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.
Strengths of psychological determinism.
-Supported by science and empiricism.
-Easy to understand that we are conditioned by past experiences.
What is theological determinism?
-God’s omniscience is understood as causative (first cause), so there can be no free choice.
-Predestination (God has already decided who’s going heaven/hell), so free will is an illusion.
-Most Christians find this repugnant.
Led St Augustine + Calvin to the doctrine of Predestination.
What does Calvin believe?
-Human beings are not free.
-Their actions are part of God’s will.
-The ‘Fall’ destroyed human free will meaning humans are unable to achieve salvation.
Elect = chosen by God’s grace to be freed from sin + achieve salvation.
How do religious believers solve problems with theological determinism?
-Aquinas claimed God’s omniscience is not causative.
-God exists timelessly so simply knows.
-Actions stemming from our free choices cause God’s timeless knowledge.
-Another approach adopted by mainstream and Process theologians is that God exists in time and so cannot know the future.
What is meant by God as timeless and temporal?
Timeless (Aquinas) = God is timeless and sees all time, meaning he has the power to intervene and control but chooses not to.
Temporal = God exists in time and therefore theological determinism is false. Process theologians see God as equal to all physical processes of the universe.
Temporal is the alternative of timeless.
Criticisms of theological determinism.
-If human actions are predestined, they have no motivation to make good decisions because their fate is unchanging.
-Possibly makes Christ’s sacrifice on the cross (faith) reduntant as some humnas are still unable to achieve salvation.
-Aquinas’ timeless God.
-God appears to be an immoral monster.
Strengths of theological determinism.
-Clear answer to ‘are we really free?’.
-Uses logic (apriori) to suggest a conclusion.
-Supports fideism meaning it’s applicable to religious people.
Fideism = faith is independent of reason.
Define libertarianism.
The view that despire restraints from genetics and the environment, human beings are free moral agents.
-Moral freedom is a contingent truth, meaning it cannot be proven but is generally accepted to be true.
What are the ideas of libertarianism?
-All people should be held morally responsible for their actions, because they have metaphysical freedom.
-People who act wrongly should be punished, because they always have genuine choice to act differently.
-Nature and nurture may exert strong occasionally overwhelming influence on our moral decisions, but argue these aren’t necessarily determinant.
Metaphysical freedom is essentially free will.
What do libertarians believe about moral responsibility?
Humans possess genuine free will and should therefore be held entiely morally responsible for their actions.
Libertarianism
What does Kant argue?
-Laws are created to tell us what we ought to do.
-Kant claims ‘ought implies can’, meaning knowing what we sgould do implies we are morally free to do it.
-Making immoral decisions limits other people’s freedom, and is therefore wrong.
Define circumstantial and metaphysical freedom.
Circumstantial = freedom to perform an action without interference from obstacles.
Metaphysical freedom = the power of the self to choose among genuine alternatives.
Genuine alternatives = actions not determined by prior causes.
We have ‘liberty of spontaneity’ rather than ‘liberty of indifference’.
What does Hume mean by this?
Liberty of indifference is freedom from necessity (being free from causal necessity) which Hume saw as delusion.
Liberty of spontaneity is consistent with necessity (the ability to do as you desire).
What is Hume’s ‘constant conjunction’?
The laws of nature do not have logical necessity, all we really see is ‘constant conjunction’.
Through observing the constant conjunction (union) of events, the mind gets conditioned to expect regularity to recur.
Logical necessity is the necessity needed in maths etc.
Libertarian views on compatibilism
-Defective.
-The idea of freedom as determined by our nature is not genuine freedom.
Libertarian views on reward and punishment
-Retribution is the appropriate response to crime.
-Some would see reform as the appropriate response.
-This would be in the sense of helping offenders to make up for the harm they had caused, feeling regret and making a conscious decision to behave differently in the future.
Support for libertarianism.
-Humans sometimes make choices that go against our personal desires.
-Humans can regret decisions.
-Free will cannot be proved, but it is accepted. It is a contingent truth.
Define compatibilism.
-Sometimes called ‘soft determinism’.
-The view that human freedom and moral responsibility are compatible with Determinism.
What are the ideas of compatibilism?
-We are free when we act according to our wishes: freedom is the ability to do what we want.
-Some aspects of life are determined and have an affect on how we see the world, but people still have free choice within them.
-There are two types of universal causation: external and internal.
External causation= describes factors beyond our control which determine what we do.
Internal causation= describes our temperament and personality.
Define incompatibilism
-The view adopted by both Hard Determinism and Libertarianism.
-It claims that humans cannot be both determined and free.
Compatibilist views on reward and punishment.
-Accept moral responsibility for those who could have done otherwise, had they so wished.
-Hume said actions should be judged praiseworthy or blameworthy only where ‘they are indicators of the internal character’.
-Hume totally rejected any idea of eternal punishment, seeing it as disproportionate.
-Use rewards and punishments to manipulate behaviour (Skinner, Watson, Hume).
What do compatibilists belive about moral responsibility?
Even if human actions are determined by prior causes, individuals can still be held morally accountable if they are acting in accordance with their own desires and values, and if they could’ve chosen otherwise.
Moral responsibility
Who were Jon Venables and Robert Thompson?
-Abducted and killed 2-year-old Jamie Bulgar.
-10 year-olds.
-Placed into rehabilitation care until they were 18 and then released under new identities.
-Both had similar upbringings: separated parents, poor attendance and behaviour at school. Thompson’s mother an alcoholic + dysfunctional family.
