Professor Geach and the future

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: