Elements of metaphysics

by A. E. Taylor

§ 6. It is not difficult to see that the logical value of all these arguments is nothing at all. They fall of themselves into two groups, one based upon the general view that all rational connection, or at least all such rational connection as is significant for our knowledge, is mechanical causal sequence, the other upon an appeal to the supposed actual practice of the mental sciences. We may deal with the first group (arguments 1 to 3) first. It is certainly not true that causal determination by antecedents is the only form of rational connection. For there is manifestly another type of connection, which we have already seen to be fundamental for the mental sciences, namely, teleological coherence. And we have learned in our preceding books that no truly teleological or purposive series can really be mechanically determined by uniform causal laws of sequence, though it is often convenient for special purposes, as in the physical sciences, to treat such a series as if it were mechanically determined. Whether this type of procedure will be valid in the mental sciences, depends upon the further question whether our interest in the study of mental processes is of the kind which would be satisfied by the formulation of a number of abstract uniformities or laws of sequence, and the neglect of all those features of real mental life of which such laws take no account.

In the physical sciences, as we saw, this mechanical scheme was valid only because we have an interest—that of devising general rules for dealing with typical physical situations—which is met by neglecting all those aspects of concrete fact which the mechanical scheme excludes. But we also saw that the nature of our interest in psychological investigation was predominantly (and, in the case of the study of voluntary action, exclusively) of a different kind. Our interest in these investigations was to obtain such a teleological representation of psychical processes as might be made available for the appreciative judgments of Ethics and History and their kindred studies. Thus, even admitting the possibility of treating psychical life for some purposes, by abstraction from its teleological character, as if it were a mechanical sequence, the abstraction would be fatal for the purposes of the concrete mental sciences, and is therefore inadmissible in them. A teleological unity in which we are interested as a teleological unity cannot, without the stultification of our whole scientific procedure, be treated in abstraction from its teleological character.

This rejoinder to the first of the determinist’s arguments is at the same time a refutation of the second. It is true that any science which aims exclusively at the discovery of “laws” or “uniformities” must adopt the causal principle, and must resolutely shut its eyes to all aspects of concrete fact which cannot be resolved into mechanical sequence of “same result” on “same conditions.” But, as we saw in the first chapter of this book, the characteristic task of Psychology, except in those parts of it which appear to be mere temporary substitutes for the Physiology of the future, is not the discovery of “laws of mental process,” but the representation in abstract and general form of the teleological unity of processes which are the expression of subjective interests. Psychology, then, in its most characteristic parts, is not based upon the causal postulate of mechanical science, but on the conception of teleological continuity.

Our answer to the determinist’s third argument is therefore that we admit the truth of the allegation that Psychology and all the more concrete mental sciences which make use of the symbolism of Psychology, because essentially teleological in their view of mental process, would be inconsistent with the mechanical postulates, if those postulates had any claim to admission into mental science as its ruling principles. We deny, however, that they have any such claim to recognition. Being, as we now know that they are, mere methodological rules for the elimination from our data of everything which is teleological, the mechanical postulates are only legitimate in Psychology so far as Psychology desires mechanical results. How far that is, we have learned in the first two chapters of the present Book, and we have found that the initiation of purposive action is not a process which Psychology can fruitfully treat as mechanical.

§ 7. Turning now to the determinist’s allegations as to the factual procedure of the mental sciences, we may make the following observations:—(1) As to the argument from the psychological treatment of “motives” as the determining antecedents of choice, we say that it is either an empty tautology or a fallacy, according to the sense you please to put on the much-abused term “motive.” Choice is causally determined by the “strongest motive”; what does this mean? If the “strongest motive” simply means the line of action we do in fact choose, the argument amounts to the true but irrelevant observation that we choose what we do choose, and not something else. But if “motives” are to be regarded as antecedents causally determining choice in proportion to their strength, as mechanical “forces” determine the path of a particle in abstract Mechanics, we must suppose the “strength” of the various “motives,” like the mass of an attracting body, to be previously fixed, independent of the choice they determine. In other words, the determinist argument requires us to hold that alternative possibilities of action are already “motives” apart from their relation to the purpose of the agent who has to choose between them, and moreover have, also in independence of the purpose or “character” of the chooser, a “strength” which is in some unintelligible way a function of—it would not be easy to say of what, though it is incumbent on the determinist to know. And this seems no better than rank nonsense. An alternative is not a “motive” at all, except in relation to the already existing, but not fully defined, purpose of some agent, and whether it is a “strong” or a “weak” motive depends likewise on the character of the agent’s purpose. The attempt to conceive of “motives” as somehow acting on a mind with an inherent “strength” of their own, as material particles attract other material particles proportionately to their masses, is so palpable an absurdity, that nothing more than the candid statement of it is needed for its complete exposure.

