s18/sld003.

htm free will/determinism page 1 of 8

Free will and Determinism1 philosophical debate in psychology

Explore some issues involved in Free will and Determinism by starting here: D o we really choose our actions? What if you have been hypnotised, or you are a brain in a jar (e.g., The Matrix), or if your biology has been influenced to such a degree by evolution that you only act in concordance with your inherited traits; is it all just brain-chemistry, governed by physical laws; what when you discover, in retrospect, that the actions you thought were free at the time you enacted them, were really controlled by your upbringing, your life-situation and so on. ...... Can the human sciences explain our actions, and hence show that they were not free? (Can human behaviour be free and still predictable, somewhat in the same way that some mathematical functions are deterministic, yet unpredictable?) Is the brain a special kind of computer, in which mentality and intentionality are implemented? All these questions pose serious threats to the notion of free will. But there is one more question, one that is far more serious, and which presumably has graver consequences than many of them: that of determinism. "Determinism is the view that, for everything that happens, there is a condition or set of conditions which are causally sufficient for that thing happening." -Oakley (2001). Determinism applies even if there is a "mind-substance", different from the physical stuff of our brain (and everything else). It seems to imply that there is no freedom for human beings (or for anything else, for that matter). The consequences of determinism seem grave. If no one chooses freely, how can we blame, praise, or punish? How would you look upon another, who acted friendly towards you, if you knew that the person had no choice in the matter? And wouldn't you yourself feel trapped, knowing you could not control your actions (even though you had the feeling you could control your actions)? Some people believe determinism is compatible with free will. Compatibilism says that "if determinism is true, then we still can have free will". It does not commit itself to any of these views ("determinism is true", or "we have free will"), it only states that they are compatible. The view that both statements are true is called "soft determinism". The incompatibilist view is that both statements cannot be true; hence an incompatibilist would either be a hard determinist or a libertarian. Hard determinism is the view that determinism is true and that we do not have free will. The libertarian view is that we have free will, and as such, determinism must be false. Libertarians basically think we can tell that we have free will, just by introspecting at the time we make choices. There seems to be a private sphere in our introspection, in which we cannot make mistakes. For example, you cannot be wrong about the fact that you are in pain when you actually are in pain. Who can tell but you? Yet, we might lack the ability to introspect as to the causes of our sensation as they appear in our brains. If you are a smoker, you know that taking a cigarette gives you a kick, a pleasurable feeling, and no one can tell you that you do not. But can you tell that this pleasurable feeling is mediated by dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens? You certainly cannot. continue if you want to read the rest... http://www.stenmorten.com/English/php/php.htm

Determinism from http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/d1/determinsm.asp philosophical thesis that every event is the inevitable result of antecedent causes. Applied to ethics and psychology, determinism usually involves a denial of free will, although many philosophers have attempted to reconcile the two concepts. Thomas Hobbes, identifying the will with appetites and defining freedom as the absence of impediments, concluded that free will exists where nothing prevents a person from satisfying his prevailing appetite. David Hume argued that a person's wilful conduct counts as freely chosen even though his will has itself been determined by his motives. Henry James called such attempts to fit notions of free will into determinist systems soft determinism; hard
1

a link to explore for those who want to know more http://www.faithnet.org.uk/AS%20Subjects/Ethics/determinismandfreewill.htm and http://philosophy.lander.edu/ethics/notes-determinism.html

free will/determinism page 2 of 8

determinism excludes the possibility of free will altogether. The doctrine of determinism is opposed by the principle of emergence, which states that truly novel and unpredictable events may occur out of the composite forces of nature. Free will: in philosophy, the doctrine that an individual, regardless of forces external to him, can and does choose at least some of his actions. The existence of free will is challenged by determinism Discussing free will/determinism involves issues of moral accountability. This is e.g. introduced in criminal cases where psychological disorders are involved. Likewise, a murderer having consumed large amounts of alcohol is supposed to be somewhat determined by that. In some countries like e.g. Denmark, it is often seen that crimes committed under the influence of alcohol will lead to less punishment than those thought to be committed deliberately and in cold blood.

