PHL100Y1 Lecture : PHL lecture, feb. 2.doc
Document Summary
Note that there is no presumption here about how someone might be in a position to make such a prediction. The limiting case of this is posed by god"s omniscience: he knows how you will act in every situation: psychological determinism. Human beings may be so constituted in their psychological make- up as to determine how they will behave in any given situation ( the compulsion of character ). Whether we or anyone can know enough about the relevant psychological laws or the particular case histories of individuals, it may nevertheless be true that we are constituted such that our responses to any given situation are determined. This too seems to remove freedom: just as we do not consider someone caught in the grips of a hopeless compulsion. Free to have done otherwise, so too of all psychological states are like this. It asserts that every event was determine by some set or prior causes.
