Free will vs Determinism

• Define determinism

  All of a persons choices are caused by events and facts outside of their control
• Define biological determinism

  Your behaviour is solely affected by your biology

  e.g genes and neurotransmitter
• Define environmental determinism

  Your behaviour is determined by learning and what happened to you

  e.g exposure to violent role models
• Define psychic determinism

  Your behaviour is caused by a mixture of your innate drives and the effects of your early experiences
• Define scientific determinism

  Each behaviour and thought has a direct cause (causal explanations between stimulus and response)
• Hard determinism

  We have absolutely no free will or control over our actions
• Define soft determinism

  Though we are influenced by deterministic factors we fundamentally have control over our actions
• Define free will

  We have the choice/decision to do something without being constrained by external and internal forces
• Explain moral responsibility

  • The basis of moral responsibility is that an individual is in charge of their own actions so are accountable for their own actions regardless of innate factors or the influences of early experience
  • the law states that children and the mentally ill do not have this responsibility
• What is the strength of determinism

  Real world application
• What is the strength of free will

  Face validity
• What is the weakness of determinism

  Culturally relative
• Evaluation - real world application (determinism)

  • Because determinism can explain behaviour, this is more useful for predicting or treating/improving behaviour than free will
• Evaluation - culturally relative - determinism

  • The idea of self determinisation may be a culturally relative concept as it can only be applied to those in individualistic cultures
  • collectivist cultures place greater value on behaviour
• Evaluation - face validity - free will

  • People tend to agree that they are involved in consciously making their decisions