Free will and determinism

• The free will-determinism debate asks a simple question - is our behaviour a matter of free will or are we the product of a set of internal and/or external influences that determine who we are and what we do?
• The notion of free will suggests that human beings are essentially self-determining and free to choose their own thoughts and actions. A belief in free will does not deny that there may be biological and environmental forces that exert some influence on behaviour, but nevertheless implies that we are able to reject these forces if we wish because we are in control of our thoughts/behaviour.
• Free will is a view of human behaviour that is advocated by the humanistic approach.
• Hard determinism = sometimes referred to as fatalism, and suggests that all human behaviour has a cause, and, in principle it should be possible to identify and describe these causes. Such a position always assumes that everything we think and do is dictated by internal or external forces that we cannot control.
• Soft determinism = the philosopher Williams James was the first to put forward the notion of soft determinism- which later became an important feature of the cognitive approach. James thought that, whilst it may be the job of scientists to explain what determines our behaviour, this does not detract from the freedom we have to make rational conscious choices in everyday situations.
• Types of determinism:

  • Biological determinism
  • Environmental determinism
  • Psychic determinism
• Biological determinism = the biological approach emphasises the role of biological determinism in behaviour, such as the influence of the autonomic nervous system on the stress response or the influences of genes on mental health. Modern biological psychologists would recognise the mediating influence of the environment on our biological structures.
• Environmental determinism = B.F. Skinner described free will as ‘an illusion’ and argues that all behaviour is the result of conditioning. Although we might think we are acting independently, our experience of ‘choice’ is merely the sum total of reinforcement contingencies that have acted upon us throughout our lives.
• Psychic determinism = Freud also believed that free will is an ‘illusion’ but he emphasised the influence of biological drives and instincts. He saw human behaviour as determined by unconscious conflicts, repressed in childhood. There is no such thing as an accident, according to Freud, and even something as seemingly random as a ‘slip of the tongue’ can be explained by the influence of the unconscious.
• One of the basic principles of science is that every event in the universe has a cause and that causes can be explained using general laws (hard determinism). Knowledge of causes and the formulation of laws are important as they allow scientists to predict and control events in the future.
• The general view is we exercise free choice in our everyday lives on a daily basis. However, even if this not the case, thinking we do can improve our mental health. A study by Roberts et al. looked at adolescents who had a strong belief in fatalism (that their lives were ‘decided’ by events outside of their control). The study found these adolescents were at significantly greater risk of developing depression. It seems people with an external locus of control are less likely to be optimistic. Suggesting that just believing we have free will may have a positive impact on mind and behaviour.
• However, brain scan evidence does not support free will but does support determinism. Libet et al. Instructed participants to choose a random moment to flick their wrist while he measure activity in their brain. Participants had to say when they felt the conscious will to move. Liber found that the unconscious brain activity leading up to the conscious decision to move came around half a second before the participant consciously felt they had decided to move. This means even our most basic experiences of free will are actually determined by our brain before we are aware of them.
• 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. Just because the action comes before the conscious awareness of the decision to act, doesn’t mean that there was no decision to act - just that the decision took time to reach consciousness. Our conscious awareness of the decision is simply a ‘read-out’ of our unconscious decision-making. This suggests this evidence is not appropriate as a challenge to free will.
• One limitation of determinism is the position of the legal system on responsibility. The hard determinist stance is that individual choice is not the cause of behaviour. This is not consistent with the way in which our legal system operates. In a court of law, offenders are held responsible for their actions. Indeed, the main principle of our legal system is that a defendant exercised their free will in committing the crime. This suggests that, in the real world, determinist arguments do not work.