VOLITION 311 



appears to be no longer any obstacle to this emanci- 

 pation. 



Let us look more closely into the problem of how the 

 mind gets a grip on material atoms so that movements 

 of the body and limbs can be controlled by its volition. 

 I think we may now feel quite satisfied that the volition 

 is genuine. The materialist view was that the motions 

 which appear to be caused by our volition are really 

 reflex actions controlled by the material processes in the 

 brain, the act of will being an inessential side pheno- 

 menon occurring simultaneously with the physical 

 phenomena. But this assumes that the result of apply- 

 ing physical laws to the brain is fully determinate. It is 

 meaningless to say that the behaviour of a conscious 

 brain is precisely the same as that of a mechanical brain 

 if the behaviour of a mechanical brain is left undeter- 

 mined. If the laws of physics are not strictly causal the 

 most that can be said is that the behaviour of the 

 conscious brain is one of the possible behaviours of a 

 mechanical brain. Precisely so; and the decision between 

 the possible behaviours is what we call volition. 



Perhaps you will say, When the decision of an atom 

 is made between its possible quantum jumps, is that 

 also "volition"? Scarcely; the analogy is altogether too 

 remote. The position is that both for the brain and the 

 atom there, is nothing in the physical world, i.e. the 

 world of pointer readings, to predetermine the decision; 

 the decision is a fact of the physical world with con- 

 sequences in the future but not causally connected to 

 the past. In the case of the brain we have an insight 

 into a mental world behind the world of pointer readings 

 and in that world we get a new picture of the fact of 

 decision which must be taken as revealing its real 

 nature — if the words real nature have any meaning. 



