know that their theory is true; they can only report that they feel helpless to believe otherwise. Nor can they claim
that their theory is highly probable; they can only acknowledge the inner compulsion that forbids them to doubt that
it is highly probable.
Some advocates of determinism, evidently sensing this epistemological dilemma, have sought to escape it by
asserting that, although they are determined to believe what they believe, the factor determining them is logic. But
by what means do they know this? Their beliefs are no more subject to their control than those of a lunatic. They
and the lunatic are equally the pawn of deterministic forces. Both are incapable of judging their judgments.
One of the defining characteristics of psychosis is loss of volitional control over rational judgment—but, according
to determinism, that is man's normal, metaphysical state.
There is no escape from determinism's epistemological dilemma.
A mind that is not free to test and validate its conclusions—a mind whose judgment is not free—can have no way
to tell the logical from the illogical, no way to ascertain that which compels and motivates it, no right to claim
knowledge of any kind; such a mind is disqualified for such appraisals by its very nature. The very concept of logic
is possible only to a volitional consciousness; an automatic consciousness could have no need of it and could not
conceive of it.
The concepts of logic, thought, and knowledge are not applicable to machines. A machine does not reason; it
performs the actions its builder sets it to perform, and those actions alone. If it is set to register that two plus two
equal four, it does so; if it is set to register that two plus two equal five, it does so; it has no power to correct the
orders and information given it. If ''self-correctors" are built into it, it performs the prescribed acts of "self-
correction," and no others; if the "self-correctors" are set incorrectly, it cannot correct itself; it cannot make any
independent, self-generated contribution to its own performance. If man, who is not "set" invariably to be right,
were merely a super-complex machine, engineered by his heredity and operated by his environment, pushed,
pulled, shaped, and molded by his genes, his toilet training, his parental upbringing, and his cultural history, then
no idea reached by him