(The Objectivist Newsletter, May 1963) "The doctrine of
determinism contains a central and insuperable contradiction - an
EPISTEMOLOGICAL contradiction - a contradiction implicit in any variety of
determinism, whether the alleged determining forces be physical,
psychological, environmental or divine. In fact, Man is neither omniscient nor
infallible. This means: (a) that he must work to ACHIEVE his knowledge, and
(b) that the mere presence of an idea inside his mind does not prove that the
idea is true; many ideas may enter a man's mind which are false. But if man
believes what he HAS to believe, if he is not free to test his beliefs against
reality and to validate or reject them - if the actions and content of his
mind are determined by factors that may or may not have anything to do with
reason, logic and reality - then he can never know if his conclusions are true
or false....But if this were true, no knowledge - no CONCEPTUAL knowledge -
would be possible to man. No theory could claim greater plausibility than any
other - including the theory of psychological determinism."
One of the catches to determinism is that you cannot argue with it. To
argue is to make an attempt to induce someone to alter the actions or content
of his mind. The determinist enters the argument with the claim that such
alteration is impossible - that he has no power to volitionally change his
state of consciousness. He says, and means literally, "My mind is made up -
don't confuse me with the facts!"
Biologists have tacitly assumed that when they have understood the
operation of each molecule in a nerve membrane, they will understand the
operation of the mind. But both the digital and the analog paradigms of
computation make it clear that this assumption is wrong. After all, a computer
is built from a completely known arrangement of devices whose operation is
understood in minute detail. Yet it is often impossible to prove that even a
simple computer program will calculate its desired result or, for that matter,
whether the computation will even terminate.
Wilder Penfield explored the brain with electrical probes. By stimulating
different parts of the brain he could cause a subject to turn his head, blink
his eyes, move his limbs and a host of other things. But though he could make
the patient's hand move he could never make the patient feel that he had
WILLED the hand to move. Penfield found that the effects of consciousness
could be selectively controlled by outside manipulation. But however much he
probed, he could not enter consciousness itself. He could not find the mind
and invade its autonomy.
The fundamental question of free will does not involve Man's physical
behavior but his psychological behavior. It concerns Man's ability to control
the functioning of his own mind.
On the Determinist premise, men are not merely unfit for freedom, they are
metaphysically incapable of it since they do not have fundamental control over
the choices made in their minds. Political issues become matters of pure
pragmatism: there is no right or wrong, but only effective or ineffective
techniques of social manipulation.