Searching for appropriate fatalism candidate of Lazy argument

Many faces of fatalism

Our intention is to show two things: what could be principally assumed as a fatalistic conception in the Lazy Argument and for whom was the fatalistic argument intended? For this purpose, it would initially be necessary to establish what fatalism is or could be, especially the kind assumed in LA. For easier reading, logical illustrations will be given in the simplest possible forms.

Modern interpretations of fatalism. It is hard to say that a certain formulation of fatalism is the standard or classic. It would be easy to find many formulations and concepts. Some differences among them are subtle, some crude, some probably unimportant from a philosophical standpoint. But our motivation here is not to estimate the consistency of interpretations of fatalism but to point at some important features of these conceptions and to expose what seem to be their main characteristics applicable to LA.

It is not strange that fatalism is almost always contrasted with determinism, since between these two, from a historical standpoint, the demarcation line is not transparent in all cases, if there are any cases where it exists at all. The standard formulation of fatalism that can be found in the literature usually emphasizes inevitability with respect to the physical aspect of its interpretation as its main characteristic: if events are fated, then they are inevitable (and, as it seems, vice versa). However, such a poorly-equipped conception, with merely a notion of inevitability and nothing besides, doesn’t tell us much. From this poor formulation of fatalism, we have no ground for the claim that events are inevitable or for how they could be so. This simple formulation gives us no further way to find any track toward the tenability of the claim. In this case, we could just take for granted that events are inevitable and nothing else. Moreover, this simple kind of fatalism tells us nothing about the inevitability of events that we are usually interested in and widely talking about. For this task, we will need some additional points. However, anything added to the simplest formulation of fatalism, marked solely by inevitability, makes this conception more complicated. For if one is talking about the inevitability of future events, she is indirectly enrolled in many additional questions concerning its properties, for example: about her base for present knowledge about the future events; about the status of the future truth and the truth of predictions; about powers and conditions that make events inevitable; about the ability to govern or to anticipate future events; about representations of fatalism that are also connected with conditions that guarantee inevitability; and so on. As we will see latter, not all forms or conceptions of fatalism are equal in the interpretation of inevitability. They differ significantly.

Let us take a closer look at the main differences between determinism and fatalism. Is there any difference between them and what this difference consists in? Let us repeat a known fact, that determinism, too, is not a unique conception and is usually connected with a bundle of properties: causal accessibility, laws or regularities (universality of some kind), necessity, antecedent causes, teleological pressure, forward knowledge, and so on. Sometimes it is connected with predictability but sometimes not – depending on the interpretation and the nature of causes. The simplest formulation of determinism is in the claim that everything has its cause or that everything that happens is determined by an antecedent cause. This formulation, supported by notions of cause and causality, is known as causal determinism. For a long time it was presented as a base for scientific knowledge.

In his classic text on the problem, in a chapter entitled The Lawlessness of Fatalism, Bunge [1959:101-2] follows the above-noted poor formulation according to which the character of fatalism is in inevitability. He criticizes Emerson’s attitude that “the book of Nature is the book of Fate” as an error, for fatalism is a non-causal principle that differs from causal determinism and scientific determinism by which “the book of nature” could be read or understood. In his attempt to formulate a conception of scientific determinism (both elastic enough to cover new forms of determination and strict enough to exclude unverifiable and irrational notions), he sees scientific determinism as something less ontologically obligated that could also cover statistical and other forms of determination. Unlike Emerson’s, Bunge’s characterization of fatalism is presented more as a dramatic scene than a serious and consistent metaphysical conception. For him, fatalism is concerned with inevitability and in the background of this “class of doctrines” he sees a non-naturalistic belief in some supernatural and external power able to assure and to make things happen in this world, a power which pushes things toward their inevitable end. Bunge’s classic scene is based on some additional assumption concerning the character of such power. In contrast to scientific determinism, this power ruling Fate is unpredictable, uncontrollable, and indirectly governs things by principles beyond our ability to comprehend. In short, according to Bunge, fatalism is not causal and its inevitability is provided only by the romantic imagination of an unnatural or supernatural transcendent and indirect force of necessity. The fatalistic explanation is just a simulation of the explanatory process and very far from both the scientific and even the causal depiction of determination.

