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not possibly have all that evidence, and any attempt to get it
would kill our subject before he ever makes his mathematical
discovery. But besides this, and much more interestingly, even if
we could make the physical prediction we would still not be able to read
off the theorem from it, unless we also had a complete account
of the relation between brain-states and thought. But if we had
that, we would already have a complete description of Pythago-
ras thoughts, as well as of his brain-states. And this is what we
should have to use to discover the theorem, because accounts of
brain-states simply do not mention matters like triangles and
hypotenuses at all. In trying to predict thought, we should have
to use existing thought as our only possible starting-point. And
112 wickedness: a philosophical essay
in order to do this, we should have to drop the attempt at predic-
tion and start instead to work out the problem for ourselves.
Given all Pythagoras data, we might even come up with his
solution. But this would be quite a different feat from predicting
that he would come up with it, and a much more interesting one.
In this way, we would have become colleagues in his enterprise,
instead of mere predictors. If we had stuck only to the physical
data, we would have made no headway with his problem at all.
There is a certain misleading picture which often crops up at
this point, and which I think is in the minds of people who
object particularly to biological determinism. It shows physical
particles as forcing thought to work in their way. It treats the
patterns of the thought itself as somehow illusory and unreal,
mere façades covering the genuinely effective movements of the
neurones. This epiphenomenalist metaphysic is obscure and
unnecessary. I think its appeal is again that of fatalism. The neur-
ones or what-not are being treated as alien beings forcing the
mind to do their will. This is idle because they are not agents and
determining is not forcing. Mind and body are two interdepend-
ent aspects of a person; neither forces the other. The determining
is mutual. Physical activities are predicted on mental evidence
just as often as the other way round. The mental pattern is not a
cheap substitute for the physical one. It is often itself exactly
what we need to know. There is nothing unreal about it. If we
want to understand thought, we must study it on its own terms.
This means that, in all but the simplest cases, we have to co-
operate in it as fellow-thinkers, not just stand by and predict it.
This need becomes more obvious the more creative the thought
gets.
Pythagoras, of course, is not an extreme case here since he did
start from a given problem. But how would someone set about
predicting Dickens s novels, or Descartes s philosophy? The
social sciences are no more able to do this kind of thing than the
physical ones. Works like this are not events to be predicted at all,
fates, causes and free-will 113
but patterns of thought, and indeed of life, only to be under-
stood by following them out and living through them. And the
creativity which is so striking in these large-scale achievements
is also present on a small scale in the actions of every human
being. It is not possible to predict just how any one of us will
react to a given surprise, to a particular loss, bereavement, chal-
lenge or provocation. We do all kinds of unexpected things, and
in doing them we continually change society. Yet our all kinds
of things do fall within certain patterns, and the social sciences
are not wasting their time when they add them all up determin-
istically, to build some sort of statistical laws and predictions.
Psychology, in fact is an art as well as a science. It is, like medi-
cine or archaeology, an art which uses many sciences. It need
not fear academic contamination if it freely uses evidence from
the physical sciences as part of its raw material. Nor need anyone
anxious to reform society suppose that the existence of a definite
human nature, predictable within wide limits, will act as a fate,
making that reform impossible.
SUMMARY
It is fatalism the superstitious acceptance of unnecessary evils
as inevitable not determinism, which can menace our free-
dom. Determinism is, or should be, only a pragmatic assumption
of order, made for the sake of doing science. Our tendency to
dramatize such notions into threats, and to personify physical
forces and entities, is natural but misleading. ( Determine here
does not mean force but make known. ) We need determin-
ism (in this wide, untechnical sense) in order to generalize and
make predictions. But much of our ordered thought is not gen-
eralizing or predicting at all. Practical thinking, for instance, is
the art of thinking what to do. (Arts are not sciences.) It is
certainly not an attempt to predict our own conduct, but to
frame it. There need be no conflict between these different kinds
114 wickedness: a philosophical essay
of thinking. Prediction does not compete with deliberation, and
cannot subvert it (Kant).
This point is made harder to grasp by the legacy of disputes
about God s foreknowledge and its relation to free-will. These
encourage the tendency to elevate ordinary physical forces into
deities. Theories of history, including Marxism and Social
Darwinism, easily fall into this superstitious language and way of
thinking.
Alarmed by these apparent threats to freedom, social scientists
have tried to protect us by confining determinism to the physical
world, and denouncing all explanation of human qualities by
physical causes as biological determinism. Determinism, how-
ever, can hardly be fenced off in this way. The result is not only a
strange divorce between mind and body, but a crippling threat
to the generalizations and predictions which the social sciences
themselves need to make. It is better to see that predictability
itself is not really dangerous.
Provided that the grounds of prediction are appropriate ones,
being predictable does not threaten anyone s freedom. Reliabil-
ity and action-in-character are perfectly compatible with human
dignity; indeed they are needed for it. Randomness would not be
freedom. What makes predictions offensive is grounding them
on mechanisms which bypass conscious choice, in a way which
leaves the agent helpless and deceived (Oedipus). Nor is the
recognition of physical conditions as setting the scene for choice
offensive. Background causes and conditions remain distinct
from the choice itself. The reductive, fatalistic elements in some
sweeping theories of motive notably Freud s have caused
reasonable alarm. But they are only dangerous if they get out of
balance.
Accordingly, the notion of human nature is not dangerously
fatalistic, but a necessary background for our understanding
of motives. Marx and others who have claimed to get rid of it
do not do so consistently. The infinite adaptability which is
fates, causes and free-will 115
sometimes claimed for human behaviour is not found, and if it
were would make history and the social sciences impossible.
Determinism, then, is not fatalism and does not threaten free-
will. Nor, however, is science the whole of our thinking. Practical
thought is non-predictive, and is often creative. Creativity does
not conflict with determinism provided that determinism
remains as modest and pragmatic as it ought to be. The epiphe-
nomenalist drama which depicts the brain as forcing thought into
alien patterns is a mere fantasy. Rather, brains are the soil in
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