GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THE PROBLEM OF FREE WILL 975
OF THE BttAiN. This conclusion applies with even greater
force to those forms of determinism which base themselves
upon Materialism. For these, as we have seen, maintain that
mental events are either disguised bodily events or at
least determined by bodily events. The psychology of
Behaviourism, for example, asserts that thought consists
of bodily movements, more particularly of movements
in the larynx. Now the movements of the body may be
necessary and determined, but they can no more be true
than a quadratic equation can be purple or a musical
chord can be covetous. It is, of course, the case that I
may feel convinced that my thinking relates to the out-
side world and correctly informs me of what happens there.
But this conviction of mine is only another thought, and,
therefore, a set of laryngeal movements, which, as I have
pointed out, cannot of their very nature refer to anything
outside themselves.
It is also the case, if Behaviourism is correct, that these
arguments ofmine are themselves no more than movements
in my larynx and nervous system which arc causally
linked to other movements in my hand, as I write, and my
face, as I talk. Therefore, they do not refer to Behaviourism
at all. The reader's view of them is another set of
movements in his larynx, and the belief that this is the
correct description both of the arguments and of the reader's
view of them is another set. It is impossible on these lines
to find any basis from which thought can operate, for there
are no common premises, no common presumptions, and
no common conclusions of thought. On the basis of a
thorough-going Materialism, every
so-called thinker is
boxed up within the circle of his own experiences. Thus
the materialist locks up the mind if, indeed, he admits
a mind at all in a cell % whose walls are the .neural and
cerebral movements of his own body, which movements
he plays no part in initiating. And, since nothing which
mind experiences can reach it from outside these walls,
so nothing that it thinks can refer to anything outside them.
Materialism, then, which purports to be thought about