 John Duns Scotus’s theory of simultaneous alternatives was an exposition of the intensional theory of modality, some elements of which were put forward in the twelfth century. In criticizing Henry of Ghent’s theory of theological modalities, Scotus sketched a model of ‘divine psychology’ in which certain relations between theological, metaphysical, and modal theoretical notions are defined. Scotus deviated from the metaphysical tradition in which possibilities were founded in divine being. According to him, when God as an omniscient being knows all possibilities, he does not know them by turning first to his essence. Possibilities can be known in themselves (Ord. I.35, 32). In fact they would be what they are even if there were no God. Scotus states that if it is assumed that, per impossibile, neither God nor the world exists and the proposition ‘The world is possible’ then existed, this proposition would be true. The actual world is possible as it is, and this possibility and the possibilities of unrealized things are primary metaphysical facts which are not dependent on anything else (Ord. I.7.1, 27; Lect. I.7, 32, I.39.1–5, 49). The commentators are divided on whether Scotus speaks here about possibilities as such (Knuuttila 1996) or about the independence of formal possibilities, but not of concrete possibilities, which are dependent on God (Normore 2003; Hoffmann 2009).