{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.06001395673412421, 'fraction_numerical': 0.024424284717376135, 'mean_word_length': 4.645669291338582, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The Existence of Powers

Aristotle relies on and uses the concept of ‘’, which I will translate throughout this paper as ‘power’, in a wide variety of philosophical discussions. In Metaphysics IX 1-5, Aristotle provides a detailed account of powers. The discussions in Metaphysics IX 1, IX 2, and IX 5 focus primarily on providing an account of what it is to be a power. Chapter 1 establishes the range of things that count as powers in the most proper sense. The primary referent of ‘power’ is ‘ ’ (1046a10-11), i.e., a principle of change in another or qua other. In addition to this primary referent Aristotle identifi es that in virtue of which some item can be acted on and changed by another (1046a11-12) and that in virtue of which some item is insusceptible to being changed for the worse by another (1046a13-14). Chapters 2 and 5 further divide powers into rational and non-rational. In addition to explaining what powers are and delineating the different sorts of powers, Aristotle argues in Metaphysics IX 3 for the existence of powers. Here, through a series of four arguments against the Megarics, Aristotle establishes that inactive powers must exist. There are, however, two important questions to which Aristotle’s answers are unclear: 1) what does it mean to say that powers exist? and 2) how can it be determined that a subject does in fact possess a particular inactive power?