St. Lem about the impossibility of life and prediction


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Abstract

The article analyzes the philosophical ideas of St. Lem, expressed by him in the short story with the double title "On the Impossibility of Life" and "On the Impossibility of Prognostication". It shows that the story is based on ontological issues related to the existence status of unique future events. Lem demonstrates the features of this status through the example of a fictional story of future Professor Kouska’s birth, on whose behalf indeterministic conclusions about the nature of unique events are made. Lem's thesis that the information about future unique events objectively does not exist is one of the key conclusions. For this reason, prognosticating events of this kind is basically impossible. The lack of information is related to the fact that ontologically there is no future, it has not happened yet. This Lem’s thesis is supplemented by the author's reasoning that the past no longer ontologically exists that appears in the indeterminate traceless disappearance of a part of unique events from the past as time passes. Defense to indeterminism includes criticism of the dogmatic determinism of Parmenidean science and philosophy, that dispel time and change from being. As a result, dogmatic determinism ignores history as an ordered set of unique events. A new understanding of the possible is substantiated, unrelated to the idea of probability theory elementary events and a great number of modal logic possible worlds.

About the authors

Alexander Anisov

Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Author for correspondence.
Email: a.m.anisov@yandex.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3492-2006

Doctor of Sciences in Philosophy, Professor, Leading Researcher

Russian Federation, 12, building 1, st. Goncharnaya, Moscow, 109240, Russian Federation

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