Free will + determinism

• Free will + determinism

  Biological approach- internal causes

  Behaviourist approach- external causes

  Humanistic approach- free will

  • allows predictions over the future
  • lab experiments allow demonstrations of causal relationships
• Free will + determinism

  Evaluations-

  CPW- Libet 1983- brain scans don’t support- p’s randomly flick their wrists, had to say when they had the thought, unconscious came 0.5 seconds before the conscious

  CPS- Libet’s findings were expected, since decisions take time to reach the conscious, not challenging free-will
• Free will + determisms -

  Evaluations-

  S- Roberts 2000- adolescents being fatalism are more likely to develop depression free will have a positive impact

  W- legal system- deterministic view can’t be used in courts, since people need to be help accountable for their actions to then accept their consequences
• Free will+ determinism-

  hard determinism-

  • Fatalism- all human behaviours have a cause that can be identified and described
  • assuming everything is determined by internal and external forces that can’t be controlled
• Free will + determinism-

  Soft determinism-

  • James 1890- scientists ability to say what our determisms is, but that doesn’t deduct from our own free will
• Free will + determisms-

  Biological determisms-

  • emphasises biological influences
  • Automatic Nervous System as a reaction to stress
  • environment can influence these structures
• Free will + determinism-

  Environmental determisms-

  • Skinner- free will is an illusion from conditioning
  • choice is from reinforcement form past consequences
• Free will + determisms-

  Psychic determisms-

  • Freud- free will is an illusion but emphasises the impacts of biological drives
  • behaviours is from the repressed unconscious childhood conflicts
  • nothing is an accident, very thing is determined from the unconscious