Dave Grohl
11/18/12
Ancient Philosophy
In Regards to Fatalism and the Future: Aristotle’s Way Out
I will do my best to explain McKim’s ideas and interpretations in each section and at
the end of it all I will explain the big picture and comment on it. So to begin with McKim
lays out four questions that remain in dispute when it comes to interpreting Aristotle’s De
Interpretatione:
(i)
What Aristotle’s own positive solution actually amounts to
(ii)
Whether the position he adopts is tenable
(iii)
Whether, ultimately tenable or not, the distinctions he makes actually suffice
to refute fatalism
(iv)
Whether fatalist arguments of the sort presented in DI9 can be refuted
These four questions he goes on to answer in later sections and the main reason he
asks and answers these questions is that he believes there is a common interpretation that
we can all agree upon more so than what has being attained so far. McKim sees all the
interpretations encountered fall either into the classification of the Standard Interpretation
(SI) or the Non-Standard Interpretation (NSI).
McKim first talks about SI claiming that every proponent of such will ultimately
unanimously agree that qualifying the Principle of Excluded Middle (PEM) is the key to
dismantling the idea that a proposition’s occurrence is not contingent, which is what the
fatalist believes. Basically the PEM deems that “it is true that p or it is true that not-p,” is
not true and does not have sufficient conditions to prove its truth (McKim 82). According to
McKim, this is the SI proposed Aristotelian answer to (i). Though not unanimously, the
majority of SI proponents are said to believe (ii) that the restriction on PEM is not tenable
yet (iii) refutes fatalism by showing that it one cannot draw deterministic consequences
from logical principles unless (iv) one makes quite different distinctions from Aristotle.
The NSI goal is to produce a viable interpretation of DI9 as well as undercut the
plausibility of the SI. (i) The use of modal concepts requires attention and qualification
instead of semantical notions and principles is what a proponent of the NSI would say
Aristotle is showing in DI9. (ii) This distinction he wants to clarify and defend is not only
tenable but also required. (iii) The qualification that Aristotle requires of inferences
involving necessity is enough to refute fatalism and (iv) if this kind of light is shed on this
fatalist argument than the aforementioned qualification can refute such an argument.
He goes on to present and defend his own interpretation that differs from both the
SI and NSI yet does its best to be as charitable as possible for both sides. On page 84,
McKim asserts:
The success of my interpretation will depend, negatively, upon being able to show that the modal
restrictions endorsed by the NSI are not sufficient to invalidate the fatalist arguments presented in
the chapter and that the particular semantic qualification recommended by the SI is neither necessary
to forestall fatalism nor one which the text supports. It will depend, positively, upon being able to
show that what Aristotle actually does in DI9 is to call attention to the fact that the arguments on
behalf of fatalism fail because they employ the concepts of truth and necessity in an equivocal way.
With this all laid out, McKim has a few goals he wants to reach: where the problem
of future contingents comes from and what it is, furthermore to analyze the fatalist
arguments presented and the distinctions that Aristotle uses to justify his refutation of
those arguments. He explains that Aristotle’s position is made so complex due to how
complex the problem of fatalism appears to him. McKim sees that the best way to look at
Aristotle’s position is to show that he was genuinely interested in distinguishing two
confusions, which are difficult to recognize differences and similarities between. His
analysis leads him to the conclusion that the distinction is between the ideas of truth and
decidability. Aristotle is interpreted to believe that fatalist plausibility stems from a failure
to distinguish between these two ideas of truth and decidability in the context of truths
about truth. This failure is due to the wording carefully disguising the two ways to read the
argument yet the way one interprets the argument will dictate the validity of the resulting
conclusions.
McKim fleshes out the argument as such, on page 87:
Premise 1: All propositions whether positive or negative are either true or false.
Premise 2: If it is true to say that a thing is white, it must necessarily be white; if the
reverse proposition is true, it will of necessity not be white.
This is where the wording allows for two different arguments to stem from these
premises. McKim calls these the “argument from truth” and the “argument from
decidability”; he begins with the argument from truth (McKim 88). McKim explains that
premise 1 does not make any claim about the truth of a proposition simply that truth (or
denial) is necessary of that proposition. He also points out that premise 2 turns on an
equivocation of truth in its antecedent and necessity in its consequent. Understood this
way, “for any event p, it is necessary that p be the case or necessary that p not be the case,”
(88). The problem that McKim lays out later on the same page is “how one is to understand
the force of a predication of necessity to an event which is not at the same time an assertion
that the event is necessary.”
Aristotle is taken to answer this problem starting with the concept of necessity as it
pertains to existence and the lack there of. In essence, an event is necessary if it has
occurred. This by no means is a controversial stance: if something is happening or
happened it is impossible that it not happen. This type of temporal necessity is interpreted
to bring to light a “linguistic truth about the way in which we speak of temporal
occurrences,” (90). In context, McKim is indicating why Aristotle needs no explanation or
defense through the scope of his interpretation for his stance on necessity as existence.
