From modal fallacies to a new argument for fatalism

• Autor(a) principal: Merlussi, Pedro
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Manuscrito (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/manuscrito/article/view/8657077
• topic: Incompatibilism; Fatalism; Nodal fallacy; Actuality; Choice.

Do incompatibilist arguments, like some fatalist arguments, rest on modal fallacies? If Westphal (2012) is right, then one popular argument for incompatibilism van Inwagen’s “First Formal Argument” - does rest on a modal fallacy. Similarly, Warfield (2000) claims that the standard modal formulation of the master argument for incompatibilismisamodalfallacy. Here, Irefutebothclaims. Contra Westphal, I show that the mistake in van Inwagen’s "First Formal Argument" is no modal fallacy. After that, I argue that Warfield’s charge of modal fallacy can be easily avoided by using a plausible principle concerning actuality. Then, I show that this allows one to put forward a fairly simple argument for fatalism (the thesis that we aren’t able to do otherwise from what we actually do).