You can use it when it can be well defined. I think in the real world you mostly do have something at least in the past you can call “original”, and when it doesn’t still exist you could modify to, e.g. “what the original instantiation, if it anticipated this scenario, would have defined as its successor”.
I’m not sure “original instantiation” is always well-defined
You can use it when it can be well defined. I think in the real world you mostly do have something at least in the past you can call “original”, and when it doesn’t still exist you could modify to, e.g. “what the original instantiation, if it anticipated this scenario, would have defined as its successor”.