Psychological Determinism and the Problem of Morality

Abstract

ACCORDING to the traditional view of man, what distinguishes him from animals is his freedom to choose between one course of action and another, his freedom to seek good and avoid evil. The animal has no freedom, but is determined by physical and biological laws; like a machine, the animal responds whenever the appropriate stimulus is present. But because man has free will, we cannot hope to explain his behavior merely in terms of causes. Man cannot be bound by physical or biological laws. While divergent views have gained some recognition, for example, the idea that man is a machine, or the idea that all of nature is purposive, the prevailing view has been one that implies that man somehow transcends the deterministic laws of nature. Two developments of the present century have challenged this traditional view of man and nature: quantum mechanics, which suggests that physics is not deterministic, and psychoanalysis, which suggests that man is not free. In response to these developments there has been a resurgence of interest in the determinismfreedom problem, especially among philosophers and physicists. Psychologists, however, have been strangely quiet about the problem, even though they are deeply implicated in it. I will indicate here the position I believe has been assumed, usually implicitly, by experimental psychologists today regarding determinism and freedom, and I will spell out some of the implications of this position for the problem of morality. In discussions of free will and determinism tlere are often a number of issues in question.' The present discussion will be concerned with just one issue: the predictability of behavior. Some men, who will be called indeterminists, contend that human behavior is not entirely predictable from antecedent conditions, so that by the power of his will a man is free to controvert the determining efficacy of prior experience and conditioning. The indeterminist has the advantage of tradition on his side of the argument, but does he have any evidence to support his position ? Let us see.