Fate, Time, and Language
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31 “The Sea Fight Tomorrow,” pp. 294 ff.
32 Ibid., pp. 294-295.
33 De Gen. et. Corr., 337b 35; Met., 1015b 14; E. N. 1139b24. Cf. Anscombe, op. cit., pp. 6-7.
34 “The Sea Fight Tomorrow,” p. 286.
35 Ibid., p. 290.
36 Summa Theologica, pt. I, q. 14, art. 13. Donald Williams expresses the same idea (“The Sea Fight Tomorrow,” p. 283): “The most accidental and ephemeral proposition—that the dog’s tail twitches at just such and such a moment, for example—is likewise an eternal truth, if it is true at all. It was true when the sun was formed; it will be true when the sun explodes or is extinguished.”
37 Cf. W. V. Quine, Elementary Logic (Boston, 1941), p. 6 (quoted by Williams, “The Sea Fight Tomorrow,” p. 286).
38 Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (London, 1940), p. 113.
39 Philosophical Essays (London, 1954), p. 186.
40 The Structure of Appearance (Cambridge, Mass., 1951), p. 297.
41 “Time: A Treatment of Some Puzzles,” in Essays on Logic and Language, ed. by Antony Flew (New York, 1951), p. 53.
42 Williams, “The Sea Fight Tomorrow,” pp. 287 ff. Cf. his “The Myth of Passage,” Journal of Philosophy, XLVIII (1951), 459-460.
43 “The Sea Fight Tomorrow,” p. 282.
44 Ibid., pp. 305-306.
45 Cf. Paul Weiss, Nature and Man (New York, 1947), p. 12.
46 Cf. Butler, op. cit., p. 273.
47 This argument is familiar from Leibniz, who in the Discourse on Metaphysics (Art. 13) argued that whatever is going to happen is already “assured” or “certain,” but not therefore any more “necessary” than what has already happened. The same point was well made by Thomas Reid (Essays on the Intellectual and Active Powers of Man (1790), vol. I, Essay III, ch. ii), and more recently by Ryle, who asks, “Why does the slogan ‘Whatever is, always was to be’ seem to imply that nothing can be helped, where the obverse slogan ‘Whatever is, will always have been’ does not seem to imply this?” (op. cit., p. 21).
48 Cf. Baylis, op. cit., pp. 161-162.
49 Cf. Reid, op. cit., vol. III, Essay IV, ch. x.
50 See G. Grote, Aristotle (London, 1880), pp. 115-116. Cf. Paul Weiss, “The Past: Its Nature and Reality,” Review of Metaphysics, V (1952), 508-509.
51 E. N. 1139b: “No one deliberates about the past, but about what is future and capable of being otherwise, while what is past is not capable of not having taken place; hence Agathos is right in saying ‘For this alone is lacking even to God, to make undone things that have once been done.’” Cf. St. Thomas, S. T. pt. I, Q. 25, art. 4, and Weiss, “The Past: Its Nature and Reality,” p. 511.
52 Cf. Anscombe, op. cit., p. 11.
53 Donald Williams writes that “as for the irrevocability of past time, it seems to be no more than the trivial fact that the particular events of 1902, let us say, can not also be the events of 1952” (“The Myth of Passage,” p. 465). But so also, the events of 2002 cannot also be the events of 1952; yet the future is alterable.
54 This point is taken from Charles Hartshorne, Man’s Vision of God (Chicago, 1941), p. 101.
55 Cf. Mary and Arthur Prior, “Erotetic Logic,” Philosophical Review, LXIV (1955), 57-58.
56 Donald Williams remarks that “there is a wholly unacceptable suggestion in these passages that an event may be contingent before it happens and necessary afterward; that indeed all present and past events ... are necessary. But in so far as he is persuaded of the truth of his first proposition, it must be by deduction from his own metaphysics of potentiality and tendency, rather than by logic or observation” (“The Sea Fight Tomorrow,” pp. 290-291. I think this interpretation is right but the evaluation wrong.
57 De Int. 19a 23-24. But notice that this is a temporal, and not an ordinary hypothetical statement.
58 “The Sea Fight Tomorrow,” pp. 291-292.
59 As Linsky, op. cit., p. 251 and Butler, op. cit., pp. 267-268, have both pointed out.
60 Cf. St. Thomas, S.T. pt. I, Q. 22, art. 4. For a brief history of Scholastic opinion on this point, see Philotheus Boehner’s edition and study of Ockham’s Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia Dei et de futuris contingentibus , Franciscan Institute Publications (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1945), pp. 75 ff.
61 Cf. Weiss, Nature and Man, p. 13.
62 S.T. pt. I, Q. 25, art. 3.
63 Hartshorne, op cit., p. 98. Cf. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (Loeb Classical Library), p. 387.
64 Hartshorne, (op. cit., pp. 104, 139) calls this conception of omniscience “the Principle of Gersonides,” after Levi ben Gerson (fourteenth century) who may have been its originator.
65 Op. cit., p. 385. Cf. E. Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (St. Louis, 1941), p. 119.
66 Op. cit., pp. 21-23.
67 Aristotle explicitly denied it (De. Int. 19b 36).
68 Essentially this point is made by Ryle, op cit., pp. 19-20: “A prophecy is not fulfilled until the event forecast has happened.... The establishment of in-correctness certainly cancels ‘true’ but not, as a rule, so fiercely as to incline us to say ‘false.’”
69 Cf. Hartshorne, op. cit., p. 103.
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Fate, time, and language : an essay on free will : David Foster
Wallace / edited by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert ;
introduction by James Ryerson ; epilogue by Jay Garfield.
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“Richard Taylor’s ‘Fatalism’ and the semantics of physical
modality”—P.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN : 978-0-231-52707-1
1. Taylor, Richard, 1919- Fatalism. 2. Fate and fatalism.
3. Semantics. I. Cahn, Steven M. II. Eckert, Maureen, 1966-
III. Wallace, David Foster. Richard Taylor’s “Fatalism” and the
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