fatalism revisited

METAPHILOSOPHY Vol. 21, No. 3, July 1990 00261068 $2.00

FATALISM REVISITED

MARK BERNSTEIN

Fatalism tells us that whatever happens had to happen. This type of necessity has typically been viewed voluntaristically. That is, if Fatalism is true, we have no abilities to perform actions other than those which in fact we do perform. Furthermore, that these abilities are lacking is a fact derivable from logical considerations about truth, rather than from empirical considerations concerning the operations of either the world or human nature. Currently, very few philosophers take this doctrine very seriously, perfunctorily dismissing it as being either patently absurd, based on sophomoric conceptual blunders, or being true, but devoid of content.

This I believe is a mistake. To illustrate this I will discuss an argument for Fatalism which has drawn recent attention. In sections (I) and (11), I will show that these attacks against the Fatalistic argument miss the mark. In sections (111) and (IV), I draw some morals from this debate and speculate where and how future engagement should take place.

I Richard Taylor, perhaps the most renowned contemporary Fatalist, has offered the following argument to try to show that whatever action I do in fact perform is the only action that I could have performed (Taylor 1962, pp. 56-66).

Consider a navy officer in the following situation. He is considering whether to issue order 0 or to refrain from issuing order 0. In fact, if he issues 0, a battle will occur tomorrow, and if he refrains from issuing 0 no battle will occur. There are 2 possibilities.

(i) Assume no naval battle occurs. Then a condition necessary for the officer to issue 0 is absent, namely the occurrence of the naval battle. This is so since ex hypothesi his issuing 0 is sufficient for the occurrence of the naval battle, and it is a logically unimpeachable principle that if A is sufficient for B, B is necessary for A. Thus we have a case where there is the absence of a condition (the occurrence of the naval battle) whose presence is necessary for the performance of an act (the issuing of 0).

(ii) Assume a naval battle occurs. Then a condition a condition necessary for the officer to refrain from issuing 0 is absent, namely the non-occurrence of the naval battle. So, again, as in (i), we have a case where there is the absence of a condition (the non-occurrence of a naval battle) whose presence is necessary for the performance of an act (the refraining of the issuing of 0).

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FATALISM REVISITED 271

Now consider the principle.

(A) No agent can (is able to) perform an act in the absence of a condition necessary for that act’s accomplishment.

If (A) is true, then upon applying it to (i), it follows that the officer is not able to issue 0. Applying (A) to (ii), it follows that the officer is not able to refrain from issuing 0.

Thus, either the officer is not able to issue 0 or is not able to refrain from issuing 0, i.e., the officer has no freedom (it is not ‘up to’ to the officer) what he is going to do concerning the issuing of 0. Or, equivalently, whichever action he does perform is the one which he had to perform - he is not able to perform otherwise than he does. Generalizing on this case, we reach the Fatalistic conclusion desired - whatever actions agents perform are the only ones that they have the ability to perform.

Peter van Inwagen has attacked Taylor’s argument by trying to show that there resides in (A) a crucial ambiguity (van Inwagen, ch. 2). According to van Inwagen, one interpretation of (A) makes it obviously true but also lends no support to the Fatalistic position, while the other reading of (A) seems to leave us with a falsehood.

The paraphase of (A) that makes (A) true is:’

(B) No agent can (i.e. no agent has the ability to): perform an action when a condition necessary for its accomplishment is absent.

That is, the phrase ‘when a condition necessary for its accomplishment is absent’ modifies ‘action’, and it is this modified action which lies beyond the ability of any agent. Van Inwagen finds this claim ‘obviously true’, but sees no reason to believe this truth helps establish Fatalism. To understand why is it that he believes this principle unhelpful, he asks us to consider the following argument:

(1) No one can: move his finger in the absence of his finger’s moving. (2) His finger is not moving. (3) He cannot (i.e. he lacks the ability to) move his finger.

This argument parallels the argument used by Taylor (now using paraphrase (B) as the reading of (A)).

(1’) No one can: issue order 0 in the absence of a naval battle occurring. (2‘) No naval battle occurs. (3’) No one can (i.e. all agents lack the ability to) issue order 0.

’ Van Inwagen actually uses an idiosyncratic bracketing device to formulate the ambiguity. Nothing is lost, I believe, but needless perplexity, by using my paraphrases.

