reason conceives as existing, provided that such a conception is not impossible, we call necessary. These, then, are rational judgments that do not require an existing thing whose attribute we could make them. For possibility is like impossibility, and impossibility has no substrate in external reality. Moreover, reason judges blackness and whiteness to be possible before they exist.

Ibn Rushd said:

“This is a fallacy, for ‘possible’ applies both to that which receives and to that which is received. When applied to the receptive subject, its opposite is the impossible; when applied to what is received, its opposite is the necessary. What passes from possibility into actuality is not characterized by possibility—the possibility opposed to impossibility—insofar as it passes into actuality, for once it does so, possibility no longer characterizes it. Rather, it is characterized by possibility insofar as it exists potentially. The bearer of this possibility is the subject that passes from potential existence to actual existence. This is evident from the definition of the possible: the possible is that which does not exist but is capable of existing or not existing,