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One objection to this definition of freedom is that it implies fatalism, since it does indeed entail that the state of the universe at any time is uniquely and strictly determined. The crucial point is that human beings are vital and significant determinants of this future state.
Our self-referring, self-conscious intelligence continually predicts events. We happily await desirable predictions or seek interventions which will hasten their arrival, and we actively seek interventions which will modify undesirable predictions and then make predictions about these interventions. This process of successive reflection is not necessarily an infinite regression, as asserted by MacKay (1960) for the reasons given in the section of this paper on self-reference. We simply continue the process until we are satisfied with the implications of the nth prediction, or until we become exhausted and turn our attention to other matters. Infinite regress could only occur if we made the unwarranted assumption that the nth prediction would always be self-invalidating, which in this context means that it has unacceptably undesirable consequences for the person.
The magnitude of our participation as a determinant of our own future is obvious from contemporary human events. All our efforts—government, engineering, agriculture, medicine, psychology, etc., are attempts to control and stabilize the determinants of our surroundings and the determinants of our own internal functioning. Indeed, many wish that this participation were less ubiquitous, since much of it seems likely to have undesirable consequences for mankind. This can be understood as the short-sighted result of incomplete knowledge and incomplete prediction. We can reasonably expect that we will eventually remedy these errors if we work hard enough at correcting them.
If this is fatalism, it is a strange kind of fatalism, for it asserts that the individual plays a significant part as a determinant in his own future, and it sets few limits on the extent of this participation. In addition, it asserts the strong probability that the outcome of this participation will be favorable, to the extent that it is based on rational deterministic knowledge.
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