Free will determinism Based on Eysenck and Flanagan (2001) Psychology for A2 level.
Psychology Press, 731-734 and Gross (1995) Themes, issues and debates in Psychology. Hodder and Stoughton. The issue of free will versus determinism has occupied philosophers and psychologists for centuries. It is on e of the oldest philosophical debates in the study of human behaviour and it can be seen in almost all areas of psychology. One of the fundamental issues here is the extent to which human beings have control over their behaviour, which is reflected in the questions here: Does our behaviour result from forces over which we have nor control or do we have fee choice to behave as we wish? or Are thoughts and behaviour the same kind of thing or event as chemical reactions in a test tube, a volcanic eruption, or the firing of neurons in the brain? No one seriously believes that chemicals can agree, or that neurons can make decisions but we attribute these abilities to people and this is why psychologists must take seriously the commonsense view that people make decisions and in many different ways exercise their free will. This implies a mind, or mental processes. However, having a mind does not imply free will because our decisions may be caused (determined) even though it does not seem so. So even if human thinking and behaviour are different from natural, physical phenomena, and that they are not determined in the same way (or that a different explanation is required), for most of its history as a separate discipline, psychology has operated as if there were no difference. Some examples of determinism within psychology are biological determinism (internal factors such as genetic make-up and neurochemical processes determines behaviour) and environmental determinism (external factors determine behaviour). The idea is if a person has no control over these internal or external forces and you cannot be held responsible. For example, if your genetic make-up determines or your previous life determines that youre a criminal, then you cannot be responsible.

According to those who believe in determinism, peoples actions are totally determined by external and internal forces operating on them. An example of an external force would be the influence of parents when rewarding certain behaviours and punishing other behaviours. An example of internal force could be hormones or genetic make-up. Those who believe in free will argue that matters are more complicated than argued by determinists. Most of them accept that external and internal forces exist. However, they argue that people have free will because each individual is nevertheless able to choose his or her own behaviour. The distinction between free will and determinism can be seen in the following question: Could an individuals behaviour in a given situation have been different if he or she had willed it? If you believe in free will the answer is yes, but if you do not, the response is no.

free will/determinism page 3 of 8

Determinism Determinists argue that a proper science of human behaviour is only possible if psychologists adopt a deterministic account, according to which everything that happens has a definite cause. Free will, by definition, does not have a definite cause. If free will is taken into account, it becomes impossible to predict human behaviour with any precision. According to determinists, it is often possible with other sciences to make very accurate predictions from a deterministic position (e.g. forecasting the movements of the planets or the reaction of mixing certain chemicals). Watson wanted psychology to be truly scientific so that it could be used to predict and control behaviour, i.e. the goal of psychology was to find the universal laws that determine behaviour. However, if determinism is regarded as not applicable to psychology, then it is either a very different science from physics and chemistry, or it is not really a science at all, as some have in fact also argued. Determinism in the physical sciences Such arguments were greatly weakened by the progress of science during the 20th century. Precise prediction based on an understanding of causal factors involved is the Exception rather than the rule even in physics and chemistry. For example, according to Heisenbergs uncertainty principle (1927)2, you are not able to determine both the position and the velocity of a subatomic particle simultaneously because when you start to measure one or the other, you change the other measurement. Chaos theory3 goes even further in that it says that the flap of a butterfly wing might ultimately change a whole weather system (the so-called butterfly effect), and therefore such a chain of event does not lend itself to prediction. These views challenge the determinism that underlies science. Behaviourist and Freudian approaches Determinism is accepted by more approaches in psychology than is free will, i.e. it is integral to most perspectives. Skinner argued that practically all of our behaviour is determined by environmental factors (environmental determinism) and he demonstrated that in e.g. his study of superstition in a pigeon. On the basis of his theory of operant conditioning, he suggested that we repeat behaviour that is rewarded, and that we do not repeat behaviour that is not rewarded. Other behaviourists argued that we can predict how someone will respond if we have knowledge of the current stimulus situation and the individuals previous conditioning history. However, a later development within the behaviourist approach was social learning theory, which departed from Skinners hard determinism. Bandura suggested in his theory of reciprocal determinism that people are both products and producers of their environments. Bandura (1973) argued, the environment is only a potentiality, not a fixed property that inevitably impinges upon individuals and to which their behaviour eventually adapts. Behaviour partly creates the environment, and the resultant environment, in turn, influences the behaviour.

