Fatalism

Aristotle's discussion in De interpretatione, book 9, gives rise to the following:

1. There will be a sea battle on 1 January 3000 or there will not be a sea battle on 1 January 3000.
2. If there will be a sea battle on 1 January 3000 then it was always true (it was always a fact that) there will be a sea battle on 1 January 3000; if there will not be a sea battle on 1 January 3000 then it was always true (it was always a fact that) that there will not be a sea battle on 1 January 3000.
3. If it was always true that there will be a sea battle on 1 January 3000, then there was never a time at which anyone could prevent the sea battle; if it was always true that there will not be a sea battle on 1 January 3000, then there was never a time at which anyone could bring about the sea battle.
4. Thus either no one, at any time, could prevent the sea battle or no one, at any time, could bring about the sea battle.
5. Thus, either the occurrence of the sea battle is necessary or the nonoccurrence of the sea battle is necessary.
6. The sea battle is merely an arbitrarily selected event.
7. Therefore, all events are necessitated.
8. Therefore, fatalism is true.

The necessity that this argument attaches to events is necessity of the past. That is, we are to think of our powerlessness to affect the constitution of the future as we conceive of our inability to affect the constitution of the past. Just as the past is now closed to us, so too is our future. Aristotle's radical solution was to deny that future contingent statements had truth values, and so, "there will be a sea battle" and "there will not be a sea battle" were both neither true nor false. Contemporary times have produced other reactions to the argument. Some have questioned the meaningfulness of tensing truth, of the significance of speaking of truths holding at certain times. Others have suggested that we are not powerless to affect the truth-value of some claims about the past because some of these claims represent "soft facts" and are, in part, claims about the future. The question then becomes whether a statement to the effect that it was always true that a sea battle will occur on 1 January 3000 represents a soft fact. It should be clear that a robust discussion of Aristotle's argument requires investigating foundational claims about the nature of truth and time.