The Riddle of the Universe

Answers

• Q05AUTOMATON

  Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?

  Yes. will is determined like any natural process. The struggle over free will has ended in favor of determinism; the human will is no freer than an animal's and differs only in degree.

  The great struggle between the determinist and the indeterminist, between the opponent and the sustainer of the freedom of the will, has ended to-day, after more than two thousand years, completely in favor of the determinist. The human will has no more freedom than that of the higher animals, from which it differs only in degree, not in kind. In the last century the dogma of liberty was fought with general philosophic and cosmological arguments. The nineteenth century has given us very different weapons for its definitive destruction--the powerful weapons which we find in the arsenal of comparative physiology and evolution. We now know that each act of the will is as fatally determined by the organization of the individual and as dependent on the momentary condition of his environment as every other psychic activity. The character of the inclination was determined long ago by _heredity_ from parents and ancestors; the determination to each particular act is an instance of _adaptation_ to the circumstances of the moment wherein the strongest motive prevails, according to the laws which govern the statics of emotion.

  Ch. VII, 'Psychic Gradations' (section 'Freedom of the Will') · Downloaded Project Gutenberg #42968; ch. VII summary lists 'The Will—Freedom of the Will' and the text states the struggle 'has ended ... completely in favor of the determinist.'