A01 Free Will And Determinism

• Free will

  Suggests as human beings we are self-determining and free to choose as thoughts and actions. Implies we are able to reject biological and environmental forces as the masters of our own destiny
• Determinism


  The idea that people's behavior is produced primarily by factors outside of their willful control.
• Hard determinism


  Referred as 'fatalism'. Suggests all human behaviour has a cause -it should be possbile to identify these causes. Compatible with aims of science -to uncover the causal laws the govern thoughts and action and always assumsed that everything we think is dictated by internal/external forces we cannot control.
• Soft determinism


  Initially proposed by James. Acknowledges all human behaviours have a cause yet suggests people have concious mental control over their behaviour. We have freedom to make rational conscious choices in everyday functions.
• Biological determinism


  Many of our physiological and neurlogical processes are not under our concious control. E,g: ANS during a stressful even. Also lots of behaviours and characteristics are thought to have a genetic basis and demonstrated effects of hormones. E.g: testosterone and aggression.
• Environmental determinism


  Skinner described free will was an illusion and argued all behaviour is a result of conditioning. Choice is merely the sum total of reinforcement contingencies that haved acted upon us throughout our lives. Behaviour is influenced by environment events and agents of socialisation -parents/teachers/
• Psychic determinism


  Freud agreed illusion to describe free will but placed more emphasis on biological drives and instincts like behaviours Freud sees behaviour as deterministic by unconsious conflicts, repressed in childhood. No sich thing as accidents and anything like 'slip of the tongue' can be explained by underlying authority and the unconsious.
• Scientific emphasis on causal explanations

  Basic principle of science is that every event in the universe has a cause and that causes can be explained using general laws . The formulation of laws is important as it allows scientists to predict and control events. While lab experiments enable researchers to stimulate conditions of a test and remove all other extraneous variables.