2 3

http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/ http://www.imho.com/grae/chaos/chaos.html brief intro to chaos theory (and the butterfly effect)

free will/determinism page 4 of 8

Soft determinism Many psychologists favour a position that was labelled soft determinism by William James.4 According to this position, there is a valid distinction between behaviour that is highly constrained by the situation (and therefore appears involuntary) and behaviour that is only somewhat constrained by the situation (and so appears voluntary). For example, a child may apologise for swearing because he or she will be punished if there is no apology (highly constrained behaviour) or because the child is genuinely upset at causing offence (somewhat constrained behaviour). In both cases, however, behaviour is determined but the underlying causes are more obvious when behaviour is highly constrained by situational forces. Evidence consistent with the views of James was reported by Westcott (1982) in a study where Canadian students indicated how free they felt in various situations. They felt most free in situations involving an absence of responsibility or release from unpleasant stimulation (e.g. a nagging headache). In contrast, they felt least free in situations in which they had to recognise that there were limits on their behaviour (e.g. when they had to curtail their desires to fit their abilities). The view of soft determinism suggests that determinism is not an all-or nothing situation, but must be related to the circumstances in which behaviour occurred. Testability The major problem with determinism (whether soft or not) is that is not really possible to submit it to a proper test. If it were, then the issue of free will versus determinism would have been settled, and so would no longer exist as an issue of debate!!! If all behaviour is determined by internal or external forces, then in principle it should be possible to predict behaviour from knowledge of these causal factors. In fact, we usually only have very limited knowledge of the internal and external forces that might be influencing an individuals behaviour, and as a result, it remains no more than an article of faith that human behaviour can eventually be predicted accurately. Free Will Most people feel that they possess free will, in the sense that they can freely choose from a number of options. Most people also have feelings of personal responsibility, presumably because they feel that they are in at least partial control of their behaviour. Humanistic psychologists such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow are among those who believe in free will. They argued that people have choice in their behaviour, and they denied that peoples behaviour is at the mercy of outside forces alone. Rogers client-centred therapy is based on the assumption that the client has free will to change if he or she chooses to do so. The therapist is called a facilitator precisely because his role is to make it easier for the client to exercise free will in such a ways as to maximise rewardingness of the clients life. Humanistic psychologists argue that regarding human behaviour as being determined by external forces is de-humanising and incorrect. Causality Those believing in free will have to confront two major problems. First, it is hard to provide a precise account of what is meant by free will. Determinism is based on the
4

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/ and some pictures http://www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/mfp/jphotos.html

free will/determinism page 5 of 8

assumption that all behaviour has one or more causes, and it could be argued that free will implies that behaviour is random and has no cause. However, very few people would want to argue for such an extreme position. Anyone whose behaviour seems to be random would probably be classified as mentally ill or very stupid. If free will does not imply that behaviour has no cause, then we need to know how free will plays a part in causing behaviour. Second, most sciences are based on the assumptions of determinism. It is possible that determinism applies to the natural world but does not apply to humans. If that is the case, then there are enormous implications for psychology that have hardly been adressed as yet. Conclusions The issue of free will versus determinism has created more heat than light for various reasons. 1. It is not clear that it makes much sense to talk about free will, because this assumes there is an agent (i.e. the will) that may or may not operate in an unrestrained way. As the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) pointed our, We may as properly say that the singing faculty sings and the dancing faculty dances as that the will chooses. 2. The issue is philosophical rather than scientific, as it is impossible to design an experiment to decide whether or not free will influences human behaviour. As William James (1890) put it. The fact is that the question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds. In other words, we can never know whether an individuals psychological grounds. In other words, we can never know whether an individuals behaviour in a given situation could have been different if he or she had so willed it. 3. Although those who believe in determinism or free will often seem to have radically different views, there is more common ground between them than is generally realised. Regardless of their position on the issue of free will versus determinism, most psychologists accept that heredity, past experience, and the present environment all influences our behaviour. Although some of these factors (such as the environment) are external to the individual, others are internal. Most of these internal factors (such as character or personality) are the results of causal sequences stretching back into the past. The dispute then narrows to the issue of whether a solitary internal factor (variously called free will or self) is somehow immune from the influence of the past. 4. There is no real incompatibility between determinism and free will at all. According to determinists, it is possible in principle to show that an individuals actions are caused by a sequence of physical activities in the brain. If free will (e.g. conscious thinking and decision making) forms part of that sequence, it is possible to believe in free will and human responsibility at the same time as holding to a deterministic position. This would not be the case if free will is regarded as an intruder forcing its way into the sequence of physical activities in the brain, but there are no good grounds for adopting this position. In other words, the entire controversy between determinism and free will may be artificial and of less concern to psychologists than has generally been supposed. Where do the main approaches in psychology stand on determinism? The biological approach takes the view that behaviour is determined by internal, biological processes or systems. This is biological determinism. Up to a point

