Fate is something we use almost regularly, usually in the context of when we can’t predict the outcome of an action, we as humans push it towards fate. it. During the ancient times, in European and classical mythology, fate was defined as the events which were ordered unavoidable. This is a concept based on the belief that there is a fixed order to the universe, and of course this was controlled by different gods, for their respective religions. During the nineteenth century a more general and philosophical definition came about. Arthur Schopenhauer [1], a famous German philosopher who is famous for his work on metaphysical will, described fate as a manifestation of free will, and that it could be overwritten through the power of morality and Asceticism.
Often there have been times where fate has been misunderstood to be similar another term determinism. Determinism means the power to determine the effect of an action on a substance. It is more of a physical cause and effect relation. Fate on the other hand is something that is spiritually set, and fixed from the time of your birth irrespective of your actions, or is it really so? A better question to ask is whether we have the power to change our fate or is it already predefined? Although it may not seem obvious, the implications of proving whether we can change our faith or that it something that is fixed for a life, are huge. Proving fate doesn’t exist seems to be the easier part to the question because logically if it were to exist, all of us would be sitting back and let fate do the work for us, but then you could counter argue that your fate is that you would be sitting and doing nothing, because you thought fate would do all the work for us. This simply becomes a recursive problem, and we won’t be making any head way of proving either that it exists or that it doesn’t.
Aristotle in his book De Intrepretatione talks about fatalism and says that if something is proved to be necessary on its own will definitely happen [2]. However, proving that a statement is necessary on its own we cannot do so unless the statement has occurred, because otherwise the statement would only have the potential to do so and not truly be it. This seems conclusive proof that fate doesn’t exist, but other philosophers have taken his findings and have proved otherwise. Surprisingly philosophy hasn’t been the only the subject to give an insight into this subject. When Isaac Newton came up with his Classical mechanic’s theory, where his first law stated that for every effect there is a cause to it. It came to explain that even events such as the roll of a dice, can be predicted given the right amount of data, such as the amount of force given, its direction, the opposing force and it direction, etc. Leaving out its practicality, it seemed like a genuine reason to conclude so [3]. Newton also being a famous philosopher carried his physical principles to the actions and thoughts and said that every effect is combination of multiple factors, and considered the human brain as an independent entity making its own decisions.
However, in the late 1930’s as the theory of Quantum Mechanics grew, Schrodinger, a then physicist came up with this notion which was later called as Schrodinger’s Cat. The notion goes about like this — Suppose we have a box whose contents cannot be seen, and we place a cat along with a small amount of radioactive material. If this substance decays then through an internal mechanism we would release cyanide into the chamber, and the cat would die, however if it didn’t then the cat would be alive. If this setup were to be left for an hour and so, we can come up with two outcomes — that either the cat is alive or that is dead. The only way we can figure that out is by opening the box and looking for ourselves and until then the cat would appear to exist in a super positional state of life and death [4]. Theoretically it makes sense but now let us take n humans A1, A2 … An. To be able to tell which state each person each person is in, someone must be looking them at each and every moment otherwise if no one is looking he will exist in a super positional state of infinite states. But we know that in real life we don’t exist in such a situation. We are always in one state or to be specific one quantum state, and this applies to all humans simultaneously. If this were to be possible, all humans must be looking at each other at the same time, or we must all form a cycle where in one looks at the other and that person looks at someone else and so on, or something already exists that is looking at all of us at the same time. Since the first two are impossible, hence by theory someone has already determined our quantum state for this moment and the next one and the next one and so on. Leaving the fact that it seems that some entity is actually looking at us, it tells us that this entity has already set our quantum state to a particular value well in advance. Although from this theory we can come closer to proving that fate exists, and with the additional tests that atoms have succeeded in maintaining atoms in a multi-quantum state, it still doesn’t falsify the classical mechanics notion. The only way that can be done is by proving or not that are actions are pre-determined.
Coming back to Aristotle and his findings, Richard Taylor during the 1960s came up with an interesting argument [5]. Let’s take two statements Q — India wins the match Q — India loses the match and A — we read about India winning in the newspaper and A its negation. Now if Q occurs then we don’t have the power to do A and similarly the vice versa. But now since Q and Q both have equal potential and both aren’t necessary on its own, we conclusively don’t have power over A and A’. it seems logical enough. Now take Q — ordering war Q’ — not ordering war, A — going for war, A` — not going for war. Now let’s replace these statements. It should be logically correct, and hence if we continue this process it seems that we have no power over anything. But then again both of the statements Q and Q’ aren’t necessary on their own and only have the potential to, hence A and A’ only have the potential to, hence saving it from proving that fate exists. But if a statement can never be necessary on its own in the present then when can it be. Though we can say it’s true in the past it doesn’t give us an insight about the future. Ironically Richard also says, “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], which suggests our actions change based on the conditions prevalent then. But then It goes back to say whether those conditions were fated.
Overall as a whole it seems that fate is too complex to understand but unless someone doe truly understand it or is fated to, we should really put our best foot forward
[1] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destiny
[2] — http://classicalwisdom.com/aristotles-de-interpretatione-fate-free-will/
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA5KC1zz6uY&index=2&list=LLLSWUqGfk1iTPjUCx-
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[4] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat
[5] — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fatalism/
[6] — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fatalism/
- Jayakrishna Sahit