ABSTRACT
There seems to be a plain, recognisable difference between actions (behaviours, rather) that one performs under duress, under coercion or compelling threat, and those which one does without such external compulsion. A behaviour-event cannot be caused from one point of view and uncaused from another, and MacKay’s argument for the compatibility of the two views is unsuccessful. All kinds of behaviour are caused, for the determinist, and all are caused by a confluence of external and internal factors; for him the ‘free’ kind of behaviour does not exist. The locus of behaviour is in the organism’s relations with its environment. Behaviour is ‘any change of an entity with respect to its surroundings’. The best prophylactic against this kind of teleological thinking is to be on guard against accepting ‘changes with respect to the environment’ as being the stuff of which behaviour is composed, and to think of an organism’s beha.
