Jaarboek Thomas Instituut 1997 - Thomas Instituut te Utrecht

130 HARM GORIS
a Possible Worlds semantics in view of the problem of temporal
fatalism.' Dr. Vos has made it clear to me that it would have been
better to separate the two and to stipulate more clearly that insofar I
would still be objecting against Scotistic viewpoints, my criticisms
would not be directed against the historical Scotus but rather against
Scotus as he is represented by Knuuttila. This takes me to the second
and more interesting part of my response. Although Scotus' notion of
synchronic contingency may logically be an important innovation, I do
not think that it is very useful in solving the problem of temporal
fatalism.
Temporal fatalism has to do with the intuitive notion most people have
that there is a difference in modal status between, on one hand, the
past and the present and, on the other hand, the future.? We feel and
think that, unlike the future, the past and present are somehow
necessary. Modal notions like 'necessary', 'possible' and 'contingent'
are rather ambiguous. The nature of the necessity that is at stake here
is not logical, as if the negation of propositions about the past and
present were to yield a logical contradiction. It is not causal either, as
if no past and present events or actions occurred contingently. The
necessity at stake is given with the nature of time itself. Suppose that
Jones did in fact mow his lawn yesterday. The negation of the
proposition, taken in isolation, is not a contradiction: "Jones did not
mow his lawn yesterday" may be false, but it is very well
conceivable. Likewise, we may assume that mowing lawns depends on
the free choice of people: nothing necessitated Jones yesterday to mow
the lawn and he freely chose to do so. However, that particular action
of Jones' is now past, and therefore it is fixed, determinate, over-and-
I also admit that I have been too careless in using the expressions
'actualist' and 'possibilist' in my book. Dr. Vos's comments on this point are
correct (cf. his point 4.5.3). On the received interpretation Plantinga and also
Scotus count as actualists, but as so-called non-naturalist actualists. However,
I would question the postulation of actual, non-natural entities like
propositions or states of affairs.
2 In this discussion I leave aside other, thorny questions about the
ontological status of past, present and future and focus only on their modal
status.