The Determinism vs.
Freewill Debate
Determininsim
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Freewill
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Assumptions
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The
determinist approach assumes that every physical event is caused, and,
since human behaviour is a physical event it follows that it too has
causal factors.
If all events are caused, and we have perfect knowledge of the current
state of the universe, it follows that subsequent event are entirely
predictable.
Determinism, with its emphasis on causal factors is, therefore aligned
with physical sciences, which aim to reveal those laws to provide
prediction and control of the future.
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The
freewill approach assumes that humans are free to choose their
behaviour, that they are essentially self-determining.
Freewill does not mean that behaviour does not have a cause, in the
sense of being completely random, but assumes that influences
(biological or environmental) can be refused at will.
William James in 1890 wrote that freewill is not freedom from
causation, but freedom from coercion and constraint - if our actions
are voluntary and in line with our conscious desired goals, then they
are free.
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Examples in
Psychology
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The majority of approaches in
psychology take a fairly strict deterministic view of human behaviour:
Behaviourism - took and extreme environmental deterministic approach,
arguing that learning from the environment 'writes upon the blank slate
of our mind at birth' to cause our behaviour. John Watson's
belief that the deterministic laws of learning could predict and
control the future were reflected in his claim that he could take any
infant at random and turn them into any type of specialist that he
might select. Skinner argued that freewill is an illusion created
by our complexity of learning.
Psychoanalysis - took the view of unconscious determinism - that our
behaviour is controlled by forces of which we are unaware - the reasons
for our actions are merely rationalised by our conscious minds.
Later psychoanalysts, such as Erikson, looked at more conscious ego
processes than Freud did.
Biological - this took a deterministic approach to psychology in that
it assumed that our genetics, brain structure, and biochemistry were
the principle causal factors in our behaviour.
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Humanistic
psychologists, like
Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, advocate strongly for human freewill,
arguing that we are able to direct our lives towards self-chosen
goals. The emphasis on freewill is most apparent in humanistic
based therapies, where the terms client and facilitator are used to
indicate the voluntary nature of the situation, and the idea that the
individual has the power to solve their own problems through
insight. Humanistic therapies are usually non-directive.
Cognitive Psychology appears to have adopted a soft determinism view
considering problem solving and attentional mechanisms as the
'choosers' of thought and behaviour. While it seems that we
select what we pay attention to, these mechanisms operate with the
parameters of their innate capabilities and our past experience (just
as a computer cannot choose to do something it was not built or
programmed for) e.g. 'perceptual set' suggests that we are not free to
choose what we see. However, language and meta cognitive
abilities may allow humans to choose from among many possible
influences (Johnson-Laird 1988).
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For
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The
illusion of freewill is shattered very easily by mental disorders e.g.
obsessive compulsives lose control of their thoughts and actions,
depressive lose control of their emotions. Psychoactive drugs,
which can produce involuntary hallucinations and behaviour.
Determinism is one of the key assumptions of science - whose cause and
effect laws have explained, predicted and controlled behaviour, in some
areas, above the level by unaided common sense.
The majority of all psychologists, even those sympathetic to the idea of freewill, accept determinism to some degree.
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Introspection
upon our decisions, when many possible and equally desirable options
are available, often seems to indicate free choice. Subjective
impressions should be considered. Even if humans do not have
freewill, the fact that they think they do has many implications for
behaviour. Rotter (1966) for example has proposed that
individuals with an external locus of control, who feel that outside
factors, e.g. chance control their lives, suffer more from the effects
of stress than those who fell that they can influence situations, an
internal locus of control. Brehm (1966) argued people react if
their freedom is threatened.
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Against
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Determinism
is inconsistent with society's ideas of self-control and responsibility
that underlie all our moral and legal assumptions. Only extreme
examples of determinism are taken into account, e.g. insanity.
Determinism can never lead to a complete prediction due to, the vast
complexity of influences upon any behaviour, the nature of inductive
thinking, that is, we can never prove determinism, and the notions of
unpredictability, e.g. Heisenberg's 'uncertainty principle' and
non-causality that physics has produced.
DEterminism is unfalsifiable since it always assumes a cause exists, even if it has not been found yet.
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It
is difficult to define what freewill is and what the 'self' that 'does
the choosing' consists of. Philosophers such as Descartes
regarded it as a non-physical soul or spirit, while the existentialist
philosopher, Sartre, preferred to think that freewill was a product of
the consciousness.
The evidence for the existence of freewill is mostly subjective - where
'objective' studies have been conducted the results are a little
disturbing - Libet (1985a) claims that the brain processes that
initiates the movement of a hand occur almost half a second before the
moment a subject reports choosing to move it.
A pure freewill approach is incompatible with the deterministic assumptions of science.
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