And (2) there is an equal absurdity inherent in the determinist view as to the kind of prediction of conduct which is possible in concrete cases. We have seen already in our Third Book that no infallible prediction of the course of events in an individual case is ever possible. Mechanical calculation and prediction we found to be possible in the physical sciences simply because they deal with the average character of a vast aggregate of processes which they never attempt to follow in their concrete individual detail. And trustworthy prediction of human conduct by the aid of “causal laws” was seen to be of the same kind. Your uniformities might hold good, so long as they professed to be nothing more than statistical averages got by neglecting the individual peculiarities of the special cases composing them, but nothing but acquaintance with individual character and purpose would justify you in making confident predictions as to the behaviour of an individual man.

Now, when the determinist says, “if you knew a man’s character and his circumstances you could predict his conduct with certainty,” it is not this kind of individual acquaintance which he has in view. He means that the “character” of an individual man could be reduced to a number of general formulæ or “laws of mental action,” and that from these “laws,” by simply putting them together, you could logically deduce the man’s behaviour. To see how irrational this assumption is, we need only ask what is meant exactly by the “character” which we suppose given as one of the elements for our supposed calculation. If it means the sum-total of the congenital “dispositions” with which we are born, then—apart from the difficulty of saying precisely what you mean by such a “disposition”—the determinist statement is not even approximately true. For (a) though it may be true that a man’s behaviour in a given situation is an expression of his “character,” yet the “character” is not the same thing as “congenital disposition.” Disposition is the mere raw material of the “character,” which is formed out of it by the influence of circumstance, the educational activity of our social circle, and deliberate self-discipline on our own part. And the “character” thus formed is not a fixed and unvarying quantity, given once and for all at some period in the individual’s development, and thenceforward constant; it is itself, theoretically at least, “in the making” throughout life, and though you may, from personal intimate acquaintance with an individual man, feel strongly convinced that his “character” is not likely to undergo serious changes after a certain time of life, this conviction can never amount to more than what we properly call “moral” certainty, and is never justified except on the strength of individual familiarity.

(b) This leads us to our second point. If—to suppose the practically impossible—you did know a man’s “character” with the knowledge of omniscience, you would clearly also know every act of his life. For his “character” is nothing but the system of purposes and interests to which his outward deeds give expression, and thus to know it completely would be to know them completely too. But—and this is what the determinist regularly overlooks—you could not possibly have this knowledge of the man’s “character” until you were already acquainted with the whole of his life. You could not possibly thus know “character” as a datum given in advance, from which to calculate, with mathematical precision, the as yet unknown future acts of the man in question, because, as we have seen, the “character” is, in fact, not there as a given fact before the acts through which it is formed. Your data could at best be no more than a number of “dispositions” or “tendencies,” and from such data there can be no infallible prediction, because, in the first place, “dispositions” are not always developed into actual fixed habits; and, in the second, your data, such as they are, are incomplete, seeing that “dispositions” may, and often do, remain latent and escape detection until the emergence of a situation adapted to call them out. So that, even if it were true that complete knowledge of a man’s original stock of “dispositions” would enable you to calculate his career from its elements, it would still be impossible to be sure that your knowledge of his “dispositions” was complete.

Thus, if a “science of human nature” really means a power to calculate human conduct in advance from its elements, we must admit that there is not and can be no such science. As a fact, however, what we really mean by a “science of human nature,” when we speak of it as possible or as partly existent already, is something quite different. We mean either Psychology, individual and social, which is simply an abstract symbolism for the representation of teleological process in its general nature, or History, which is the detection of coherent purpose in human action, after the event; or, again, Ethics and Politics, which are appreciations of such purpose by an ideal standard of worth. Not one of these sciences has ever attempted the calculation of human action in advance by general laws; such forecasts of the future as we do make, with rational confidence, are palpably based, wherever they are of value, on concrete experience, our own or that of others, and not upon the principles of an imaginary mechanics of the human mind.

§ 8. Indeterminism. With the fallacies of the indeterminist we must now deal more briefly. This is the more possible as Indeterminism, though common enough in popular moralising, has never won anything like the position of the rival doctrine as the professed creed of scientific investigators. The essence of the indeterminist position is the denial of the principle affirmed alike by the doctrine of self-determination and, in an unintelligent travesty, by the determinist theory that conduct results from the reaction of “character” upon circumstances. Seeing that, if all human action is mechanically determined in advance by its “antecedents,” and is thus theoretically capable of being deduced from its “elements,” there can be no true moral freedom, and, not seeing that the essence of true freedom is teleological as opposed to mechanical determination, the indeterminist thinks himself compelled to assert that human action is, in the last resort, not “determined” even by human character. There is a “free will of indifference” inherent in human nature, in virtue of which a man’s acts, or at least those of them in respect of which he is morally “accountable,” are free, in the sense of being independent of his character.