Necessitated, not fated
It’s important to appreciate determinism’s startling implications. It’s just as important to recognize what determinism doesn’t imply. I noted before that being necessitated in your actions by prior conditions doesn’t imply being coerced, compelled, or manipulated. Having to repeat this point takes up much of the time of compatibilists like me, who say that determinism is compatible with free will.
In my book (pp. 80-81), I speculated that our tendency to confuse necessitation with manipulation may stem from our having what psychologists call a “hyperactive agent-detection device,” inherited from our evolutionary ancestors. It behooved our ancestors to suspect the presence of hostile agents even where none existed, which may explain why many of us today mistakenly treat all necessitation as akin to “having your strings pulled” or “being set up.” Whatever its evolutionary pedigree, it’s a confusion.
The same inheritance may explain why newcomers to the topic often misread determinism as saying that everything was “meant to be.” Meant by whom? My definition of determinism makes no mention of the Fates, God, or anything of the sort. Indeed, as I’ll explain in later posts, the best reasons to accept determinism are also reasons to reject the supernatural.
Still less does determinism justify the fatalistic attitude that nothing we do matters. On the contrary, determinism says that what will happen later strictly depends on what happens now, including any actions we take, or fail to take, now.