free will/determinism page 6 of 8

physiological determinism may be a valid argument because physiological factors provide explanations of behaviour but do they offer a complete explanation? They may be more applicable to non-human animals where learning has less influence on behaviour. Non-human animals also lack selfawareness, which is associated with the concept of will. Without selfawareness and consciousness, can you say about an organism that it has a will? One line within the biological approach is genetic determinism claiming that your genetic make-up (e.g. intelligence) is given from birth and cannot be altered. Within socio-biology the genetic make-up of organisms determines natural behaviour, e.g. related to biological sex. The natural selection is seen as the result of inherited characteristics that has been naturally selected and passed on to the next generation The behaviourist approach proposes that all behaviour is learned and can be explained solely in terms of external (environmental) factors. This is environmental determinism. Skinner argued forcefully that freedom is an illusion, maintained only because people are unaware of the environmental causes of behaviour. Humans are seen as blank slates when they come into the world and being totally determined by their experiences. Bandura suggested reciprocal determinism, a position where the environment influences the individual who on the other hand influences the environment. The cognitive approach is to a large extent seen as mechanistic, and any mechanistic explanation is said to be determinist because it suggests that a particular action will result in a predictable result. Cognitive psychology is divided in several areas but in its essence it focuses on different cognitive processes, many of which are automatic. The view of the mind is that it can be compared to a machine (computer analogy) and that thinking takes place in sequential patterns, one step causing the next. So where is free will? The common-sense idea of free will is that our actions follow from a conscious intention to act. However, the philosophical argument to this would be that there are limitations on our freedom to act, e.g. because were not conscious about many of the acts we commit (e.g. that you take the train to get to work) and that most of cognitive processing is automatic and not really the result of intentional behaviour. Human agency can be seen as a feature of autonomous creatures that all the same life in a deterministic universe. There is a strong divide between an inside world and an outside world, and thoughts must get out in order to cause action, i.e. bodily actions must be caused by non-physical symbolic thoughts. It seems that e.g. skills (related to procedural memory) that are so well learned that they are incorporated into a flow of behaviour take place without much consciousness, i.e. each sequence of the behaviour is not the result of deliberation. In spite of this, it can be argued that all behaviour is to some extent caused, but it is often argued that Cognitive psychology is related to soft determinism in that free will is not freedom from causation but freedom of coercion and constraint (James 1890), i.e. if actions are voluntary and in line with our conscious desired goals they are free. The humanistic approach represented by e.g. Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow are among those who believe in free will. According to this perspective, people have a free will, and they denied that peoples behaviour is at the mercy of outside forces alone. Free will is most apparent in humanistic therapies where the terms client and facilitator indicate the voluntary nature of the situation, and the idea that the

free will/determinism page 7 of 8

individuals have the power to solve their own problems through insigt in a usually non-directive theapy.
Six Schools of Psychology: Assumptions Approach Classical Behaviourism Radical Behaviourism Social learning Nature / Nurture Nurture Determinism / Free Will Determinism Environmental Determinism (freedom is an illusion) Reciprocal determinism Free Will/determinism e.g. due to. conditions of worth) Psychic Determinism Focus of Study Stimulus-response associations Environment-behaviour interactions Environment-behaviour interactions Individual Experience (phenomenology) Mind processes/psychic processes Researchers Pavlov Watson Skinner

