Free will and moral responsibility Flashcards
What is free will?
The ability to make reasoned and conscious choices without obstacle.
Aristotle quote on moral responsibility.
“It is only voluntary actions for which praise and blame are given”.
How is the issue of free will complex?
It may be difficult to assess at what point the limit/influence is an actual constraint.
In some situations that result in harm being done, it is clear that free will could not operate.
How does UK law accommodate the issue of complexity?
Three levels of legal responsibility that correspond to levels of moral responsibility:
-No responsibility
-Diminished responsibility
-Full responsibility
What are the 4 groups of people seen as being unable to understand right and wrong?
-Babies and young children who are insufficiently developed.
-Those who have severe learning disabilities or suffer from certain forms of mental illness/neurological disability.
-Those who have permanently forgotten the difference as a result of conditions such as dementia.
-Those who have temporarily forgotten the difference e.g alcohol/drugs (this is the most controversial).
Hume + others
What do people believe about the sources of moral awareness in telling right from wrong?
-David Hume claimed that it is innate: we just know we ought to respond positively to those in need.
-Others claim it is the product of one’s upbringing, social environment or culture. This is supported by differing views on issues such as polygamy.
-Can come from one’s religious tradition.
Hume’s ‘faculty of sympathy’ = innate sense of morality.
Define universal causation.
The belief that all human actions and choices have a past cause, leading to the conclusion that all events that happen are determined by an unbreakable chain of past causes.
Determinism
What does Spinoza argue?
-Determinist and rationalist.
-Two schools of though regrading epistemology: empiricism (senses) and rationalism (mind).
-Feeling of freedom is simply ignorance of the causes acting upon us, but because we are rational we have some sort of freedom from understanding the world.
Epistemology = how we know stuff.
“Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they’re conditioned.”
What is scientific/hard determinism?
-All events including human choices and actions are the necessary consequence of antecedent events.
-Includes causal determinism = based on universal causation: nothing is random and nothing is free, everything is part of a chain of causes.
-Based on evidence from the natural and applied sciences.
-We are part of a ‘totality of causes’.
Antecedent = previous
Actions are influenced by our upbringing, past experiences etc.
Hard determinist views on reward and punishment.
-Reward and punishment are meaningless since those who break the law did not choose to do so.
-Reject the idea of retribution.
-Skinner suggested psychological conditioning as a way of reforming an offender’s character and outlook by manipulating their minds.
Strengths of hard determinism
-Supported by science + empiricism.
-Logically easy to understand.
Weaknesses of hard determinism
-Based on inductive theory (probable not certain).
-Science constantly develops and changes, suggesting it’s not reliable.
-Physical behaviour is random and unpredictable (reductionism).
-Morality no longer exists.
-We no longer have free will.
Atoms/particles aren’t always predictable, so can behaviour really be?
What do hard determinists believe about moral responsibility?
Moral responsibility:
-Individuals do not possess free will and are therefore not morally responsible.
-Their actions are determined by factors beyong their control.
Define reductionism.
The idea that to understand something complex, like human behaviour, you should break it down into smaller parts.
E.g. mental thinking can be reduced down to the brain, which can be reduced to chemical and biological processes.
Determinism, free will and happiness.
Epicurus quote.
“The future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that we may neither count on it as a certain to come nor abandon hope of it as certain not to come”.
Essentially, anything is predictable given it’s circumstances and the natural forces involved. We could predict any situation if we knew everything.
What is psychological behaviorism?
-Form of Hard Determinism.
-Skinner and Watson claim our actions are a result of genetic and environmental conditions e.g. upbringing/experiences.
-Watson focused on fear but Skinner preferred positive reinforcement, claiming people would feel free because they were doing what they wanted.
Influenced by Pavlov’s dogs.
Humans are psychologically conditioned.
What is the difference between classical and operant conditioning?
Classical = involves involuntary responses (individual doesn’t consciously decide, their actions are determined by external stimuli/experience). Based on passive learning (don’t need to consciously participate).
Operant = incolves voluntary behaviours (individual makes choices based on consequences of their actions).
Pavlov’s Dogs = clasical (dogs didn’t choose to salivate the bell rang).
What is Pavlov’s Dogs?
-Ivan Pavlov
-Classical conditioning experiment.
-Dogs salivating is an unconditioned reflex (God doesn’t need to learn to salivate, it’s biological).
-Pavlov began to ring the bell when food was presented.
-He then rang the bell with no food and the dogs still salivated.
-The dogs salivating due to the bell is a conditioned response to a stimuli.
What was the Little Albert Experiment?
-Watson.
-Exposed 9 month old baby to range of stimuli (rabbit, rat, burning newspaper etc.)
-Boy initially showed no reaction to the objects.
-He then rang a loud bell when exposing the child to the objects, making the boy cry.
-The boy then began to cry after only seeing the stimuli, without the noise.
What do Watson and Pavlov’s experiments demonstrate?
-All human reactions are simply conditioned responses associated with the environmental conditions of one’s upbringing.
-Therefore a person’s actions are dtermined by their own unique environmental upbringing.
-We donot make free choices, we make conditioned responses.
Skinner’s Behaviourism.
What is Skinner’s experiment?
-Skinner’s box
-Whenever the rat interacted with the leaver, he placed food in the rat’s box.
-The rats learned to go straight to the lever in order to get the food.
-Shows conditioning by positive reinforcement.
Displays operant conditioning.
How does Chomsky challenge Skinner’s behaviourism?
-Its basis in animal studies will not ‘translate’ to human behaviour, which is far more complex (motivations etc).
-If everything is just a set of conditioned responses, then his theory is just a conditioned response.
-Argued the results of his experiments often didn’t support the idea that behaviour is solely based on reinforcement.
What is Chomsky’s LAD?
-Inborn metal structure that helps us learn language.
-We have natural capabilities that are not just responses to our environment (e.g. language).
-Pre-wired into our brains, suggesting we have some control over our thoughts and actions.
How does Chomsky use the example of the pig to criticise Skinner?
-Pig was trained to put a coin in a slot to get food (reinforcement).
-Initially worked, but over time the pig reverted to its natural behaviour of rooting the ground, a phenomenon known as instinctual drift.
-Shows that even with reinforcement, animals (and humans) have innate behaviours that can override conditioned responses.
Instinctual drift = going back to natural behaviours.
