Nothing Can Be Impossible: Why Absolute Impossibility Does No Theoretical Work

This paper defends a thesis stronger than epistemic humility about modality and weaker than metaphysical eliminativism: the concept of framework-transcendent impossibility is theoretically idle. It does no explanatory or inferential work that framework-relative impossibility cannot do, it has no independent route of epistemic access, and the appearance that it is required arises from a hypostatisation of framework-internal achievements. I call this the Idleness Thesis. It is logically stronger than the claim that we cannot demonstrate absolute impossibility (since something undemonstrable might still play indispensable theoretical roles) and weaker than the claim that there are no absolute impossibilities (since the absence of theoretical work is compatible with mind-independent modal facts). The Idleness Thesis is the only version of framework-relativism that engages necessitism and absolutism on terms they cannot evade by retreating to pure metaphysics. I argue that meaning is itself framework-determined, that this dissolves the standard "change of subject" objection to logical pluralism, and that absolutism cannot give content to its central modal claims without conscripting framework-internal resources. The conclusion is not that nothing is impossible, but that nothing is impossible "absolutely" in any sense that earns its theoretical keep.