Free will and determinism:

• Free will:

  • 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
• Determinism

  • Free will has no place in explaining behaviour, though there are hard and soft versions

  Hard determinism: referred to as fatalism suggests that all human behaviour has a cause and 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. For some this is too extreme a position
• Determinism:

  Soft determinism: Philosopher James was the first to put forward the notion of soft determinism - a position that 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

  • Biological approach emphasises the role of biological determinism in behaviour, such as the influence of the autonomic nervous system on the stress response
  • Modern biological psychologists would recognise the mediating influence of the environment on our biological structures
• Types of determinism


  Environmental

  • Skinner described free will as 'an illusion' and argued 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
• Types of determinism:


  Psychic

  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.