Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-2l2gl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-31T04:29:42.895Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Professor Geach and the future

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

Patrick McGrath
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In his article on the future in the May issue of Blackfriars Professor Geach argues at some length against the thesis (which I will henceforth call fatalism) that the future is definite and determinate. I am just as firmly convinced as Professor Geach that fatalism is incorrect, but I am not at all sure that the reasons which he puts forward against this theory are sufficient to refute it. Geach’s main argument against fatalism appears to be contained in the following passages:

The simple fact to which I want to draw your attention is the fact that not everything that was going to happen eventually did happen. Human agency often averts impending disasters. . . . What is prevented was going to happen, but didn’t happen; the preventive action changes what is going to happen, changes the future . . . (Fatalism asserts) that if it is true at some later time that Johnny will die of polio, then nobody ever was able at some earlier time to bring it about Johnny was not going to die of polio. And this of course we do not believe : Johnny could have been preserved by a suitable injection, but his foolish parents neglected the precaution.’

'P. T. Geach ‘The Future’ in New Blackfriars, vol. 54, number 636 (May, 1973), pp. 209, 211.

However, the simple fact to which Geach draws our attention is not as simple as it looks. ‘Not everything that was going to happen eventually did happen’ may be interpreted in a number of different ways. It could mean:

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 54 , Issue 642 , November 1973 , pp. 497 - 504
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)