This “linguistic truth” is obvious when we look at a sentence such as: “It is possible that an
event which occurred yesterday might not happen.” This statement is obviously false and a
poorly constructed sentence or as McKim puts it, “the concept of temporal necessity is built
into the very way in which we speak… to say (above statement) would be to manifest not a
lack of empirical knowledge, but an ignorance of rules for correct usage,” (90). The long
and short of it is that McKim believes that Aristotle should be interpreted to be asserting
necessity in terms of how we speak about the world. As I understand McKim’s
interpretation, Aristotle is framing necessity in such a way as to claim that it comes simply
from how we form our speech to talk about the world. This framework seems right in that
events that are happening or have happened must happen due to the tense used to describe
their existence.
McKim’s next move is to show that even if the argument in question is valid it does
not support fatalism. The first step towards this is to show that Aristotle brings to light the
difference between T-necessity and unconditional necessity. T-necessity is explained as
everything either necessarily is, when it occurs, or necessarily is not, when it fails to occur.
Unconditional necessity is the idea that everything either occurs out of necessity or fails to
occur out of necessity. McKim interprets the argument in terms of unconditional necessity
not to imply any kind of knowledge about the future rather that it implies determinism.
When it comes to T-necessity the argument does not imply any kind of determinism, in fact
the idea of every event being necessary “when and if it occurs is perfectly compatible with
the idea that the occurrence or non-occurrence of any particular event is a purely
contingent matter, and not the outcome of necessity,” (92).
Understood this way, Aristotle is interpreted to ask the fatalists to elaborate on
which type of necessity they choose to imply. Either way, the fatalists cannot reach their
conclusion of truth requiring necessity since unconditional necessity simply implies
determinism (not fatalism) and T-necessity does not imply that the occurrence, or lack
there of, of any event is necessary. This is how McKim lays out the common view of the NSI.
Now that the first argument has been taken care of, McKim moves on to the
argument of decidability laid out this way:
Premise 1: Again, if it is white now it was true to say earlier that it would be white;
so that it was always true to say of anything that has happened that it would be so.
Premise 2: But if it was always true to say that it was so, or would be so, it could not
not be so, or not be going to be so, (it is impossible for it not to happen).
Premise 3: And if it is impossible for something not to happen it is necessary for it to
happen.
Conclusion: Everything that will be, therefore, happens necessarily. So nothing will
come about as chance has it or by chance; for if by chance, not of necessity.
McKim does not find it plausible to attack 3 so he aims for 2 by setting up 1. In a long
drawn out paragraph on page 95, McKim sets up premise 1 to be read in such a way as to
make it true in virtue of the semantic definition of truth and also to be taken to imply the
statement S is P (said now) is true also implies that S will be P (said earlier) was true. In
order to have the antecedent of 2 match the consequent of 1 we must interpret it in the
sense of premise 2’: if “S will be P” (said earlier) was true, then it is necessary that S be P,
(96). Taken this way, McKim shows that the antecedent of 2’ implies that “S is P” (said now)
is decidable now, rather than “S will be P” (said earlier) was then decidable.
At this point, McKim points out that “the root error of fatalism is the failure to
recognize the non-equivalence of expressions of the form, ‘S will be P (said earlier) was
true’ and ‘S will be P was rightly said earlier to be true,’” (98). He then explains that both
first premises “express unexceptionable semantical principles” but neither of the two
arguments is supporting the claim that any proposition is decidable before the event in
question occurs or fails to occur. McKim goes on to say that if shaped as arguments of
decidability both are invalid and when it comes to truth either harmless or incoherent.
On page 101, McKim writes out what he sees to be the problem and the solution
proposed by Aristotle:
The Problem Posed
With regard to what is and what has been it is necessary for the affirmation or the negation to be true
or false. But with particulars that are going to be it is different. For if every affirmation or negation is
true or false, it is necessary for everything either to be the case or not to be the case.
The Answer Supplied
In the case of that which exists potentially, but not actually, the rule which applies to that which
exists actually does not hold good. The case is rather as we have indicated, (namely that) one of the
two propositions in such instances must be true and the other false, but we cannot say determinately
that this or that is false, but must leave the alternative undecided.
What McKim claims he is trying to show is that the distinction between a
proposition being true or false on one hand and true or false on the other is an attempt to
elucidate the differences between epistemic and semantic dimensions of talk about truth
and correspondence. I believe McKim achieves this claim and in his closing remarks he
clears up that although the dispute between fatalists and common belief is finished, in the
end determinism is neither proven nor disproven and that the fatalists never really had a
tenable thesis but indubitable premises when applied properly.