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Fate, Time, and Language An Essay on Free Will

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ISBN-10: 0231151578

ISBN-13: 9780231151573

Edition: 2011

Authors: David Wallace, Steven Cahn, Maureen Eckert, James Ryerson, Jay L. Garfield

List price: $16.99
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Description:

Long before he probed the workings of time, human choice, and human frailty in Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace wrote a brilliant philosophical critique of Richard Taylor's argument for fatalism. In 1962, Taylor used six commonly accepted presuppositions to imply that humans have no control over the future. Not only did Wallace take issue with Taylor's method, which, according to him, scrambled the relations of logic, language, and the physical world, but he also called out a semantic trick at the heart of Taylor's argument.Wallace was a great skeptic of abstract thinking made to function as a negation of something more genuine and real. He was especially suspicious of certain paradigms…    
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Book details

List price: $16.99
Copyright year: 2011
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication date: 2/1/2011
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 264
Size: 0.55" wide x 0.82" long x 0.06" tall
Weight: 0.638

Jay Garfield is Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Logic Program and of the Five College Tibetan Studies in India Program at Smith College, Professor in the graduate faculty of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Professor of Philosophy at Melbourne University and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies.

Preface
Introduction: A Head That Throbbed Heartlike: The Philosophical Mind of David Foster Wallace
The Background
Introduction
Fatalism
Professor Taylor on Fatalism
Fatalism and Ability
Fatalism and Ability II
Fatalism and Linguistic Reform
Fatalism and Professor Taylor
Taylor's Fatal Fallacy
A Note on Fatalism
Tautology and Fatalism
Fatalistic Arguments
Comment
Fatalism and Ordinary Language
Fallacies in Taylor's "Fatalism"
The Essay
Renewing the Fatalist Conversation
Richard Taylor's "Fatalism" and the Semantics of Physical Modality
Epilogue
David Foster Wallace as Student: A Memoir
Appendix: The Problem of Future Contingencies