title: Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will
author: David Wallace
description: A progression of ordinary-seeming premises that would obliterate free will is challenged on its own grounds by the late, celebrated author of Infinite Jest. Written in the mid-1980s as one of Wallace's two undergraduate theses at Amherst College (his first novel, The Broom of the System, was the other), it addresses a "logical slippage"--as James Ryerson puts it--in Richard Taylor's six famous presuppositions that contend that man has no control over his fate. The paper, a survey of Taylor's argument and its influence on late-20th-century philosophy, is reprinted in its entirety, and the language of modal logic can be heavy going at times--be prepared for pages of highly specialized discussion on logic that necessitate accompanying diagrams. Still, as an early glimpse at the preoccupations of one of the 20th century's most compelling and philosophical authors, it is invaluable, and Wallace's conclusion--"if Taylor and the fatalists want to force upon us a metaphysical conclusion, they must do metaphysics, not semantics"--is simply elegant. (Dec.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: FATELESS (STATELESS #3)
  
  MELI RAINE
  
  Copyright © 2019 by Meli Raine
  All rights reserved.
  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
  mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without
  written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book
  review.
  
  CONTENTS
  “States are like men; they grow out of human characters.”
  Fateless
  Chapter 1
  Chapter 2
  Chapter 3
  Chapter 4
  Chapter 5
  Chapter 6
  Chapter 7
  Chapter 8
  Chapter 9
  Chapter 10
  Chapter 11
  Chapter 12
  Chapter 13
  Chapter 14
  Chapter 15
  Chapter 16
  Chapter 17
  Chapter 18
  Chapter 19
  Chapter 20
  Chapter 21
  Chapter 22
  Chapter 23
  Chapter 24
  Chapter 25
  Chapter 26
  Chapter 27
  Also by Meli Raine
  About the Author
  
  “STATES  ARE  LI KE ME N; THEY GROW OUT  OF
  HUM AN CHARACT ERS.”
  – Plato
  
  FATELE SS
  The future isn’t real.
  The past isn’t real, either.
  Only the present is, solid and full, flying at our faces, our bodies, our
  hearts and souls at breakneck speed as we work to ta