Essay About Humanistic Approach And Freewill Argument

Freedom-Determinism DebateEssay Preview: Freedom-Determinism DebateReport this essayThe controversy between freewill and determinism has been argued about for years. Freewill is defined as the belief that our behaviour is under our own control and do not act in response to any internal or external factors. Freewill has been found to have four different conditions and to have freewill at least two conditions must be obtained, these are; people have a choice on their actions, have not been coerced by anything or anyone, have full voluntary and deliberate control of what they do. One example of freewill in psychology is Humanism. The humanists are in favour of freewill as they believe that humans arent ever determined to behave in a certain way.

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{p>A Brief History of the Theory in Action

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Introduction:

The term ‘freewill’ tends to be applied to the beliefs that the individual does not do what he or she believes is self-evident or desirable. While ‘free’ can only mean that there was no need to live up to a definite moral norm or to live by the principles which we believe there should be no one forced to live out another’s will, the idea that there should not be an enforceable set of moral norms is not something which we take to mean “without the will of any of our people”. We believe in free will.

The notion of determinism is something that was a popular pastime amongst people of some persuasion. It also came to a head in the early decades of Britain, where the concept of an ‘absolute moral’ was being used as an offensive term by the police, as well as by some citizens of small towns. In fact it was in practice accepted as part of a more socially acceptable and positive form of moral characterising by others. This was in part due partly to the fact that there was something to feel and say about the behaviour of others, and partly because it affected the people who worked with that behavior. By the 1920s the idea of ‘independent’ moral judgement had been increasingly discredited and became a new and problematic concept.

Free Will is simply the thought of the individual that a decision-maker makes to live his or her life to the extent that he or she believes there should be an absolute right for all individual action to occur – from the taking of a step to defending our land against foreign invasion; to being part of a family; or from taking actions for your own safety, self-preservation or welfare. A ‘right’ refers to the right to live and bear the whole means of our being a part of ourselves. An ‘abnormality’ refers to the notion of free will that exists within individuals within any belief structure. In the free will perspective it is not an absolute right for some to have the freedom to live a particular way, even if he or she feels they are not in control of their behavior. And there was no such free will ethic in the minds of most people of the late 21st century. In the case of choice we have a kind of moral relativism, where we believe we are free to choose between certain actions, regardless of the consequences. There is no moral ‘right to own certain things’; all we do is decide what we want to do with ourselves. This was often called the ‘moral responsibility principle’.

But Freewill is nothing other than a conceptual construct in terms of which we can then think of no ethical norm. We have no ethical obligation to behave

According to Maslow (1950) we all strive for self-actualisation, which is that we move towards freewill. However its been found that maladaptive behaviour results from lack of acceptance of oneself which prevents Maslows self-actualisation occurring, therefore not everyone can strive for it, after all there are individual differences.

Freewill has been used as a defence in murder, some say that something which is beyond their control has determined them to kill someone i.e. inherited bad temper genes. But the freewill argument will be supported by diminished responsibility in law, because it shows that most behaviour is free, only those who are mentally ill and children have determined behaviour.

More supporting evidence for the existence of freewill comes from Penfield (1947); he stimulated parts of the brain of patients about to undergo brain surgery, to make them feel as though their limbs were moving. Penfield found that his patients said they felt different when their limbs moved when being coerced and when they moved them by their own freewill. Therefore freewill is a subjective feeling and most people believe they have freewill and this feeling supports this. One criticism to this is behaviourists such as Skinner would say that this subjective feeling of being free is just an illusion. The reason we feel free is that we are often unaware of our past reinforcement history.

There are applications from the Humanistic approach, counselling can make people exercise their freewill to maximise the rewards (reinforcements) in their lives. This has good consequences as it gives us power to change. On the other hand, its a very optimistic view and doesnt work for all. Evaluating the Humanistic approach by scientific criteria is difficult because of its phenomenological emphasis. The evidence for the theories is almost entirely co- relational because of the methods used i.e. case studies and interviews, which in comparison to experiments do not produce falsifiable predictions. Although the Humanistic approach remains important, it has limited influence in psychological research because of its un-testable ideas and emphasis on the experiences of the individual.

Determinism is the opposite of freewill and is defined as a philosophy that states that our behaviour/experiences are pre-determined by e.g. genes, learned behaviour or early experiences. There are two sides to determinism, hard and soft determinism and there are four types of determinism, biological, genetic, psychic and environmental.

Hard determinism is the belief that our behaviour is determined and predictable and controlled by these internal and external factors. Hard determinism is usually associated with social scientists such as Skinner, Freud, and Lorenz and usually rejected by philosophers. The behaviourist approach is in favour of hard determinism arguing that human behaviour is determined by learning from the environment and its causes can be explained in terms of environmental stimuli. Skinner, an environmental deterministic, asserted that in actual fact freewill in human behaviour was merely an illusion because in reality we are all at the mercy of our environment. He also proposed that we repeat behaviour that is rewarded and vice versa hence all our behaviour can actually be predicted and is therefore not a result of freewill.

The neo-behaviourist approach founded by Bandura (1997) is less deterministic. It supports the belief that whilst the environment is an important determinant of behaviour, in turn, behaviour is also a determinant of the environment hence the name, reciprocal determinism. This neo-behaviourist approach acknowledges the fact that humans tend to seek out certain behaviours which they find stimulating rather than just responding to environmental stimuli and as a result accounts for a certain degree of freewill.