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Van Inwagen’s reasoning for finding the prior argument invalid is not explicitly given, but apparently runs something like this: (1) is true, for the action described is impossible, indeed logically impossible. This is just to say that it is a (logically) unperformable action and, so, truistically, no one can perform such an action; (2) is true, ex hypothesi; (3) at least, in general, is false. One normally does not lack the ability to move one’s finger when one isn’t moving it (although strange scenarios where one doesn’t have the ability at these times can be devised). Thus we have true premises and false conclusion and so an invalid argument. Since Taylor’s argument is of the same form, Taylor’s argument, too, is invalid.

The first bone of contention is whether these two arguments are actually of the same form. After all, (1) refers to an action that is taken to be logically unperformable, while (1’) refers to an action that is causally (perhaps metaphysically?) impossible to perform. Is this difference important? In a note, van Inwagen admits that Taylor meant (A) to apply to conditions causally, but not logically, necessary for one’s acts. Van Inwagen, however, finds no point to this restriction (van Inwagen, p. 229). He argues that if one were to accept (A) when we’re speaking of causal conditions, we should have even more confidence in accepting (A) when we’re referring to conditions which are logically necessary for the performance of an act. Although Van Inwagen is correct in this assessment, the discussion does not reach the proper depth.

If (1) is merely an instance of the claim that one cannot perform the (logically) unperformable, its source of truth and obviousness resides in the fact that it is a tautology. Thus the argument reduces to

(2) His finger is not moving

(3) He cannot move his finger

which may seem obviously invalid, until you remember that this argument, is, in effect, an expression of the Fatalistic doctrine, viz. that one can only do what one does, in fact, do. Thus in arguing that a purported argument for Fatalism is invalid, van Inwagen implicitly incorporates a denial of the Fatalistic position, and is therefore guilty of begging the question. It is true as van Inwagen claims, that he is not trying to show Fatalism false, and is only trying to show an argument for Fatalism invalid2, but nonetheless this hardly shields him from this charge of question-begging. On the other hand, Taylor cannot claim validity for this argument without himself begging the question in his favor. My speculation is that Taylor saw this and thus disavowed using

* cf. van Inwagen, p. 49; but cf. p. 1 , where claims he will solve the problem of “fatalism.”


principle (A) in the ‘logically necessary’ form that is exemplified by van Inwagen.

This criticism does not have the consequence of every deductive argument being question-begging. If one tries to argue for position P by employing argument R, and it is shown that R relies, say, on an instance of denying the antecedent, then it has been shown that R doesn’t establish P. This mode of argument is impeccable (or at least it’s the best we have) except of course in the case where P is the position that the denying of the antecedent is not a fallacy. In this rather special case, the mode of argument against the legitimacy of the argument for P is question-begging, and so another type of argument, needs to be used. This is precisely the position that van Inwagen finds himself - he must try to show Taylor’s argument for Fatalism invalid without presupposing its falsity.

Let us then consider (a), as Taylor explicitly wishes us to, where the ‘necessary’ is to be taken as ‘causally necessary’. This being so, (1’)-(3‘) represents an instance of an argument which relies on (A), where (1)- (3) does not. But, unfortunately, for the Fatalist this gain of content results in a loss of obviousness of truth. Is it manifestly true that

No agent can (is able to): perform an act in the absence of a condition (causally) necessary for that act’s accomplishment?

Let us grant that knowing the Cyrillic alphabet is causally necessary for reading Russian. Is it true that I lack to ability to: read Russian without knowing Cyrillic? Well, I’m not sure. And this isn’t because I need any further factual information, but I need to know at this juncture exactly what the Fatalist will accept as an ability. This issue bcomes crystallized when we condsider what options an anti-Fatalist has. He knows that he won’t read Russian without knowing Cyrillic; indeed he never will perform this act. But, the anti-Fatalist may suggest that this is quite compatible with him having the ability to: read Russian without knowing Cyrillic. He has the ability, alright, it’s just that this ability will never be exercised. Moreover, the anti-Fatalist may claim that the ability is exerciseable (i.e. the ability can be exercised), just that, as a matter of fact, this meta-ability will not be meta-exercised. Thus, the anti-Fatalist may not only not find (A) manifestly true; he may find it false.

Now how is the Fatalist to show that his notion of ability which the anti-Fatalist expouses is not the proper one, that it doesn’t capture the ‘fullbodiedness’ of the relevant concept of ability? I see no way that the Fatlist can do this without presupposing the ‘manifest truth’ which is now up for discussion. Thus any Fatalistic attempt seems doomed to question-begging.

