Hyponoetics - Essays
Potentiality, Actuality, and Reality
Abstract: The concepts of potentiality and actuality play an important role in the philosophy of Hyponoetics. This essay discusses the etymology and meaning of both concepts and defines the principles and factors of the two processes of reality, i.e., actualization and potentialization.
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Etymology

Potentiality:

Actuality:

The Two Processes of Actualization and Potentialization

1. From Potentiality to Actuality (Actualize): 2. From Actuality to Potentiality (Potentialize):

Figure 1 - Actualization and Potentialization

Note the prefix 'en-' (in, into) in en-ergeia and en-telecheia: it could be translated as in-actuality or in-actualization. I also described this process when discussing in-formation, the process of instantiating form from the potentiality of the ultimate reality 'into' the actuality of the perceived reality of our universe (see Essay Knowledge and Information).

Similarly, the process of actualization is a process of initiating action into the time-space continuum, which causes change and transition from potentiality to actuality. To exist is the same as to act. Acting is not just considered the outward, expressed form of action or activity that is observable, but also the cognitive activity of our mind. Anything that happens or occurs in time and/or space, any event is a determined action.

Acts are determined, concrete, and individual(plurality of phenomena). Since acts are the result of actualized potentiality, they are at the same time also potentialized actualities, i.e., the refer back to the unitary potentiality out of which they were en-acted. In other words, although acts are the result of the actualization process, acts also are the initiators of the reverse process: potentialization.

Mind, as the factor of potentialization, moves in two dimensions: a) the actual dimension of noetic activity (rationality) and the b) potential dimension of Paranoesis , which consists not in a form of activity or action (which is always concrete), but in a state of non-activity (compare Taoist concept of 'wu-wei' = non-action) that transcends the individual form of our mind in order to become universal and therefore potential (an-energeia).