In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• The Certaintists
• Gary Saul Morson (bio)

We see that both deliberation and action are causative withregard to the future, and that, to speak more generally …there is a potentiality in either direction. Such things mayeither be or not be; events also therefore may either takeplace or not take place. … It is therefore plain that it is notof necessity that everything is or takes place; but in someinstances there are real alternatives.

—Aristotle, "On Interpretation"

"I WAS NOT TO BLAME"

For the past ten years, I have been co-teaching a course with Morton Schapiro, a professor of economics and the president of Northwestern University. That course led to a book we wrote, Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities. We are currently working on a sequel, on what humanists can learn from economics. That book will of course be called: Price and Prejudice.

Our course focuses on a theme many disciplines share: the nature of decision-making. Every model of decision-making is implicitly a model of time or, as Mikhail Bakhtin would say, it presupposes a [End Page 575] chronotope, so our course is also about temporality. For decisions and choices to be real, rather than resembling Soviet elections in which voters chose among one candidate, there must be more than one possible outcome. That is why determinists can offer at best a pale, sickly version of choice. By definition, a determinist is someone who believes that at any given moment one and only one thing can happen. Or, as William James phrased the point, for an indeterminist there are more possibilities than actualities and for a determinist there are not.¹ Choice, chance, and contingency all demand an indeterminist view of the world.

If we do have choices, how do and how should we make them? As we structured the course, disciplines are distinguished by how they answer this question. One can define economics as a discipline about how people choose to allocate scarce resources. Theologians have asked how choice can be real if God foresees what we do and made the world knowing everything that would happen. How then can we be held responsible for our choices? In what sense are they choices (and in what sense are they not choices)?

If one substitutes "natural laws" for an omniscient God, the same question arises. Once again everything is determined in advance. As Omar Khayyam wrote, "And the first Morning of Creation wrote / What the last Dawn of Reckoning shall read" (1120, st. 73). Again we can ask whether people can be held responsible for outcomes dictated from all eternity.

Realist novels, my own specialty, explore the inner world in which choices are made (or avoided). The concerns of several disciplines appear in Anna Karenina when Stiva, caught by his wife in infidelity, thinks: "It's all my fault—all my fault, but I'm not to blame, that's the whole point of the situation" (Tolstoy 1965, 4). How can it be one's fault (vina) and one not be to blame (vinovat)? What Stiva means is that although the act happened through his choice, there was no other choice that he, a healthy, susceptible thirty-four-yearold man, could have made. It's just nature. When people want to excuse their behavior, they argue they could have done nothing else. Determinism is the first refuge of a scoundrel.

Later in the novel Stiva's sister Anna tells Stiva's wife Dolly: "But I was not to blame. And who is to blame? What's the meaning of being to blame? Could it have been otherwise? What do you think? Could it possibly have happened that you didn't become the wife of Stiva?" "Really, I don't know" (Tolstoy 1965, 664) answers Dolly, who recognizes an evasion when she hears one. [End Page 576]

THE HOLY GHOST OF ATHEISTS

One must understand time to understand choice because every choice involves predictions. The chooser entertains what Bertrand de Jouvenal famously called "futuribles," possible futures that could take place, depending on what we do or do not do. We often have a hazy sense of futuribles, and so we must...

中文翻译：

---

确定论者

代替摘要，这里是内容的简短摘录：

• 确定论者
• 加里·索尔·莫森（生物）

我们看到，深思熟虑和行动都是对未来的因果关系，而且，更笼统地说……在任何一个方向上都有潜力。这样的事情可能是也可能不是；因此，事件也可能发生或不发生。……因此很明显，一切都发生或发生并不是必然的；但在某些情况下有真正的替代品。

——亚里士多德，《论解释》

“我没有错”

在过去的十年里，我一直与经济学教授、西北大学校长莫顿·夏皮罗 (Morton Schapiro) 共同教授一门课程。那门课程导致我们写了一本书，美分和感性：经济学可以从人文学科中学到什么。我们目前正在制作续集，探讨人文主义者可以从经济学中学到什么。那本书当然会被称为：价格与偏见。

我们的课程侧重于许多学科共有的一个主题：决策的本质。每一个决策模型都隐含着一个时间模型，或者，正如米哈伊尔·巴赫金所说，它预设了一个[End Page 575] chronotope，所以我们的课程也是关于时间的。要使决策和选择成为真实的，而不是类似于选民在一名候选人中选择的苏联选举，必须有不止一种可能的结果。这就是为什么决定论者最多只能提供一个苍白、病态的选择。根据定义，决定论者是相信在任何给定时刻只有一件事会发生的人。或者，正如威廉詹姆斯所说的那样，对于非决定论者来说，可能性多于现实，而对于决定论者来说则没有。¹ 选择、机会和偶然性都需要一种非决定论的世界观。

如果我们确实有选择，我们应该如何以及如何做出选择？在我们构建课程时，学科的区别在于它们如何回答这个问题。人们可以将经济学定义为一门关于人们如何选择分配稀缺资源的学科。神学家问，如果上帝预见我们所做的事情并使世界知道将要发生的一切，那么选择怎么可能是真实的。那么我们如何为自己的选择负责呢？它们在什么意义上是选择（在什么意义上它们不是选择）？

如果用“自然法则”代替无所不知的上帝，就会出现同样的问题。再一次，一切都是预先确定的。正如奥马尔·海亚姆 (Omar Khayyam) 所写，“创造的第一个早晨写道/最后的清算黎明将读到什么”（1120 年，圣 73）。我们再次可以问，人们是否可以对永恒不变的结果负责。

现实主义小说，我自己的专长，探索做出（或避免）选择的内心世界。当斯蒂瓦被妻子不忠发现时，几个学科的担忧出现在安娜卡列尼娜身上，他认为：“这都是我的错——都是我的错，但不能怪我，这就是情况的全部意义所在”（托尔斯泰 1965 年） , 4)。怎么可能是一个人的错（vina）而不是一个人的错（vinovat）？Stiva 的意思是，虽然这个行为是通过他的选择发生的，但作为一个健康、易感的 34 岁男性，他别无选择。这只是自然。当人们想为自己的行为找借口时，他们会争辩说他们本可以做任何其他事情。决定论是恶棍的第一避难所。

在小说的后期，斯蒂瓦的妹妹安娜告诉斯蒂瓦的妻子多莉：“但我不应该受到责备。应该责怪谁？受责备是什么意思？可能不是吗？你怎么看？它可能发生了你没有成为斯蒂瓦的妻子？” “真的，我不知道” (Tolstoy 1965, 664) 回答多莉，当她听到一个逃避时，她认出了逃避。[第576页结束]

无神论者的圣灵

人们必须了解时间才能了解选择，因​​为每一个选择都涉及预测。选择者接受了 Bertrand de Jouvenal 著名的“未来”，即可能发生的未来，取决于我们做什么或不做什么。我们经常对未来有一种朦胧的感觉，所以我们必须……