ABSTRACT
Psychological determinism - the theory that human beliefs and actions follow ineluctably from the combination of experience and anterior psychological conditions - has some credibility, but is far from being an established fact and is specifically denied by some philosophers. Psychology itself is far from an exact science. The standard expositions of psychological determinism have been the works of John Hospers and B. F. Skinner. The two are quite different in their approach to life in general and social engineering in particular. Strawson is right that psychological determinism could not imply that all psychologically determined behavior is like neurotic behavior in that the objective attitude is appropriate for dealing with it rather than the participant attitude. The implication of psychological determinism for social and moral questions in the chapter would be no greater and no less than the implication of physical determinism. If this makes life unliveable, it does so in exactly the same way as does physical determinism.