My conclusion then is that if we interpret principle (A) as (B), then

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the discussion of Fatalism reduces to a question-begging verbal dispute. If we take (A) as referring to logically necessary condition, we are left, blatantly, with assertions of the Fatalistic and anti-Fatalistic positions, and if we take (A) as incorporating causally necessary condition, we are left with a question-begging discussion concerning its truth.

Van Inwagen renders an alternative reading for (A).

(C) Whenever a condition necessary for the performance of an act is lacking, agents lack the ability to perform that act.

Whereas in (B) the inability arose from the very nature of the self- defeating action, in (C) the inability is a result of the absence of a condition necessary for the performance of the (self-consistent) act. As van Inwagen apparently believes that Taylor’s scenario does demonstrate that conditions necessary for performances of acts are always lacking, it follows that the acceptance of (C) will lead van Inwagen to Fatalism. But van Inwagen claims not to find (C) as an obvious truth; and finds Taylor’s only argument for (C) uncompelling. Taylor’s argument is that

I cannot, for example, live without oxygen; or swim five miles without ever having been in water, or read a given page of print without having learned Russian, or win a certain election without having been nominated, and so on (Taylor 1960, p. 81).

According to van Inwagen

[Wlhat Taylor has done is simply to list certain conditions necessary for his being able to perform certain acts, conditions that are a fortiori necessary for his performing these acts.

Such a list lends no support for (C) for

[Olne might as well try to show that one cannot live in America if some condition necessary for one’s living in California is absent by arguing:

I cannot, for example, live in America if I do not live in the Western Hemisphere, live upon dry land, live north of the Equator. . . (van Inwagen, pp. 49-50).

Van Inwagen’s reasoning is very compressed. Evidently, first he believes that an argument of the following sort is obviously invalid.

(E) (1) One doesn’t have the ability to live in America when we aren’t living

(2) Living in the Western Hemisphere (etc.) is necessary for living in

0

in the Western Hemisphere (etc.)

California


(3) Thus, whenever a condition necessary for living in California is lacking, we don’t have the ability to live in the U.S.

Secondly, he takes Taylor’s list as implicitly supplying us with an argument of the same form, and is therefore also invalid.

(F) (1’) We don’t have the ability to read Russian when we lack knowledge of Cyrillic (etc.)

(2’) Knowing Cyrillic (etc.) is necessary to reading Russian

(3’) Thus, whenever a condition necessary for reading Russian is lacking, we lack the ability to read Russian.

Since it is due to generalizing on (3’), that we reach Taylor’s desired result (C), we find that we are not provided with good reason to accept Fatalism.

First, it is probably a bit unfair of van Inwagen to view Taylor as intending, even implicitly, the list as an argument. After all, Taylor believes (A) to be ‘manifestly true’ (by just serious consideration, as it were) and so any attempt to provide an argument for this principle would be at best superfluous, and at worst, perverse. It is probably, therefore, fairer to view the list as merely applications of the principle.

But, this to the side, van Inwagen’s argument is not detrimental to the Fatalist cause. For the claim arguments (E) and (F) have the same form is to assume that the relationship between living in America and living in California is the same as the relationship between being able to perform an action and the actual performance of that action. And this relationship, van Inwagen supposes, is given exhaustively, by the fact that the first state of affairs in each of the respective pairs is a necessary condition of the second state of affairs. But to the Fatalist, the relationship between being able to perform P and the performance of P is more than this: being able to perform P is both necessary and sufficient for the performance of P (van Inwagen, in a different context (pp. 42-43), recognizes this when he says that “[Flatalism may be looked upon as a doctrine that only the powers one has are - of logical necessity - powers that one fact exercises.”) Thus the Fatalist may agree that van Inwagen has provided an invalid schema, but one which is crucially different in form, and thus has no bearing on the Fatalistic argument. Indeed, for van Inwagen’s present discussion to be telling against the Fatalist, it is just this inference (the inference from ‘being able to perform p’ to ‘p is performed’) that must be denied. But to do so, would, once again be begging the question against the Fatalist.

Of course, to adopt such an argument form (i.e. (1‘)-(3))) as valid, is, in effect to adopt Fatalism, and so without independent argument from either side, we seem to be left with two question-begging disputants;

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one who allows for the notion of ‘ability’ to be distinct from ‘exercised ability’ and one who does not.

