could claim objectivity or truth—including the idea that man is a machine.
Those who propound determinism must either assert that they arrived at their theory by mystical revelation, and
thus exclude themselves from the realm of reason—or they must assert that they are an exception to the theory they
propound, and thus exclude their theory from the realm of truth.
The fact that knowledge is possible to man cannot be contested without self-contradiction. It is a truth that must be
accepted even in the act of seeking to dispute it. Any theory that necessitates the conclusion that man can know
nothing, is self-invalidating and self-refuting by that very fact. Yet such is the conclusion to which the theory of
determinism inescapably leads.
In appraising any theory of the nature of man's mind and its operations, it is necessary to consider that, since the
theory is itself a product of man's mind, its claim to truth must be compatible with its own existence and content.
Otherwise, the theory is contradictory and nonsensical (Bertrand Russell's theory of types notwithstanding). For
example, if a man were to declare, as an alleged fact of reality: "Man is incapable of knowing any facts"—the
logical absurdity of his statement would be obvious. The epistemological contradiction of determinism is—in a
subtler and more complex way—of the identical order.
Determinism is a theory whose claim to truth is incompatible with its own content. It exhibits what may be termed
the fallacy of self-exclusion.
A number of thinkers, attacking the theory of classical associationism, have pointed out that the associationist
theory of mind does not allow the possibility of ever establishing associationism as true; that the theory does not
allow the possibility of any knowledge. But associationism is merely one version of psychological determinism.
What has not been recognized is that the same objection applies to—and invalidates—any version of determinism.
It does not matter whether man's mind is alleged to be passively under the sway of the "laws of association"—or of
conditioned reflexes—or of environmental pressures—or of Original Sin. Any theory of mind that denies man's
volitional control over his faculty of judgment, collapses under the weight of the same inescapable and insuperable
contradiction.