No one can change the future
In my previous post, I offered examples of sloppy language that fosters the misunderstanding of determinism. This post continues the theme. Too many people speak and write as if determinism makes a difference to whether anyone can “change the future.”
According to philosopher Karl Popper, “Everybody knows what we mean when we say that the past cannot be changed. It is in precisely the same sense that the future cannot be changed, according to metaphysical determinism” (The Open Universe, 1982, p. 8). By contrast, science writer Michael Shermer claims that determinism “is the ultimate upper because it means we can do something about the future, namely, we can change it!”
Shermer is mistaken. Nothing can be changed unless it already exists. You can’t change your job or your plans unless you already have a job or plans. But the future, by definition, doesn’t already exist: it hasn’t happened yet.* So it’s just simple logic that no one can change the future. Despite what Popper and Shermer say, it has nothing to do with determinism.
Popper is also mistaken in implying that determinism makes us equally powerless over the past and the future. While the past counterfactually depends on what we do now, we can’t control the past: we can’t now make the past go the way we want it to. But we can control the future. Take a simple example: By wanting right now to read to the end of this paragraph, you can bring it about that you will. And you did.
*Even B-series “eternalists,” who say that all times equally exist, don’t say that future times already exist: that would muddle together temporal and atemporal language.
