Debates & Issues : Free Will & Determinism Flashcards
Outline Free Will.
This means that in any given situation people have the freedom to behave in one way when they could have chosen to do otherwise.
Outline Determinism.
> Determinism is the philosophic belief that all events including instances of human behaviour are entirely determined by previously existing causes.
Determinists believe we live in a universe governed by rules. Meaning events never happen randomly. Rather a persons behaviour is part of a chain of events that are connected casually to other events.
Outline Hard Determinism.
The belief that believing in determinism is incompatible with believing in free will.
> They say that all events are determined by prior causes. Meaning we choose to behave in a particular way due to prior events, meaning we could have not done otherwise, thus free will is essentially an illusion.
Outline Soft Determinism.
The belief that a belief in determinism is compatible with a belief in free will.
> They say that rather than seeing free will as the capacity to have acted otherwise, soft determinism posits that an action is free will if it results from the individuals internal processes.
Outline Environmental Determinism. Example?
> Environmental determinism is the belief that human behaviour is determined by features of a persons environment rather than their biology.
Supports Nurture — Behaviourism
E.g when Skinner claimed that all involuntary instances could be explained by classical conditioning and all voluntary by operant.
Outline Biological Determinism. Example?
Biological determinism is the belief that human characteristics including how we think, feel and behave are determined by hereditary factors. (Genes)
> Support Nature
> E.g the warrior gene (gene which makes you violent)
> E.g People scoring highly on an IQ test due to genes.
Outline Psychic Determinism. Example?
The belief that human behaviour can be explained with reference to the influence of unconscious processes.
> Advocated by psychodynamic approach
> E.g a persons obsessive tidiness could be explained with reference to how their unconscious mind became fixated during the anal stage. Since fixation happens at an unconscious level, the individual has no awareness of and therefore no control over their tidiness.
What research has challenged free will and provided support for hard determinism as the correct way of explaining human behaviour?
Libet asked participants to choose when to flex their wrists. He found that changes in brain activity (what he called ‘readiness potential’) occurred nearly half a second before participants reported deciding to move their wrist. This finding provides support for hard determinism, as the action Libet asked participants to do was seemingly entirely free, and yet it seems their conscious will to make the action was not the ultimate cause of any conscious decision to act, providing support for hard determinism. However, one issue with the Libet experiment is that its validity depends on on participants being able to accurately report when they make a conscious decision. It’s quite possible that there is a delay between the conscious decision to flex their wrist and when participants reported those decision to Libet. If such a delay occurred than this would undermine Libets claim that unconscious brain activity occurs before the conscious decision making, meaning free will may still be a cause of the behaviour. A further challenge to Libets support for hard determinism comes from a 2019 study by Maoz. This was an adapted version of the Libet study where participants had to press a button to decide which two charatoes would be awarded $1000. Unlike in Libets study, the researchers found no rise in unconscious brain activity preceding their conscious experience of making the decision. This suggests the Libet finding may have only applied to arbitrary (random choice) decisions and that more meaningful and ecologically valid decisions, like deciding who to donate money to, are not a result of unconscious brain activity. Therefore, this finding appears to challenge the claim that human decisions are determined by unconscious processes. However, the researchers are continuing to analyse the FMRI brain scans from this study, as although they haven’t detected a signature activity yet, this doesn’t mean no signature exists, meaning hard determinism may yet still be right. This study therefore provides support for a hard determinist and biological determinist explanation of human behaviour, as well as a powerful challenge to free will, although there are reasons to be cautious about how effectively Libets research challenges free will.
Explain the argument in favour of free will and against determinism is that a belief in free will is useful.
Throughout history, in every human society, individuals have been held accountable for their actions. If society were to accept that all our actions are determined by forces beyond our control, it would no longer make sense to hold people accountable for their actions. This would mean that punishing criminal activity would no longer be morally justifiable and consequently it would be difficult to deter (discourage) people from committing crimes in the first place. The humanistic approach makes a similar argument for the utility of believing in free will. Roger’s and Maslow maintained people have free will as those who lack such a belief may also lack the sense of agency to enact (make law) positive changes in their own lives. However, this only provides a justification for for why believing in free will is useful — none of these arguments demonstrate that humans do have free will.
Explain the argument in favour of determinism and against free will is that free will lacks scientific credibility.
Science depends on a belief in materialism. This is the view that everything in the universe has a physical basis. The scientific belief in materialism presents a problem for free will as, from a scientific perspective, the process of using our free will to make decisions is best understood as an internal mental process of the mind. Since science requires a belief in materialism, then all mental processes must ultimately be understood as actions of the brain. Since the brain —the source of all our actions—is physical, then all of its actions must be a consequence of other physical processes (e.g actions of neurons responding to physical factors in our environment). From this perspective, the idea that there can truly be a thing called free will — some part of our mind that is independent of all other physical things and therefore not governed by determinism — seems possible. Meaning, believing in free will means rejecting the fundamental ideas of science. The only way out of this trap is to accept that humans have some non-material part of their being (soul) that gives us free will and is not subject to determinism. However, such a belief is not compatible with the belief of materialism, and therefore would not be accepted as scientific.
