Free Will and Determinism Flashcards
What is free will?
Free will suggests that as human beings we are self-determining and free to choose our thoughts and actions. This doesn’t deny environmental or biological effects but it implies that we are able to accept or reject these forces.
What is hard determinism?
Suggests all human behaviour has a cause and it is possible to identify and describe said causes. This is compatible with scientific aims - to establish cause and effect.
What is soft determinism?
Proposed by William James in 1890, this is the idea that all human action has a cause but there is some room for manoeuvre in that people have conscious mental control over their behaviour.
What is biological determinism?
It emphasises the role of biological determinism in behaviour - our physiological, neurological and genetic influences are not under our control. Hormones have an effect on behaviour, as do genetics and our different nervous systems.
What is environmental determinism?
BF Skinner described free will as ‘an illusion’ and argued all behaviour is as a result of conditioning. Our experience of choice is simply the sum total of reinforcement contingencies that we have experienced. We are essentially ‘agents of socialisation’.
What is psychic determinism?
Freud said that free will is also an illusion and it is governed by unconscious drives and instincts, but also by repressed conflicts from childhood. He argues there is no such thing as an accident and everything can be explained by ‘the underlying authority of the unconscious’.
What is the scientific emphasis on causal explanations?
CAUSE AND EFFECT.
A question including this wording is essentially asking, how does the experiment establish cause and effect.
What is the case for determinism?
It is consistent with the aims to science - placing psychology on equal footing with other disciplines. It has also led to the development of treatments for schizophrenia - antipsychotics - since we have been able to establish C+E between schizophrenia and certain causes. Also the sufferers of Sz experience total loss of thought control - no one would choose this so in mental illness must be determined.
What is the case against determinism?
A hard deterministic stance is not congruent with our legal system. If someone is genetically predisposed to commit crimes then do we imprison them as a baby, or do we convict at all since they weren’t acting of their own free will.
What is the case for free will?
Everyday experience gives the impression we are exercising free will - this is face validity as it makes cognitive sense. Also, research suggests those with an internal LOC are mentally healthier - Roberts found adolescents with a fatalistic attitude were 20x more likely to get depression.
What is the case against free will?
Neurological studies have found that the brain activity that determines the outcome of any single choice predate our knowledge of making said choice by up to 10 seconds (Soon). This shows that our basic experiences of free will may still be predetermined.