Wilson [1955:70-2] interprets fatalism almost in Bunge’s sense, claiming a causal discontinuity version of fatalism. If the future is inevitable (and not antecedently dependent), then everything is prepared for ‘laziness’, and his opinion is that, in this version, “human effort, human wisdom, human skills, even human stupidity, have no causal continuity with the future. The same future will occur ... no matter what we human beings know or don’t, seek or shun.” The difference between the two conceptions he sees in this manner: “the fatalist asserts a causal discontinuity between present actions and the future world, where the non-fatalistic determinist asserts causal continuity here as everywhere else.” In this interpretation of Wilson’s, the kind of fatalism that claims causal discontinuity and puts aside antecedent conditions conflicts with the given formulation of determinism. Discontinuity fatalism does not have much in common with (causal) determinism, neither could be implied by determinism.

Grünbaum, in a chapter entitled The Fallacious Identification of Determinism with Fatalism in his [1971:302], shares some opinions of Bunge and Wilson when he says that “fatalism is the appallingly primitive prescientific doctrine that in every situation, regardless what we do, the outcome will be unaffecting by our efforts”. Since determinism recalls antecedent conditions (and laws of nature) while fatalism claims just inevitability (without further recalling antecedents), it means that these two conceptions differ. However, if we accept these formulations as adequate, it does not mean that these two are mutually and necessarily excluding one another. According to him, if determinism is true, fatalism has to be true, too. Fatalism can be seen as an outcome of determinism since determinism implies fatalism. But not vice versa: if everything is inevitable, it does not imply that everything that occurred has its antecedent condition fulfilled. But if everything is necessary, then it is also inevitable. These two conceptions are not equal, but strongly related and similar.

The position of S. Langer [1936:474, 478] is not far from above. She conjoins fatalism and determinism when she contemplates William James’ “The Dilemma of Determinism” and says that modern “scientific fatalism” (the notion we later meet in Bunge in a different sense) is “the assumption that there is a theoretically knowable collection of causes for any act” and that the doctrine of determinism, in its philosophic form, is “a modern version of belief in Fate.” She assesses the ancient concept of inevitability projected in a modern derivation from the concepts of necessity, cause and the universality of law, and from the assumption that the future, like the past, is necessary and in the same sense inevitable. Everyone who knows the causes and universal laws could form and infer true sentence about the future. He could make an inference covering the future (inevitable) state of affairs. Langer decidedly denies that such knowledge is possible not just because personal acts are practically unpredictable (for it is impossible to collect such an immense complexity and variety of causes), but also because “all the causes of an act,” before the act itself has taken place, form an “illegitimate totality,” in the sense of Russell’s and Whitehead’s Principia. However, the logical ground for the character of the relation between determinism and fatalism seems to be still open according to Langer’s observations.

We are mentioning just some of the many modern interpretations of the relation between two conceptions. However, these interpretations did not provide us with a more precise or a broader view of the problem. We could also have introduced other modern authors and formulations in this line of reasoning – they are numerous – but the impression will not be significantly different and, what is important for us, not much clearer. Fatalism is, for the above authors at any rate, a strange, impossible, inconsistent and undesirable doctrine, and we agree that, from today’s standpoint, such non-continuous fatalism would be a completely eccentric theory. What these positions generally have in common is that determinism is connected with the notions of cause and causality (and generality), while fatalism is connected with the notion of inevitability and, in some cases, with discontinuity and particularity. Moreover, since determinism and fatalism are frequently understood as (in the same strange way) similar and interwoven conceptions, the notion of inevitability could probably be understood – in some or another sense and in some cases and formulations – as accessible from the notion of necessity. This summary is certainly nothing more than just a sketch. Due to the conceptual mess (interweaving causality and uncaused circumstances, universality and particularity, and so on), we have to know that a precise formulation of the modern understanding of fatalism remains an open question.

