This is an interesting question, but I do not feel as though you have contributed anything deeply philosophical in answering it. First, you accept it as an obvious conclusion that there must be some being that predetermines the universe, but this fails to account for other sources of determinism. For example, scientific determinism has it that everything is governed by strict principles that govern cause and effect, so everything can be traced back in time through such causal relationships, and such would be true for the future. If every future event can be demonstrated to have perfect predictability because every event is governed by physical law, then everything can be said to be predetermined by pre-existing conditions of the universe, possibly ad infinitum. This situation does not necessitate a being to plan out anything, but rather just the existence of universal physical law.
Furthermore, your definition of the future is very limited; surely the future is not limited to that which is not currently observable by an individual. This definition of the future also includes much of the past, since the past is also not presently observable to an individual. A better definition of future would be to describe it as what is temporally beyond the present. The question of fate surely asks whether or not what will happen in a future time admits of one possibility (predetermined) or more. It matters not in fact whether this predetermination is known to us by observation, and does not actually depend on it. A game played between two players, for example, might have rules that guarantee one outcome. The players may not know that there is only one outcome, even after that outcome has been observed. In fact, no one might know that the game has only one outcome, but this does not have any effect on the fact that it is predetermined, because there is only one outcome. Furthermore, every player of this game may observe that the game is, in fact, predetermined, but this, too, has no effect on the fact that it is predetermined. Hence, I am not convinced that observation has anything to do with predetermination at all.
We arguably only have five sensory faculties, although I would say that balance is another sensory faculties (a man can determine his bodily orientation, whether he is standing up, laying down, or upside down, and has an implicit ability to keep himself standing). Gravity and magnetism are not sensory faculties; gravity can be felt through balance, and magnetism by touch. When a charged balloon comes near one's arm, for example, the individual's hairs are attracted to the balloon, which activates our "touch" sense. I see no reason why there need to be more sensory faculties attributed to certain animals, but rather refined variations of these. And I believe the claim that migratory birds use "the stars" is a faulty claim, especially since the moon, and every planet in the solar system, exert much greater gravitational forces in relation to the earth than any of the stars. The stars are simply much too far away for them to exert any significant amount of gravitational force on anything here on Earth, and this claim presupposes that the birds have some sort of mechanism for accounting for the much superior gravitational influence of planets and the moon that fluctuate greatly here on Earth, given the frequency and differences of orbital paths. Blue whales do not communicate over thousands of kilometers; the sound waves would be spread much too thin and probably effected significantly by ocean noise. Furthermore, bats are, in fact, not blind, but rather have a less acute sense of vision.
Section 4 completely misinterprets Einstein's relativistic principles. When an object approaches the speed of light, three things will differ in the observational frame of the object and the observational frame of the stationary observer. These three effects are: time dilation, length contraction, and the non-preservation of simultaneity of events between the two reference frames. As an object moves closer to the speed of light, time slows down for that object. At the speed of light, time stops in this reference frame. But this requires an infinite amount of energy to attain, and hence is a physical impossibility. Anything moving at a speed faster than the speed of light would require a greater amount of energy than an infinite amount, which, too, is a physical impossibility. The idea of anything moving faster than the speed of light continually back through time is mere fancy, and is not scientifically possible. If man were to travel back in time, from the reference frame of the time he was leaving, everything that man did is in the past and hence determinate. From the point of reference of the time he travels back to, if he were to claim that he knew the future, this already presupposes that the future is determinate. How does this individual know that an alternative future is impossible? If the future he came back from is one among any number of possibilities, then it is possible that this procession through time might lead to a different one.
Lastly, I don't see how your conclusion offers any more than the Random House definitions do. The only difference depends on the possibility of it being perceived by those with certain faculties; but this can only be speculation. Furthermore, this lies in direct contradiction to your proposition that the future is defined as that which is not presently observable. If certain individuals have the capacity to observe it now, then what they observe, by your definition, cannot be the future. So, essentially, your definition offers a contradiction of an earlier position and a synonym to answer the question of "What is Fate?" Most of it seemed to be misguided, and didn't really offer any investigation into ideas of possibility and predetermination, which is really necessary to understand what is at stake in the question. Your presentation suffered from commonplace bad science, which really would've been helped by providing credible citations that would have eliminated some of the common misunderstandings (such as the claim that bats are blind). It would be more interesting for you to investigate what predeterminism is and means for us. I do not mean to be overly critical, but I thought I should try to best expose the flaws so that future editions or like projects do not succumb to the same mistakes. |
|
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
