ABSTRACT
Determinism, is a metaphysical, not an ethical, theory, but if it is true there cannot be an ethical theory. Now according to determinism, moral words have meaning, but no proper application; they express genuine concepts, but they suffer from the same defects as dragons, fairies or hobbits; and a treatise on fictitious concepts will have little appeal. Again, certain theories and practices of punishment have a strong undercurrent of determinism about them, and not only because they have been influenced by the deterministic thinking of modern psychologists: some of them are far too old for that. The attempt to reconcile determinism and freedom, just considered, relied on the common-sense view that predictions of human behaviour are as a matter of fact not totally reliable, they can often turn out to be false.