One might take a different tack toward the Fatalist. Premise (1’) seems questionable. One might claim that we have the ability to read Russian, even when we lack knowledge of Cyrillic, if we are in a position from which we can get ourselves to learn Cyrillic. Armed with this account of ‘having an ability’, we can now make an important distinction which the Fatalist is impotent to make: that between a person who, say, is a master of language-learning but as of yet hasn’t focused his energies on Cyrillic, and a person whose native intelligence simply prohibits him, even under the most favorable of circumstances, to learn a foreign language. Here the former, the former alone, has the ability to learn Cyrillic, while under the Fatalist position, as exemplified in (l’), such a distinction is conflated. This, the anti-Fatalist might argue, is primafacie evidence that his account of ‘having an ability’ is on the right track, and not merely ad hoe.

There are various replies open to the Fatalist. A short one would be to ask the anti-Fatalist if, since he believes that the distinction that he illuminates is evidence for the rejection of (l’), why he doesn’t object in similar fashion to the very central tenet of Fatalism. That is, why not say that the Fatalist conflates ‘having the ability to do A’ with ‘performing A’, that we have and use criteria for a person being able to perform an action and yet not performing it, and so Fatalism misaccounts for our daily behavior, and so, should be rejected.

But when viewed this clearly, the Fatalist reply is obvious. What the Fatalist is attempting to do, with the use, for example, of Taylor’s argument, is to show that we are making a distinction where there isn’t any. The ‘criteria’ that we use are not reflective of an actual difference in the world. Precedents for the anti-Fatalist’s error can be found, historically, when persons thought they possessed ways of telling witches from non-witches, and philosophically, when persons thought they owned methods to distinguish synthetic from analytic claims. To charge the Fatalist with conflation, is to do nothing other than beg the question against him.

In a slightly different way the dispute can be seen as one in which, once again, the Fatalist denies and the anti-Fatalist asserts that there exists a distinction between an exercised ability and an abilityper se. For the anti-Fatalistic characterization of the master language learner hinges on the assumption that it’s possible for one to have an ability and not exercise it. Notice that both the Fatalist and anti-Fatalist may grant that the having of an ability presupposes its exerciseability by the agent, but only the latter believes that this property can exist without it being instantiated.


I1 Irving Thalberg also finds fault with Taylor’s ‘naval battle’ argument, but for entirely different reasons (Thalberg 1980). He believes that Taylor’s example implicitly smuggles in and relies upon the notion of backwards causation, a concept which he finds at best quite obscure and in need of explication, and at worst simply incoherent. Thalberg finds the notion of ‘sufficiency’ having no more or less content than that of the concept of ‘causation,’ and so takes Taylor’s tale of the occurrence of a naval battle being sufficient for the emission of a particular prior order, as legitimizing the phenomenon of backwards causation.

As evidence for this charge, Thalberg points out that Taylor’s examples of necessary of essential relationships - oxygen being necessary to human life, being (and perhaps practicing) in water for some time being necessary to swimming five miles, etc., - are causal, and are so in the normal cause-effect sequence. As sufficiency to Taylor is merely the converse relationship of necessity (i.e., if A is necessary for B, B is sufficient for A), these examples, ipsofucto, show that Taylor’s use of ‘sufficient’ is also merely a disguise for causal language.

Taylor’ own work concerning backwards causation is equivocal (Taylor 1966a, 1966b, esp. pp. 31-39, 188-195). But, Thalberg’s charges can be accommodated without entering these murky waters. Sufficiency is not identical to causation.

The occurrence of a naval battle suffices but does not cause the officer to make order 0. The cause of his making this order is presumably, a decision that was based on military factors - the size of the enemy fleet, the position of his fleet vis u vis the enemy flotilla, etc. - all of which preceded its effect of the issuing of the order. To say that the occurrence of the naval battle sufficed for the issuing of 0 is just to say that it is in the given circumstances, empirically impossible (but logically possible) for the joint occurrence of the naval battle and the non-issuance of 0. I use the term ‘empirically impossible’ rather than ‘causally impossible’ for two reasons. First, the use of the latter term may create confusion, inducing some to conflate sufficiency with causation, and secondly, I wish to prevent the misimpression that there is a causal law which relates naval battles with the issueances of certain orders, simpliciter.

