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Fatalism: thoughts about tomorrow's sea battle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 February 2019
Abstract
The hold of the fatalistic reasoning that Aristotle criticizes is dependent, first, on the idea, articulated by Frege, that the real candidates for truth and falsity are something other than particular contingent happenings such as affirmations or thinkings, and, second, on the idea that the demand for speculative reflection overrides any demand for practical deliberation. Standard challenges to the reasoning embody the same presuppositions and so simply perpetuate the core confusions. They do so most fundamentally in the assumption that we need a ‘metaphysical’ grounding for our idea of ourselves as agents who have influence on the course of events.
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References
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7 I will not explicitly consider where the fatalistic concerns of Christian and Islamic theology and philosophy, deriving from ideas of God's foreknowledge, fit into this.
8 Reconstructed, using Aristotle's own words, from On Interpretation, op. cit. note 2, chapter 9.
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31 I am indebted to Chryssi Sidiropoulou for confirmation that, while matters are not completely straightforward, this translation is accurate from the point of view of my concerns.
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