HUDSON HOAGLAND 
“rewards” and “‘punishments’’. Behavioural scientists and neu- 
rophysiologists are making advances in understanding the 
mechanisms involved in behaviour at many levels. Throughout 
all of these studies there runs the tacit hypothesis that behaviour 
is dependent upon physicochemical events in cells, especially 
those of the brain. There is no reason to abandon this hypothesis 
despite our present ignorance about the regulation of behaviour, 
including thinking. 
To some students of behaviour, free will is an epiphenomenon 
—an illusion, since all behaviour may be regarded as a result of 
our phylogenetic development and of the individual’s experi- 
ences. It is maintained that what a man is and all that he knows 
is a result of information passed on to him by the deoxyribo- 
nucleic acid (DNA) code of his genes and by the sensory infor- 
mation he receives throughout his lifetime. Democritus 
expressed this 2,300 years ago when he said, “‘ We know nothing 
unerringly, but only as it changes according to the disposition 
of our body and the things that enter it and impinge upon it.” 
However, the fact that we can never know in detail the meaning 
to an individual of his wealth of past experiences, or the details 
of his genetic make-up and its impact on the functioning of his 
brain, means that much of his behaviour must remain relatively 
undetermined, and man may be considered to have free will. 
That this may be an illusion is unimportant. Anatol Rapoport 
has pointed out the paradox that if a person predicts his own 
behaviour and then behaves in the way he predicted, he con- 
cludes he has free will. But if that person predicted another 
person’s behaviour and that other person behaved in the way 
the first person predicted, then the first person would conclude 
that the other person did not have free will. Yet there is no 
operational or logical difference in the bases for the two pre- 
dictions. D. M. MacKay has recently called my attention to 
his views on logical indeterminacy which shed, for me, refreshing 
new light on the ancient dilemma of freedom and determinism2. 
He points out the logical impossibility of predicting a decision 
to be made by someone who is first informed of the prediction 
of what his act will be. 
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