of film, or to a rule of grammar.[2]

Unit

A single complete possible world, marked as the one that obtains

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Formalised in possible-world semantics, where an actuality operator or a designated world fixes what is true in the world that obtains

In film history, an actuality is a short early nonfiction film that presents unstaged people, places, and events, and it was the dominant form in the first years of cinema before the story film took over. The Lumiere brothers' views of a train arriving, workers leaving a factory, or a baby being fed are the classic examples, sold as actualites. Tom Gunning's 1997 essay Before Documentary: Early Nonfiction Films and the 'View' Aesthetic reads these films as organised around presenting a view of the world rather than telling a story. This referent is a kind of movie and a stage in the history of documentary, and it shares nothing with Aristotle's realized being, with the actual world of modal logic, or with a grammatical entailment beyond the letters of the word.[3]

Unit

One short nonfiction film of real people, places, or events

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Studied through surviving prints, sales catalogues, and exhibition records of early cinema

In formal semantics, an actuality entailment is the effect where combining an ability or possibility modal with perfective aspect entails that the action was not merely possible but was actually carried out. In some languages, saying that someone 'was able to' do a thing in the perfective conveys that they in fact did it, whereas the imperfective leaves the outcome open. Valentine Hacquard's 2009 paper On the Interaction of Aspect and Modal Auxiliaries explains this pattern through the way aspect takes scope over the modal. This referent is a specific pattern in grammar about whether an event occurred, and it is distinct from a metaphysical mode of being, from which world is real, or from a genre of early film.[4]

Unit

One entailment that a modal claim was realized, triggered by aspect

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Detected by testing whether asserting the modal in the perfective can be followed by denying that the event occurred