One could compare usefully it to the idea of fate in religous imagery or theology. However the term fatalistic is pejorative. It describes a certain attitude like resignation towards fate perhaps. For example "he's fatalistic". Its not really a philosophical term. However, it has been used to describe cultures in East not present day. One could say it is an orientalist term as in Edward Saids analysis. This is very similar to the question What is the difference between determinism and compatibilism?
For fatalists, all events in the universe are predetermined, usually by a deity who also knows the future, and there is nothing they can do or not do to change the future. A fatalist would continue smoking because they believe if they are meant to quit, it will happen some day regardless of what they do. If they are not meant to quit, then they are meant to continue smoking and suffer the consequences. The problem with this line of reasoning is that the fatalist has the attitude that there is no reason to try.
For determinist, the world works the exact same way, either by a deity who knows the future or just the laws of physics, and there is nothing they can do or not do to change the future.
However, using the example above, a determinist would have a different attitude. The determinist recognizes that the future cannot be changed, but they also understand that nobody knows the future. Therefore, if they try to quit smoking, it may be that their future has been predetermined to not be a smoker. They use their knowledge of the negative consequences to cause them to try , and hope that their efforts produce a successful effect.
If we could both predict the future and change the future, we might have what many call a free will. However, this would involve predicting how every action we take will influence the entire world, truly understanding the infinite amount of possibilities, and having the wisdom to choose the greatest outcome for our self - and somehow choose what that self should be to begin with.
If anyone has a logical explanation of how free will is supposed to work, I would really love to hear it. Determinism is about laws of nature, including humans as a Conscious objects liable or prone to laws of nature. In Determinism there's no free will, even for Humans. In Determinism once the cause exists, the effect necessarily will exist.
Fatalism is about Destiny, free will exists and is real, not an illusion, but God acts to limit the probabilities. Thus the event, any event destined to happen, will happen, but free will acts, so the event may progress or delay but anyway it will happen. Again: - Determinism about laws of nature and future. Can you change the future if you know how to manipulate people? The ability for human to act upon their free will is completely rejected by those who believe in Determinism.
According to fatalism, all events in life are preordained. Fatalism says that it is futile to oppose what is happening and that what is going to happen, will happen and is inevitable. Fatalists would argue that talking about the past or present being different is futile as everything has been decided beforehand, and humans are merely puppets being made to dance by the almighty. Fatalism is of the firm view that whether we will be reborn or go to hell or heaven has already been decided, and we are merely following a course that has been charted for us.
There is some similarity in these approaches too as is evident by rejection of a free will and also the views on events in life. While fatalism says that events are predetermined all events are inevitable and one cannot do anything to prevent them from taking place , determinism says that events can be re-determined but based upon our actions in the past. A fatalist will not look sideways before crossing a road as he believes that what will happen will happen and is not dependent upon his actions.
On the other hand, a deterministic person believes that every action is a result of some action in the past, and thus he can take action to avoid an accident. Again, I highly recommend Jason's post on evil robots , which I think is extremely helpful here.
Posted by Richard. Visitors: check my comments policy first. Non-Blogger users: If the comment form isn't working for you, email me your comment and I can post it on your behalf. If your comment is too long, first try breaking it into two parts. Providing the questions for all of life's answers. The initial dissatisfaction many people feel towards determinism may be largely due to their conflating it with a notions of pre-destination, fate, or destiny.
First, the notion of 'purpose'. I simply want to emphasise that determinism has none. Those other quasi-religious notions are all built around the idea of events leading up to some inevitable goal which must be realised no matter what. Determinism, by contrast, has no inherent goals, it's just the way things are.
Sure, it means that future states are inevitable given the past states and the laws of nature, but there is no personal driving force behind it all, no God or gods imposing their will upon us hapless mortals. I think that's an important distinction to bear in mind. Most important of all, of course, is the question of an individual's power to contribute to the shaping of history. According to 'destiny' notions, there is a fixed divine goal which will be attained no matter how much we strive against it.
Human actions don't make any difference - fate ensures the future will turn out the same no matter what we choose or how we act.
The phrase "you can't fight fate" pretty much sums it up. Our cultural heritage has tied 'determinism' and 'destiny' notions very closely together. This makes it a difficult link to break, though for purely psychological reasons. For hard though it may be for us to see at first, anyway , the gulf between these notions is vast indeed.
The key difference is that while destiny excludes us from influencing the future, determinism does quite the opposite - in fact, it needs us to shape the future. This is best demonstrated hypothetically: suppose you die in a car crash tomorrow. Now, according to 'destiny' notions e. Maybe you'd get struck by lightning, or have a heart attack, whatever.
Contrast this with determinism: if contrary to fact you had avoided cars altogether, then you would not have died that day at all. Your different actions would cause all sorts of different consequences - perhaps you would go on to cure cancer and live to see ! You may think these hypotheticals irrelevant - "what matters is reality, and in reality it's determined that I die in a car crash tomorrow and there's nothing I can do about it!
This complaint sounds plausible, because there is a sense in which it is literally true. But it's also severely mistaken due to a conceptual confusion about the nature of control. You lack control if your actions lack causal power, i.
Hypotheticals are thus central to the notion of control; to assess whether you have control or not, simply look at those hypothetical possibilities where you act differently, and see if a different state of affairs results.
According to destiny, it won't. But according to determinism, it will. Your actions determine the future. That is the way to understand determinism without making the all-too-easy mistake of conflating it with destiny notions.
It is also the case that "past events determine your actions", but we are in a far worse position to understand the true nature and implications of that proposition, so if you focus on it too much as people commonly do , then misunderstandings of determinism will inevitably result. The heart of the matter is that destiny notions deprive us of a place in history.
They imply that the same future would result with or without us - they exclude us from the causal chain. Determinism, by contrast, embeds us deeply within the causal chain.
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