As Wittgenstein said, the world is the totality of facts, not of things.
Past, present, and future.
It is written, even now; all is written.
Things could have been otherwise.
There is not only one possible world.
But they are not otherwise.
They are as they are, past, present, and to come.
That is logical determinism, the doctrine that all disjuncts are settled, all propositions are true or else false, all contingents have a truth-value, future ones included.
That is fatalism.
Not that the future cannot be otherwise but that it will not be otherwise.
Not that you could do no other but that you will do no other.
The Book of the World is written entirely and nothing, not the least jot, has been left out.
And you did not write it.
Nor did anyone else, by the way.
Not even God.
Not least because he doesn't exist, yes.
But even if he existed he would only be a character in the Book of the World, like you and me and anyone and everyone.
Just another character though, yes, certainly, as free as you please.
Just another character in the Book.
P.S.
For all argument I can say only that it seems to me that the practice of foresight presupposes a determinate future to foresee.
On the other hand, would not Nietzsche laugh at that argument?
Though he himself was a believer.
And, anyway, successful prediction does not require that foresight be thus possible.
It is enough if, when the time comes, the prediction is borne out by present experience.
Alexander, anxious, says to Aristotle, "There will be a sea battle tomorrow."
The morrow comes, and there is a sea battle.
For this there is no need for a prediction to be accurate, correct, right, that is to say, true when it is made.
Still, we are apt to think that if your prediction is borne out then you were right when you made it.
Oh, well.
Humans are easily and chronically confused.
It is part of our charm.
P.P.S.
All the same, like Nietzsche, I still believe the future, like the past, is determinate, while neither is necessary.
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