Issues and debates- free will and determinism Flashcards
What is meant by free will?
The notion of free will suggests humans are free to make choices. There are biological and environmental influences on our behaviour - but free will implies we can reject them. This is the view of the humanistic approach.
What is meant by hard determinism?
Suggests that all human action has a cause, and it should be possible to identify these causes.
What is meant by soft determinism?
Suggests that all human action has a cause but people have freedom to make choices within a restricted range of options.
What are the 3 types of determinism?
Biological determinism, environmental determinism and psychic determinism.
Biological determinism
The biological approach describes many causes of behaviour e.g. the influence of the autonomic nervous system on stress or the influence of genes on mental health. Modern biological psychologists would recognise the mediating influence of the environment on our biological structures.
Environmental determinism
Skinner described free will as an illusion and all behaviour as the result of conditioning. Our experience of choice is the sum total of reinforcement contingencies that have acted upon us throughout our lives.
Psychic determinism
Freud emphasised the influence of biological drives and unconscious conflicts repressed in childhood. Even something as seemingly random as a slip of tongue can be explained by the unconscious.
Science seeks to find causal explanations where one thing is determined by another
A basic principle of science is that every event has a cause and these can be explained with general laws. Knowledge of these allows scientists to control and predict events. In psychology, the laboratory experiment allows researchers to stimulate the conditions of the test tube and remove all other extraneous variables to demonstrate a causal effect.
A03: One limitation of determinism is the role of responsibility in law.
he hard determinist stance is not consistent with the way in which our legal system operates. In court, offenders are held responsible for their actions. Indeed, the main principle of our legal system is that the defendant exercised their free will in committing the crime.
This suggests that in the real world, determinist arguments do not work.
A03: One strength of free will is it has practical value.
Roberts et al (2000) looked at adolescents who had a strong belief in fatalism - that their lives were decided by events outside of their control. They were at greater risk of developing depression. People who exhibit an internal, rather than external, locus of control are more likely to be optimistic.
This suggests that, even if we do not have free will, the fact that we believe we do may have a positive impact on mind and behaviour.
A03: One limitation is evidence doesn’t support free will, it supports determinism.
Libet et al (1983) asked participants to randomly flick their wrist and say when they felt the will to move. Brain activity was also measured. The unconscious brain activity leading up to the conscious decision to move came half a second before the participant’s conscious decision to move.
This may be interpreted as meaning that even our most basic experiences of free will are actually determined by our brain before we are aware of them.
A03 (counter): However, Libet’s findings showing that the brain is involved in decision-making is not surprising and is, in fact, just as we would expect.
The fact that people consciously become aware of decisions milliseconds after they had begun to enact the decision still means they may have made the decision to act. Our consciousness of the decision is a read-out of our sometimes unconscious decision-making.
This suggests this evidence is not appropriate as a challenge to free will.
