Fatalism and the Logic of Time

Regular price €28.50
Quantity:
In stock with our UK publisher. 14-28 days
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days
14 days return policy Shipping & Delivery
Category=QDHR9
Category=QDTL
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain

Product details

  • ISBN 9780197786680
  • Weight: 272g
  • Dimensions: 149 x 212mm
  • Publication Date: 03 Feb 2025
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
Secure checkout Fast Shipping Easy returns
Fatalism -- the thesis that something in the past necessitates the entire future -- is often argued for in three ways. One argument is that the truth of propositions about future events makes those events necessary. Another is that infallible divine foreknowledge necessitates all future human acts. The third is that the past history of the world in conjunction with universal causal laws necessitates the entire future. Each of these arguments depends on a premise of the necessity of the past. In Fatalism and the Logic of Time, Linda Zagzebski examines two interpretations of this necessity. One interpretation is the modal necessity of the past, and the other interpretation is the cause of closure of the past. She argues that the combination of the necessity of the past with the transfer of necessity principle is inconsistent with the truth of any proposition about the past that entails a proposition about the future. As such, the problem is much broader than fatalism. It is a problem in the logic of time. All arrows of time, as well as the arrows of physics, arise from the human experience of before and after -- but that experience does not itself require an arrow.
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski is the George Lynn Cross Research Professor Emerita and Kingfisher College Chair of the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics Emerita at the University of Oklahoma. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. Some of her other publications include Omnisubjectivity (OUP, 2023), Epistemic Authority (OUP, 2017), Virtues of the Mind (Cambridge, 2012), and The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (OUP, 1991).