One wonders how Wallace would have felt about this - I would not allow any of my undergraduate writing to be published without a serious working over. But then Wallace no longer has that option. Besides, Wallace appears to have been a singular talent as a young philosopher, following in his father's footsteps.
When Wallace was 14, so the story goes, he asked his father to explain his job (as a philosopher) so that Wallace knew how to answer the question of what his father does. So he and his dad read Plato's Phaedo dialogue together. As reported in Slate (this article by James Ryerson is adapted from the Introduction to the book, which was adapted a 2008 New York Times article), his father recollects:
"I had never had an undergraduate student who caught on so quickly or who responded with such maturity and sophistication," James recalls. "This was this first time I realized what a phenomenal mind David had."
At Amherst College, he quickly gained a reputation as a serious and diligent student with a gift for philosophy. Even after he began writing fiction midway through college, he was known by the faculty for his philosophical work. Again, from Slate:
"I knew him as a philosopher with a fiction hobby," Jay Garfield, a professor now at Smith College who worked with Wallace at the time, remembers. "I didn't realize he was one of the great fiction writers of his generation with a philosophy hobby."In light of Wallace's suicide in 2008, reading a philosophical thesis by him that argues in favor of free will and in opposition to fatalism seems somehow fitting, perhaps ironic. What greater act of free will can there be than choosing the moment and manner of one's death.
I'm glad I discovered this book (even if it is months after its December, 2010, publication) and was granted a review copy by the publisher.
I have consulted several other articles for background on Wallace and to help me frame the philosophical elements of the book - full links are included and I will list them at the end.
Unfortunately, however, my Kindle version of the review copy was essentially unformatted, so I cannot provide page numbers or direct quotes. However, I can offer the Table of Contents from the Columbia University Press website.
I enjoy philosophy, so the cool thing for me was reading Taylor's original 1962 essay and the various responses from other philosophers and from Taylor himself (sources that Wallace cites in his paper). The inclusion of the thirteen chapters and introduction in the first part of the book provides the necessary context for reading Wallace's paper and for a lay person having any hope of making sense of it.Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will
by David Foster Wallace
Edited by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert; Introduction by James Ryerson and Epilogue by Jay Garfield
Preface: by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert
Introduction: A Head That Throbbed Heartlike: The Philosophical Mind of David Foster Wallace, by James Ryerson
Part I: The Background
Introduction, by Steven M. Cahn
1. Fatalism, by Richard Taylor
2. Professor Taylor on Fatalism, by John Turk Saunders
3. Fatalism and Ability, by Richard Taylor
4. Fatalism and Ability II, by Peter Makepeace
5. Fatalism and Linguistic Reform, by John Turk Saunders
6. Fatalism and Professor Taylor, by Bruce Aune
7. Taylor’s Fatal Fallacy, by Raziel Abelson
8. A Note on Fatalism, by Richard Taylor
9. Tautology and Fatalism, by Richard Sharvy
10. Fatalistic Arguments, by Steven Cahn
11. Comment, by Richard Taylor
12. Fatalism and Ordinary Language, by John Turk Saunders
13. Fallacies in Taylor’s “Fatalism”, by Charles D. Brown
Part II: The Essay
14. Renewing the Fatalist Conversation, by Maureen Eckert
15. Richard Taylor’s “Fatalism” and the Semantics of Physical Modality, by David Foster Wallace
Part III: Epilogue
16. David Foster Wallace as Student: A Memoir, by Jay Garfield
Appendix: The Problem of Future Contingencies, by Richard Taylor
About the Author: David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) wrote the acclaimed novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System and the story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and Girl with Curious Hair. His nonfiction includes the essay collections Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and the full-length work Everything and More.
Before going any further, I want to offer a brief definition of fatalism from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP):
Though the word “fatalism” is commonly used to refer to an attitude of resignation in the face of some future event or events which are thought to be inevitable, philosophers usually use the word to refer to the view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do. This view may be argued for in various ways: by appeal to logical laws and metaphysical necessities; by appeal to the existence and nature of God; by appeal to causal determinism. When argued for in the first way, it is commonly called “Logical fatalism” (or, in some cases, “Metaphysical fatalism”); when argued for in the second way, it is commonly called “Theological fatalism”. When argued for in the third way it is not now commonly referred to as “fatalism” at all, and such arguments will not be discussed here.The entire entry is quite long, and the SEP also provides a brief summary of Taylor's argument for fatalism:
This is a rather non-intuitive argument - in fact, it's even an argument that challenges the currently accepted laws of physics (retro-causation is considered impossible by most, despite a recent article claiming to demonstrate it). In essence, Taylor is arguing that what I do today has no more impact on tomorrow than it does on yesterday. Further, and more challenging, it is how things are tomorrow that shapes my experience of today. And by yesterday and tomorrow I mean the past and the future, not simply a single day.Logical fatalism: Richard Taylor's argument and the conditions of power
Richard Taylor argues that certain commonly accepted presuppositions yield a proof of fatalism. (Taylor 1962) The presuppositions are:
