 Possibilists claim that we can: we must simply broaden our understanding of reality, of what there is in the broadest sense, beyond the actual, beyond what actually exists, so that it also includes the merely possible. In particular, says the possibilist, there are merely possible people, things that are not, in fact, people but which could have been. So, for the possibilist,  (4)  is true after all so long as we acknowledge that reality also includes possibilia, things that are not in fact actual but which could have been; things that do not in fact exist alongside us in the concrete world but which could have. Actualism is (at the least) the denial of possibilism; to be an actualist is to deny that there are any possibilia. Put another way, for the actualist, there is no realm of reality, or being, beyond actual existence; to be is to exist, and to exist is to be actual. In this article, we will investigate the origins and nature of the debate between possibilists and actualists.