Issues and Debates

• What is Free will?

  • The notion humans can make choices and their behaviour and thoughts are not determined by biological or external forces
  • Individuals play an active role and have choice in how they behave
  • Free to choose their behaviour and are self-determined
  • Impossible to predict human behaviour without any precision
• What is determinism?


  • View that an individual's behaviour is shaped by internal or external forces, rather than an individual's will to do something
  • Behaviour is predictable
  • Causal laws of determinism forms the basis of science
• What is hard determinism?


  • Belief that forces outside of an individual's control e.g. biology or past experience, shape their behaviour
  • Incompatible with free will
  • Behaviourism - Skinner believed free will is an illusion, the person who commits a crime has no real choice
• What is soft determinism?


  • Belief that behaviours can be predictable (caused by internal or external force) but there's room for personal choice from a limited range of possibilities
  • There's an element of free will in all behaviour and while behaviour is predictable, it is not inevitable
• What is environmental determinism?


  • Type of external determinism
  • Sees the cause of the behaviour as outside of the individual e.g. parents, the media or school
  • E.g. behaviourism and SLT