compossibility

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Compossibility is the capacity of different trajectories of becoming to coexist in a shared world without structurally foreclosing one another's viability. It tests regimes, not mere connectedness or aggregate benefit. The ethical demand does not preserve every possible project indiscriminately. PB additionally models non-foreclosure through joint worlds, preserved distinctions and exits, while denying that this formal structure proves its moral bindingness.

Explanation

AB attributes the word to Leibniz and makes it a test of whether stabilized becomings can be shared. Its applications include animals and the ecological conditions of future life, not only human projects. Domination is not every distribution of power or exclusion of a possibility, but systematic subordination that makes others' becoming serve the projects of some. AB and RB3 therefore allow prohibition and burdens while requiring viable plurality, participation, revision and redress.

PB's ethical formulation leaves others room to live, act and change the world. Its categorical supplement distinguishes weak compossibility, with a colimit and monic coprojections preventing collapse, from strong compossibility, which additionally preserves revisions. A complementary descent model asks whether locally viable, matching becomings can form a global world. These are partial modeling choices: ethical reality is not literally a sheaf, local compossibility need not survive composition, and neither moral obligation nor selection among possible worlds is derived.

RB3 makes the test constitutional for AI-mediated regimes and explicitly rejects sacrificing particular lives to a computed aggregate. It includes more-than-human viability and conditionally includes technical beings with stakes, without asserting their present existence. Even a well-supported forecast does not authorize removal of standing, exit or correction.

Scope and attribution

Direct ethical ownership is AB, PB and RB3; PB alone owns the categorical constructions reviewed here. No compossibility treatment is assigned to RB1 or RB2 from general discussions of possibility, relation or coexistence. Leibniz attribution is source-local, not an externally reconstructed historical definition.

AB — The Actual Book

Compossibility tests whether diverse becomings share a world without structural ruin. The animal and ecological applications widen its reach beyond human interests. The constitution permits necessary burdens but refuses to remove participation, revision and redress in the name of future benefit.

Occurrence locators: 181, 182, 185, 191, 193, 199, 209; Glossary: 225; Thinker register: 230; Notes: 248, 249; Appendix: 279, 285, 289.

PB — The Possible Book

The ethical demand is accompanied by an explicitly provisional formal construction. Weak compossibility prevents collapse; strong compossibility preserves exits. The descent picture models a local-to-global obstruction. Composition can fail to preserve compossibility, and the model supplies neither obligation nor selection among worlds.

Occurrence locators: 38, 63, 105, 106, 107, 143, 147, 148, 150, 151, 155, 165, 168, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 184.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

Compossibility is constitutional world-making without sacrificing particular lives to an aggregate. It permits constraints on destructive projects but requires viable plurality, participation and revision. More-than-human life is included, and technical beings with stakes are included conditionally rather than assumed to exist.

Occurrence locators: 165, 166, 168, 177, 190, 191, 196, 198, 200, 206, 211, 224, 229, 239, 241, 258, 259, 260, 261, 263, 266, 267, 272, 281, 290, 298, 299, 303, 306, 314, 317, 320, 321, 322; Living in a World of Relations: 345.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Domain-specific mechanisms and wider analogies remain distinguished. Original definitions retain their scope; local cross-references do not rewrite them. Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.