An action actually performed and the multitude of conceivable alternative actions belong to different relations. The question of what happened cannot be resolved by counting the scenarios one can imagine. This difference becomes especially apparent when possible scenarios are used as objections to a statement about a subject’s action.
Action and Negation
Suppose that, under certain conditions, subject H performed action X. The statements “H performed X” and “H did not perform X” are mutually exclusive under those conditions. Which of them describes what happened depends on the event itself and the grounds for establishing it.
One might try to unpack the negation through other descriptions: H was engaged in Y, was somewhere else, interacted with another subject, or did nothing. But such descriptions do not automatically constitute a set of cases in which “H did not perform X.” Some are compatible with X: for example, H could have performed X and then gone on to do Y. For each scenario, it is still necessary to establish whether it excludes X under the specified conditions.
From Possibility to Grounds
Even the incompatibility of a scenario with X does not, by itself, prove that the scenario occurred. “H could have been engaged in Y” does not entail “H was engaged in Y,” nor does it entail “H did not perform X.” Moving to a statement about what happened requires grounds beyond the mere conceivability of an alternative.
The same boundary remains when discussing probability. The ability to invent many scenarios does not turn their number into the probability that X did not occur. Such a calculation first assigns weights to the scenarios and only then produces a numerical advantage for one side. Without grounds for the weights themselves, the result tells us about the method of enumeration, not about the event.
Evidence and the Multitude of Scenarios
Suppose there is direct evidence that X was performed. Additional scenarios may matter if they provide grounds for assessing that evidence differently or for establishing an event incompatible with X. Merely increasing their number changes nothing about either what happened or the content of the evidence.
The multitude of alternatives constructed by an observer does not add a multitude of events to the past. The number of conceivable alternatives is not the number of grounds for believing that those alternatives occurred. Possibility does not become probability simply through further subdivision of scenarios.