1. Any proposition whatever is either true, or if not true, false.
2. If any state of affairs is sufficient for, though logically unrelated to, the occurrence of some further condition at the same time or any other time, then the former cannot occur without the latter occurring also.
3. If the occurrence of any condition is necessary for, though logically unrelated to, the occurrence of some other condition at the same time, or any other time, then the latter cannot occur without the former occurring also.
4. If one condition or set of conditions is sufficient for (ensures) another, then the other is necessary (essential) for it, and conversely, if one condition or set of conditions is necessary (essential) for another, then that other is sufficient for (ensures) it.
5. No agent can perform any given act if there is lacking, at the same time or any other time, some condition necessary for the occurrence of that act.
6. Time is not by itself “efficacious”; that is, the mere passage of time does not augment or diminish the capacities of anything and, in particular, it does not enhance or decrease an agent's powers or abilities.
He then produces an argument to show (what most of us believe) that either it is not in my power to read a headline saying that there was a sea-battle yesterday or it is not in my power to read a headline saying that there was no sea-battle yesterday, at any rate if we make some obvious assumptions about the relation between the headlines and what took place. Letting S be the act of reading a headline that there was a sea-battle, and S′ be the act of reading a headline that there was no sea-battle; and letting P and P′ be the propositions that there was and was not such a battle, the argument goes:
If P is true, then it is not in my power to do S′ (for if P is true, then there is, or was, lacking a condition essential for my doing S′, the condition, namely, of there being no sea-battle yesterday).But if P′ is true, then it is not in my power to do S (for a similar reason).
But either P is true or P′ is true
So, either it is not in my power to do S or it is not in my power to do S′.
The argument, he claims is sound, given the six presuppositions.
But suppose, his argument continues, we let O and O′ be the act of ordering a sea-battle and the act of ordering no sea-battle, and Q and Q′ be the propositions that there will and will not be such a battle; and we substitute O and O′ for S and S′, and Q and Q′ for P and P′, and “tomorrow” for “yesterday” in the argument above, then (if we make some obvious assumptions about the relation between what we order and what happens) we have a parallel argument which goes:
If Q is true, then it is not in my power to do O′ (for if Q is true, then there is, or will be, lacking a condition essential for my doing O′, the condition, namely, of there being no sea-battle tomorrow).But if Q′ is true, then it is not in my power to do O (for a similar reason).
But either Q is true or Q′ is true
So, either it is not in my power to do O or it is not in my power to do O′.
And this argument seems equally sound. And evidently it can be generalised to yield the fatalist conclusion that it is never in our power to do anything other than what we actually do.
As James Ryerson summarized the idea of fatalism in the New York Times (a longer version of this article, from Slate, is included as the Introduction to this volume):
What might seem like an open possibility subject to human choice — say, whether you fire your handgun — is already either impossible or absolutely necessary. You are merely going with some cosmic flow.To my philosophically uneducated mind, this sounds like the Schrodinger's Cat hypothesis inverted so that we are not dealing with indeterminacy so much as we are with predeterminacy - i.e., fatalism.. Or, in other words, the cat is already dead or alive - that fact determines the observation when the box is opened.
Perhaps most counterintuitively, the fatalist argues that this topsy-turvy doctrine can be established by mere reflection on the simple logic of propositions about the future. If I fire my handgun, one second from now its barrel will be hot; if I do not fire, one second from now the barrel will not be hot; but the proposition one second from now the barrel will be hot is right now either true or false. If the proposition is true, then it is the case that I will fire the gun; if it’s false, then it is the case that I won’t. Either way, it’s the state of affairs in the future that dictates what I will or won’t do now.
I can see why Wallace bristled at this seemingly wrong-headed position. It's implications are as troubling to me as the arguments that "god" has already planned out the future until the end of time and we are just puppets in his show.
