Physicalism and the Bogey of Determinism

Abstract

Only a dreadful prig could seriously condemn secret lust as a form of adultery. However, even someone who claims to be wholly concerned with the things of the mind must have some interest in what he says and does, and these require the occurrence of bodily processes. Realising that so much of what matters to us involves physical events and processes, it is natural to find alarming the suggestion that all physical behaviour of our bodies can be explained in terms of the ‘mindless’ workings of laws of nature. Consequently, many philosophers have tried to prove it isn’t so.

I am indebted to several colleagues, including M. Boden, D. Booth, J. W. Burgess, M. B. Clowes, J. Dorling, M. Ireland, R. Poole, T. L. Sprigge, A. R. White, for comments on an earlier version of this paper, and to N. S. Sutherland, many of whose arguments I have borrowed from his ‘Is the brain a physical system?’, in R. Borger and F. Cioffi (Eds.), Explanation in the Behavioural Sciences (Cambridge University Press, 1970) pp. 97–122.