With this in mind that one can recognize a rationale for Taylor’s examples, Thalberg is quite right in assessing them as exemplifications of causal laws and so his misevaluation of sufficiency is understandable. Indeed these causal relationships form a proper subset of sufficiency relationships, and are given as examples of such, I would speculate, because their background conditions are so mundane. No story of continued conditions need be elaborated for persons understanding that oxygen is necessary for human life, or equivalently, that human life is sufficient for the presence of oxygen. As Thalberg himself notes

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‘[Tlhese are well-established empirical matters’ (Thalberg p. 34) On the other hand, a comparatively complicated scenario (and of course, it is a relative notion which matters are well-established or manifest) must be devised to demonstrate non-causal sufficency examples; background conditions which are not normally pervasive must be given.

To exemplify this consider the case of Jill, the babysitter, who is an inveterate chocolate lover and the sote person in the house other than the two-month-old child. There is a box of chocolates left on the coffee table by the parents of the child for whom Jill is sitting, but it is made clear to Jill that she is not to eat the chocolates. Then,

(a) the box of chocolates remaining full when the parents return suffices (or

The cause for Jill not eating them was the respect (or fear) that she has for the parents, and not of course the fact that the box is full. There is no logical inconsitency in Jill eating the chocolate and the box being full when the parents arrive at home (maybe in another world when a person eats a chocolate a duplicate reappears in the place where the original was eaten). And the story is manipulated in such a way that Jill not eating the chocolate is necessary for the box of chocolates being full. That this connection holds is not (relatively), a manifest empirical matter (maybe Jill had the strange habit of carrying chocolate in her pockets which she used to refill boxes of chocolate which she ate); or

(b) the box of chocolates being empty when the parents return suffices that

ensures) that Jill did not eat them.

Jill did eat them.

The cause for Jill eating them was her extreme desire for chocolates, and not of course the fact that the box is empty. There is no logical inconsistency in Jill not eating the chocolates and the box being empty when the parents arrive at home (maybe in another world, Phil, a telekinetic in Afghanistan, can make the chocolates disappear at will). And the story is manipulated in such a way that Jill eating the chocolates is necessary for the box being empty. That this connection holds is not, relatively, a manifest empirical matter (maybe Jill had the strange habit of emptying boxes of chocolate into a garbage di~posal) .~

modification to make the same point. An example of Davidson, used for another purpose, can be used without great

Suppose a hurricane, which is reported on page of Tuesday’s Times causes a catastrophe, which is reported on page 13 of Wednesday’s Tribune. Then the event reported on page 5 of Tuesday’s Times caused the event reported on page 13 of Wednesday’s Tribune. Should we look for a law relating events of these kinds? (In Davidson, p. 17)

Inventing appropriate background concerning a fierce rivalry between the two news- papers, the story in the Wednesday Tribune would be necessary for the story in the Tuesday’s Times, and yet it would be absurd to consider this relationship causal.


It appears, then, that Thalberg’s identification of sufficiency with causation is unjustified, and that without such warrant accusations of the implicit use of backward causation are unfounded.

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It is now time to take stock. First, it seems clear that neither van Inwagen nor Thalberg have shown Fatalism to be false. Secondly, it seems equally clear that neither has given us more reason to believe in the falsity of Fatalism rather than its truth. Thirdly, that whatever significance the distinction between (B) and (C) has, it does not account for an important advance in the discussion concerning Fatalism. Regardless of which interpretation we employ, we are still embroiled in a question-begging dispute.

To highlight this it is perhaps best to concentrate on (C):

(C) Whenever a condition necessary for the performance of an act is lacking, agents lack the ability to perform that act.

Both parties agree that under these conditions, I will not, at any time, perform the act in question. To use the possible worlds jargon, there is no possible world in which both the necessary condition for an action is lacking and that action gets performed. The Fatalist, in effect, says that this suffices for demonstrating that the agent lacks the ability to perform the action; the anti-Fatalist denies it. The anti-Fatalist is puzzled that the Fatalist cannot see that he is conflating ‘does not’ with ‘cannot’; the Fatalist is puzzled as to what more the notion of the ability amounts to than the performance of an action at some time.

To say that A is able to do Z, is usually taken to mean that in at least one possible world A does Z. Now what does it mean to say that in absence of necessary condition C, A is not able to do Z? Does it mean

(i) that in no possible worlds in which C is absent does A occur or (ii) that in say, the actual world C is absent, and in no possible world does A

occur.

The Fatalist can accept his opponent’s view (viz. (ii)) without substantive damage to his position. He will now say with the anti- Fatalist that persons have the ability to do other than what they, in fact, do, but that his point is preserved by the truth of (i), for (i) expresses what he meant when he said that the occurrence of X is impossible (even logically impossible) and so could not be performed, given the occurrence of not-X. If his opponent wants to claim victory by equating the ability to do X with the avoidability or non-inevitability of X, the Fatalist may shrug with equanimity. Since the exercise of the ability will

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never occur in circumstances where necessary conditions are lacking, he may feel quite satisfied with the results.

Of course, the anti-Fatalist may be equally generous. The acceptance of (i) means no more to him that the acceptance of a tautology. If such acceptance, by verbal maneuvering, results in holding that persons lack abilities in situations described in (C), his point can be re-established by coining a term, “shabilities,” whose referent persons will still have even given the literal truth of (C). By this manipulation, the point of his position, i.e. the rejection of (C) under interpretation (ii), is preserved.

IV

The Fatalist is usually perceived as one who treats the future just as all of us treat the past. Just as all of us believe, that we can do nothing to change or influence the past, the Fatalist believes that there is nothing that we can do to influence or change what will happen (Taylor 1963, pp. 497-99). More perspicuously, if E is an event that will happen at some future time, that there is nothing that we can now (or in other time, for that matter) do to prevent E from happening, or from influencing in any matter the form that E will take. Most important for our present purposes is that with the proferred deflationary account of ability, the Fatalist can continue to hold that the anti-Fatalist is quite correct in believing that we can influence the future, but by the same token, we can influence the past, though, of course, we can never do either. Just as it will never be the case that: P occurred and we make it the case that not-P occurred, so, too, it will never be the case that: E will occur and we will make it the case that not-E will occur. If these Fatalistic theses are compatible with both our ability to change the past and our ability to change the future, so much the better for the reconciliationist spirit. The Fatalist will give up the verbal point in exchange for the substantive one. The anti-Fatalist may well question how substantive this Fatalist victory actually is. Certainly if E will occur, E will occur (and not-E will not), but this seems no more than a trivial tautology. Does his opponent’s thesis come to anything more than this? Wasn’t the point supposed to be that if E will occur, E must occur, where the ‘must’ is given a voluntaristic explication as ‘cannot be avoided by any of our actions’? These rhetorical questions again emphasize the verbal nature of the dispute. But perhaps we should not be too hasty in dashing our hopes completely.

Perhaps the anti-Fatalist can make a stronger case - a case where he shows that the parity thesis, in either its normal form or its converted one, is incorrect. If he can do this, if he can show, say, that in one and the same sense of ‘ability’ one is unable to change the past, but is able to make the future, then I believe he has at the very least, progressed a long way toward showing the issued substantive and his position true.


The goal might be attainable - what seems necessary are compelling theories of time and truth. Only by imbedding the adversarial viewpoints within broader, more inclusive theories, will the question- begging character of most of the discussions concerning Fatalism be mitigated, though not perhaps completely eliminated. But this at least constitutes some progress, progress which seems impossible to make by confining our attention to this issue so l ~ c a l l y . ~

University of Texas at Sun Antonio Sun Antonio, TX 782854643 USA

References

Davidson, D. (1980). ‘Actions, Reasons and Causes’, rep. in Essays on

Taylor, R. (1960) “I Can”. The Philosophical Review 66. __ (1962) “Fatalism”. The Philosophical Review 71. - (1963) “A Note on Fatalism”. The Philosophical Review 72. - (1966a) “Prevention, Postvention, and the Will” in Freedom and

Determinism, ed. K. Lehrer, Random House. - (1966b) Actions and Purpose, Prentice Hall. Thalberg, I. (1980) “Fatalism Toward Past and Future” in Time and

Cause: Essays Presented to Richard Taylor, ed. P. van Inwagen, Reidel Publishing Co.

Actions and Events, Oxford University Press.

van Inwagen, P. (1983) A n Essay on Free Will, Clarendon Press.

For some interesting work that can serve as an introduction to this problem cf. Storrs McCall’s “Temporal Flux” in American Philosophical Quarterly, Oct. 1966, pp. 270-281 and his ‘Objective Time Flow’ in Philosophy ofscience (43), Sept. 1976, pp. 337-362.

fatalism revisited

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