| Summary | According to fatalists, our actions are not merely determined but fated. If our actions are determined, then it is in some sense already settled how we will decide to act; if our actions are fated, then what we will do is already settled regardless of how we will decide. Most philosophers think that fatalism is a confusion and of no relevance to the free will debate, but there is a substantive problem concerning logical fatalism. A sentence concerning some future event seems to have a truth value prior to the event's occurrence, but if the sentence is to have a truth-value prior to the event's occurrence it seems that the event must be fated to occur. |
| Key works | The problem of logical fatalism has its canonical statement inAristotle unknown. Some solutions to the problem of foreknowledge and free will also serve as solutions to the problem of logical fatalism: for instance Ockham's distinction between hard and soft facts, where only the former concern the past alone: Ockham 1983. A much more recent argument for fatalism is Taylor 1962. |
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