Since we could find traces of the above mess in most of the modern interpretations of the Lazy Argument, we have decided to compile a crude registry of historical and ancient conceptions of fatalism and have tried to find some appropriate candidates for what the original defenders of the argument could have been maintaining in the debates. Also, if possible, we have tried to answer the question of who they were. We will not assess the metaphysical consistency of these conceptions, but only wish to select the best candidates that correspond to the historical and conceptual claims given in the argument. As it seems, nothing in the above ‘modern’ interpretations of fatalism is what we are trying to find. Besides, as it can be seen, let us say in advance, that the names of the conceptions and their contents do not always correspond to the same things. We will try to make it clearer when and if it is possible.

Fatalism as logical determinism. Jordan used to say [1963:1] that “strict determinism” is the outcome of the principle of bivalence, with two additional assumptions: one of them is the correspondence theory of truth while the other is the assumption of the timeless character of the truth. Woleński recently [1996:2] stated a similar formulation of this conception: “The view that classical logic implies radical determinism, is called logical determinism.” He equates radical determinism with fatalism. When we add the principle of causality to the principle of bivalence, we obtain radical determinism (fatalism). Jordan and Woleński just echoed the words of Schlick [1931], Weismann [1956] and early Łukasiewicz (from his article “On determinism” [1970]). According to them, logical implicature could in some sense cover and express the principle of causation across the correspondence theory of truth. Łukasiewicz also holds that logical determinism is a conception where logic reveals the ontological structure of reality. Actually, in many aspects, he interprets and repeats ancient conceptions. It is a common opinion that he did not make an additional terminological distinction between logical determinism and (logical) fatalism and, from that time on, these two terms seem to be marked in the literature as the same conception. Here, the logical notion of necessity fully corresponds to the fatalistic notion of fate and inevitability, while the notion of cause and the nature of causality could be interpreted (roughly speaking) through the notions of realized antecedent condition and implication. Łukasiewicz formulates this conception with the philosophy of the Stoics in mind as well as their theories of logic and physics. As is known, he widely criticized this conception, from seemingly the same position as Aristotle, and later introduced three-valued logic systems as the result of his standpoint on the non-identity of the principle of bivalence and the principle of the excluded middle. Taylor’s [1962] ‘standard’ argument for fatalism is based on the same understanding of logical determinism that we find in above authors plus something tacitly assumed by others, namely, the interpretation of the nature of time is substantially symmetrical in character. Such conceptions and the same starting assumptions also inspired most of the modern interpretations of the ‘Lazy Argument’ like Ryle, Dummett and Gould, and later Stalnaker, Shields, Irwin and some others. The most of them are dealing with the problem as opponents and critics of this conception and they do not always share all of the same assumptions in interpreting (logical) fatalism and logical determinism. However, almost all of them agree that ‘strict’ or ‘radical’ determinism (logical fatalism) is an idea that could be or tend to be proved solely or largely on logical grounds by appropriate application of logical principles.

Logical fatalism or determinism in this sense is not a conception that adequately corresponds to the two key premises of LA. Two sentences containing inserted disjunctions refer to the possibility of a free decision between two exclusive actions: ‘either you will do this or you will not do that’. That is, there is an open possibility to do any of the two opportunities. Logical fatalism – if time is symmetrical and reduces all possible worlds to an actual one – will not allow this possibility. What is interesting here is that all ancient critics tolerate this possibility for decision and criticize other aspects of the argument. It is hard to suppose that no one saw this part of the argument as inconsistent – neither the Stoics nor Cicero nor their commentators. There are no such traces in either the later Peripatetics’ or the later Middle Platonists’ and the Neo-Platonists’ sources. For us, it only means that this possibility could have been tolerated intentionally if, in the background of the argument, there lies an assumption of some specific sort or an understanding of fatalism. If we take these assumptions from the ground of logical fatalism, then the argument is clearly inconsistent, for the key premises are stating something contradictory to the assumptions of radical or strict determinism, which excludes the possibility of behavior that could be covered or illustrated by a form of exclusive disjunction and the possibility to choose freely between two exclusive options. So we must go towards a part-time fatalism and this should be the subject of the subsequent section of our article.