As Wallace's thesis adviser remembers, however, it was the sense that this semantic argument disrupts the felt experience of reality that bothered Wallace the most:
What most bothered Wallace about Taylor’s paper was not the despair-inducing worldview of fatalism itself (though that was indeed worrisome); it was, as Jay Garfield recalled, that “this metaphysically troubling conclusion followed from these ordinary-seeming premises.” Taylor seemed to have scrambled the normal relations among logic, language and the physical world, detaching them from their proper spheres. There was a kind of anguish for Wallace in the prospect of a world so out of whack.Wallace was motivated by this (Garfield suggests) and in his passion around the issue, he discovered the flaw in Taylor's argument. It was his meticulous attention to language (which would make him one the major writers of his generation) that created the opening for his refutation of Taylor's argument.
But according to Daniel Menaker, in his review at Salon, it is more than this - it is Wallace literally fighting for his life. It was depression that likely led to Wallace's suicide, and depression had haunted him since his youth. Speaking from experience, nothing feels more inevitable than depression - when one is depressed it can seem as though there has never been anything else and there never will be anything else.
[The essay] shows a brilliant young man struggling against fatalism, performing exquisite exercises to convince others, and maybe himself, that what we choose to do is what determines the future, rather than the future more or less determining what we choose to do. This intellectual struggle on Wallace's part seems now a kind of emotional foreshadowing of his suicide. He was a victim of depression from an early age — even during his undergraduate years — and the future never looks more intractable than it does to someone who is depressed.For a moment at least, Wallace's amazing attention to the detailed nuances of language and his seemingly effortless cognitive skills defeated the fatalism of Taylor's article. The thesis is a flash of brilliance, and it suggests Wallace may have been a major figure in philosophy. As Ryerson noted in the NYT article/Introduction:
The formal apparatus that Wallace developed in the thesis, a so-called intensional-physical-modality system, would have been a novel contribution to the philosophical literature; deVries and Garfield each expressed to me their regret that Wallace never published the paper.Menaker adds this about Wallace's approach in the essay:
Wallace's ornate, symbol-laden response, based on a new system of truth-value he calls J, leads him to the conclusion that right now there are indeed many possible futures, and that what we decide to do today — this, that or the other decision — will determine which future we will have.Wallace's work in philosophy clearly influenced his fiction and essays - in fact, Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity is a book that traces the 2,000 year history of the mathematics and philosophy through which the idea of infinity has evolved. One wonders what he may have done as a philosopher who dabbled in fiction instead of the other way around.
Menaker speculates that it may have been some form of Oedipal conflict (remember, his father was a well-known philosopher) that drove him into philosophy and that then also drove him to change his career path from philosophy to creative writing. Unless there are also diaries someplace that reveal what he was thinking, the Oedipal thing only can be conjecture at best.
Speaking of which, the Oedipal myth is the perfect exemplar of Taylor's argument, as Menaker points out. Oedipus is told his fate by the Oracle at Delphi - that he will sleep with his mother and slay his father - and everything he does to prevent the oracle from being correct leads inexorably to his fate.
Maybe Wallace could not possibly have done anything other than what he did - Wallace did not claim to disprove fatalism, only to have disarmed Taylor's argument for it. In the final passage of his thesis, Wallace writes:
In light of what we’ve seen about the semantics of physical modality, I hold that Taylor’s semantic argument does not in fact yield his metaphysical conclusion. And now the fact that it appears as though he can get his metaphysical conclusion from his semantic argument only by positing at the outset the truth of a doctrine thoroughly metaphysical, seems to warrant the following conclusion of our own: if Taylor and the fatalists want to force upon us a metaphysical conclusion, they must do metaphysics, not semantics. And this seems entirely appropriate.Indeed, it does.
However, I must admit that I probably understand maybe 2/3 to 3/4 of what I read in this book - especially when the arguments begin employing symbolic logic - yet I still feel rewarded for having stuck with it and working through the essays. When I have more time, I want to go back to the book and give it a second read - or at least Taylor's essay and Wallace's refutation.
This book is a challenging read for anyone who does not have a solid education in formal logic and philosophy - but I think there is enough of value in it for an educated reader that it is worth the effort to spend some time with these big ideas.
References:
- Fatalism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- The philosophy of David Foster Wallace, By Daniel Menaker, Salon
- Philosophical Swhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifeep: To understand the fiction of David Foster Wallace, it helps to have a little Wittgenstein, By James Ryerson, Slate
- Consider the Philosopher by James Ryerson, New York Times
- Please visit our special page The Philosophy of David Foster Wallace: Context and Conversation.
- Read an article from the Wall Street Journal
- Read a review from The Financial Times.
- A review from Biblioklept.
- Read about the book on EW’s Shelf Life.
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