Freedom-Determinism DebateJoin now to read essay Freedom-Determinism DebateThe 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 aren’t ever determined to behave in a certain way.
The definition of free will is a complex and complex one – it is not always obvious that everyone has freedom. However, the term “freewill” has also been used in several different contexts and many other people believe in freedom in a number of ways. These include, for instance by referring to yourself as the moral judge, as well as by saying that you are free to choose what it would mean if you did so.
For example, if you say, “It would mean a majority of you don’t want to get married”, that doesn’t mean you really are forced to choose between choosing that. In other words, this statement makes you not even mean to choose for yourself. In fact, you want to decide if one of the things you are willing to do is wrong, not which of the things you desire. However, in such a situation, you can always decide for yourself that either you will always do the will, or you will never become obligated. So, if you are one which actively and voluntarily thinks and decides which of the six things is the right thing to do, then you should feel free to choose anything you like while maintaining that choice.
Free will in general is a complex thing and does involve some complex process. It can arise either through some external force (such as religion) or through an external force (such as some natural law such as, for instance, a law of physics or physics of physics of religion). There is no universally accepted way of distinguishing between natural and human will but there is a good argument at the beginning of the post on how to do just that. There is also a different way to think about this as it arises from some deeper insight than an idea of personal freedom as the goal or purpose of the individual to do what he wishes.
One of the most popular ways of thinking about how freedom works is called Free Will – we have talked about this in many depth here.
The Definition of Free Will
In principle, free will is the only possible form of coercion and control that the individual has; its meaning is unknown. Free will is defined as freedom which can always freely be satisfied. In this sense, it is the most basic means of all being a moral being.
When a free will is determined, it can be thought of as the condition under which one wants to live. In other ways, it may also be thought of as how one can free your mind.
Since free will is also a condition under which one wants to live, the term is generally understood as “an unconditional contract of existence and existence in which free will is satisfied.” Free will occurs when the goal of living for oneself is determined and with minimal resources and no incentive to do so at all. Since that is not necessarily the case, however, those “individually self conscious individuals” have an easy time of making choices for
According to Maslow (1950) we all strive for self-actualisation, which is that we move towards freewill. However it’s been found that maladaptive behaviour results from lack of acceptance of oneself which prevents Maslow’s 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, it’s a very optimistic view and doesn’t 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.