Free will and Determinism

• Free will suggests that human beings are self determining and free to choose their own actions. There are external forces that influence us however we choose to reject them. An example of this is the Humanistic approach, in particular Maslow's Hierarchy of needs.
• Determinism suggests that behaviour is caused by internal forces such as genes and hormones and external forces such as conditioning. It has two different versions, hard and soft.
• Hard determinism suggests that all human behaviour has a cause and everything we think and do is determined by internal or external forces beyond our control, suggesting that free will is an illusion and that everything is predetermined for you. 
• Soft determinism suggests that all human behaviour has a cause but that there is some room for flexibility. People have a certain amount of conscious control in the way they behave.
• There is also different types of determinism, biological determinism is behaviour which is cause by biological influences such as genes and hormones. Environmental determinism is caused by forces outside the individual for example the behaviourist approach + conditioning

  Psychic determinism suggests that all human behaviour is the result of childhood experiences and innate drives (psychodynamic approach) 
• Deterministic approaches are considered more scientific because scientific research is based on the belief that all behaviour has a cause. Determinism believes that all behaviour has a cause that can be determined therefore placing a scientific emphasis on causal  explanations 
• Free will has practical value. The common sense view is that we exercise free choice in our everyday lives on a daily basis. Even if this is not the case, thinking we exercise free choice can improve our mental health. Roberts et al. looked at adolescents who had a strong belief in fatalism, they found that these adolescents were at a significantly greater risk of developing depression. People who exhibit an external locus of control are less likely to be optimistic. Even if we do not have free will the fact that we believe we do may have a positive impact on our mind and behaviour. 
• Brain scan evidence does not support free will but supports determinism. Libet et al, instructed participants to choose random moments to flick their wrist while he measured activity in the brain. Participants had to say when they felt the conscious will to move. They 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. Even the most basic experiences of free will are determined by our brain.
• Libet’s findings that the brain is involved in decision making is not surprising. Just because the action comes before the conscious awareness of the decision doesn't mean that there was no decision to act, it just took time to reach consciousness. 

  Evidence is not appropriate as a challenge of free will.
• The hard deterministic stance is that individual choice is not the cause of behaviour. This is not consistent with the way the legal system works. In court, offenders are held responsible for their actions. 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, deterministic arguments do not work.