Hollywood's Interpretation of Surrealism

Can we have precognitive abilities? Is it possible to predict the future with absolute certainty? Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), a rationalist, theorizes that by examining the contents of our own minds, we can use reason alone to gain scientific knowledge of the future. On the other hand, David Hume (1711-1776), an empiricist, counters Leibniz belief that knowledge of matters of fact come from previous experience and that as humans we can only make inferences on what will happen in the future, based on our experiences of the past. Personally, I agree with certain principles from both philosophers and don’t fully conform to just one side. Do you believe that we can be like Professor X, being able to see what happens before it has even happened?

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a rationalist. Rationalism proposes that we are capable of gaining important knowledge regarding the world around us by examining and using the contents of our own minds. He contends that we are able to gather scientific knowledge of the future through reason alone. He backs this argument by saying that human beings were modeled to resemble god and because god would want nothing but the absolute best of all possibilities for humanity, he would have created the world utilizing the most logical set of laws. Should we find out what these sets of laws are, predicting the future would be nothing more than a simple task? According to Leibniz, we are able to figure out these laws by determining which laws are the best. While he does make a good argument, Leibniz’s rationalism has its problems. The first of those problems would be that his propositions are heavily reliant on the existence of a god. How can we prove that there is a deity known as ‘god’? How can we be certain that that deity is all good, wants the best for us, and is not actually malicious? These are questions to which we don’t have answers to, which would mean that we cannot fully accept Leibniz’s theories due to them not having a very stable foundation. Following suit, say there is an all-good deity and that we do succeed in figuring out which laws of nature are the best, how are we so sure that these laws will remain true in the future? Leibniz’s response to that is that due to god having chosen the most perfect laws, they will remain as they are. However, we cannot fully define the term ‘perfect’. Perfect could may involve change, it could be to evolve and if that were the case, we would never be truly successful in predicting the future which David Hume would agree with.

David Hume was an empiricist and unlike rationalism, empiricism relies on the knowledge of our senses and not our logic. It states that experience is our singular source when it comes to information about our world. According to Hume, the idea of there being a god was derived from our ideas of goodness, power, etc. He argues that there is no way to rationally make any claims about future occurrences and that knowledge of matters of fact comes from previous experience. He states that we can only make inferences on what will happen in the future, based on our experiences of the past. Hume did not doubt that there were hidden causes for what happens in the world, he merely suggested that because they are unseen, we should not act as though we are able to comprehend the real reason that things happen as they do. Since we have experience of the past, we can only offer propositions of the future and cannot fully predict it. Hume’s empiricism, like Leibniz’s rationalism, do propose some issues of its own. Unlike in the past, we are now able to accurately predict some of the future such as the weather. These are made possible through our understanding of the ‘hidden forces in our world which he stated we should not pretend like we understand. He does make a fair point that not everything will happen as they did however, the world has patterns that we have found ultimately lead to a conclusion that is certain.

I myself believe that we are indeed capable of predicting the future but we cannot use rationalism or empiricism alone to do so. Instead, we must amalgamate the points that the two theories offer. I opine that we should use knowledge of the past and also the knowledge of logic and understanding to be able to successfully predict the world’s outcomes. These have been done which is why we are able to predict future disasters, the weather and so much more. I do believe that there are laws in the universe that when found out would unlock the key to not only the future, but also the past and the present.

There are definitely outside factors that alter the accuracy of our predictions, making it so that the nearer the time that we are trying to is, the more accurate we will be. It is also dependent on what exactly we are trying to predict. The more we know about the history of something, the easier it is to find out what is going to happen. As the famous saying goes, “History repeats itself”. Forecasting human lives however proves to be more challenging as no singular person is the same and we evolve meaning that we are highly unlikely to repeat the same mistakes. It is factors like these that make it more difficult to envision the future. Do you think that we will one day be able to predict the future with certainty? What level of understanding about the world do we need to do so?