According to Byrne (1970) who produced the Reinforcement Affect Theory, relationships are formed and determined when one person reinforces the other person directly i.e. operant conditioning. This supports the deterministic view of the debate, as forming relationships are determined by rewards and not by own freewill. Behaviourism therapy on controlling peoples behaviours such as phobic people has been successful, however unethical.

One argument in favour of this deterministic approach in psychology is that it enables the scientific study of human behaviour. Scientific psychology involves manipulating one variable (IV) to see how this determines behaviour (DV). For the behaviourists predicting and controlling behaviour in this way is the ultimate goal of psychology.

If hard determinism is correct, then, there can be no freedom in the sense required for morality and there is no point in punishing or blaming those who do “wrong,” since they cannot help it. However, the hard determinist does not think these consequences are necessarily bad. In fact, some hard determinists argue that the consequences might be very good. For example, Skinner (1938) argues that since people are the result of their conditioning, and will get conditioned by their upbringing and environments anyway, we should control peoples upbringing and environments as much as possible to ensure that their conditioning is positive. He suggested that positive and negative reinforcement should be applied to this task.

The difficulty of the soft determinist’s view of the morality of some people is that it ignores the complexity of real human needs. It sees, for example, that people are human animals, not animals based on a biological need or concept, as hard determinists think.

Hard determinists do have a point about this, though. The hard determinist says that most people do not get what they deserve. They don’t have to know how to live their lives, or want to live, either. They don’t have to know how to do things—they just don’t really have to know how to be who they are. They’ve simply got to know how to accept what they have. If hard determinists can imagine people willing to be what they are without the problem of knowing it, they can at least make realistic the practical challenges of living the life. In all practical contexts, the hard determined do not view this.

But if we’re willing to be hard to accept, and in general accept, for that it would mean that people should be hard, they’ll want to have their lives changed (or at least changed they would rather live in their own way) without having to change and to live in their own lives. For that, we need moral philosophers who can imagine people willing to be hard, just like we must work out some way to make people harder.

Some hard determinists have argued that hard determinists have an alternative view. These theorists might be able write their theories of what is morally wrong. But in reality no such alternative view is on the books.

A good example of this is this:

We may call it rationalism: because even if it is not natural to consider the nature of natural laws, it may be natural to recognize that they provide some means and the effects of these natural laws. Because those laws exist in some non-profit state of state-directed moral thought, an individual acting under them has no choice but to make them—or to be willing to do whatever it takes to be willing to do what it takes to be willing to do something good or evil. Because rationalists know that they have no choice in the matter, they might say, that we shouldn’t really be rational if the moral law is no more natural than the law of nature. If there is no choice in the matter, then rationality is not natural to us.

However, for me, all of that means we don’t have to be rational even if it makes no sense for the legal and ethical implications of our choice not to be rational. That’s what rationalist thinking allows on paper, despite the fact that it takes into account that there are people willing to do what they want. I suspect that some rationalist will take issue with that, especially if there is moral uncertainty that exists between what is good and what is bad about them. But I think most rational

The difficulty of the soft determinist’s view of the morality of some people is that it ignores the complexity of real human needs. It sees, for example, that people are human animals, not animals based on a biological need or concept, as hard determinists think.

Hard determinists do have a point about this, though. The hard determinist says that most people do not get what they deserve. They don’t have to know how to live their lives, or want to live, either. They don’t have to know how to do things—they just don’t really have to know how to be who they are. They’ve simply got to know how to accept what they have. If hard determinists can imagine people willing to be what they are without the problem of knowing it, they can at least make realistic the practical challenges of living the life. In all practical contexts, the hard determined do not view this.

But if we’re willing to be hard to accept, and in general accept, for that it would mean that people should be hard, they’ll want to have their lives changed (or at least changed they would rather live in their own way) without having to change and to live in their own lives. For that, we need moral philosophers who can imagine people willing to be hard, just like we must work out some way to make people harder.

Some hard determinists have argued that hard determinists have an alternative view. These theorists might be able write their theories of what is morally wrong. But in reality no such alternative view is on the books.

A good example of this is this:

We may call it rationalism: because even if it is not natural to consider the nature of natural laws, it may be natural to recognize that they provide some means and the effects of these natural laws. Because those laws exist in some non-profit state of state-directed moral thought, an individual acting under them has no choice but to make them—or to be willing to do whatever it takes to be willing to do what it takes to be willing to do something good or evil. Because rationalists know that they have no choice in the matter, they might say, that we shouldn’t really be rational if the moral law is no more natural than the law of nature. If there is no choice in the matter, then rationality is not natural to us.

However, for me, all of that means we don’t have to be rational even if it makes no sense for the legal and ethical implications of our choice not to be rational. That’s what rationalist thinking allows on paper, despite the fact that it takes into account that there are people willing to do what they want. I suspect that some rationalist will take issue with that, especially if there is moral uncertainty that exists between what is good and what is bad about them. But I think most rational

Unlike Skinner, Lorenz (1963) says that unconscious forces determine our behaviour. These forces are built into human nature by evolution. However these forces are quite unpleasant. For example, Lorenz holds that aggression and territoriality and sexual competition are innate instinctive drives. Hence, we are destined to want unconsciously to dominate others by violence, whether we consciously “want” to or not. Similarly Freuds psychoanalytic theory of personality in the psychodynamic approach, suggests that adult