Both

Both

Albert Bandura Rogers Maslov Freud Bartlett Ellis Delgado Penfield Walter Cannon Wilson

Humanistic

Nurture

Psychoanalytic

Nature

Cognitive

Both

Soft determinism Mind Processes e.g. some free will in /information processing coping strategies? schema Determinism/free will (e.g. biofeedback, coping strategies) Brain-behavior interactions, genetics and biological processes Evolution and comparative psychology

Biological

Nature

Sociobiology

Nature

Genetic determinism

Free will determinism in the biological perspective5 biological determinism - The belief that individual differences are biologically caused and, therefore, unchangeable. http://www.ycc.ac.uk/yc/psycho/unit5/determinism.pdf very good paper that can be directly used in class. See here an interesting article: How biological determinism is encouraged by Jeff Thomas: http://www.iubs.org/cbe/papers/thomas.html The argument advanced here is that both school-based learning of genetics and contemporary discourses on popular genetics are likely to promote a deterministic interpretation. By this logic, factors that prompt a view of the gene as all-embracing "blueprint" for fixing adult behaviour enjoy a greater prominence than those that stress the importance of the interdependency of genes and environmental influences. Centre for Science Education, The Open University UK Email: j.n.thomas@open.ac.uk

The free will vs. determinism debate in psychology6

Free will Assumptions
5

Determinism

papers on biological determinism http://www.iubs.org/cbe/pdf/thomas.pdf http://theoryandscience.icaap.org/content/vol003.001/pratarelli-mize.html http://www.thegreatdebate.org.uk/determinismandfreewill.html 6 p. 13 in Grahame Hill (1998) Advanced Psychology through diagrams. Oxford revision Guides.

free will/determinism page 8 of 8

The free will approach assumes that humans are free to choose their behaviour, i.e. they are essentially selfdetermining. Free will does not mean that behaviour is uncaused in the sense of being completely random, but assumes that influences (biological or environmental can be rejected at free will) Soft determinism (William James, 1890) suggests that free will is not freedom from causation, but freedom from coercion and constraint. If actions are voluntary +in line with conscious desired goals then they are free. Humanistic psychology: strongest advocate of human free will _we are able to direct our lives towards selfchosen goal. Free will most apparent in humanistic therapies (non-directive). Cognitive psychology: soft determinism in e.g. problem solving and attentional mechanisms as the choosers of thought and behaviour. While it seems that we select what we pay attention to, these mechanisms operate with the parameters of their innate capabilities and our past experience (just as the computer cannot choose to do something it was not built or programmed for), e.g. perceptual set suggests that we are not free to choose what we see and many cognitive processes operate on a more or less automatic basis (e.g. schema processing).

The deterministic approach assumes that e v e r y physical event is caused, and since human behaviour is a physical event, it follows that it is too caused by preceding factors. If all events are caused and perfect knowledge is gained of the current state of the universe, it follows that future events are entirely predictable. Determinism: emphasis on causal laws _ basis of science aims to reveal laws to provide prediction and control of the future.

Examples in psychology
The majority of approaches in psychology adopt a fairly strict view of human behaviour. B e h a v i o u r i s m favours extreme environmental determinism (blank slate). Watson: deterministic laws of learning can predict and control future behaviour _ his claim that he could take any infant at random and turn them into any type of specialist he might select. Skinner: free will is an illusion created by our complexity of learning. Psychoanalysis Freud took the view of unconscious determinism (psychic determinism)_behaviour is controlled by forces of which we are unaware- the reasons for our actions are merely rationalised by our conscious minds but neo-Freudians (Erikson) looked at more conscious ego processes. The illusion of free will is shattered by mental disorders (people suffering from OCD lose control of their thoughts and actions, and depressive people of their emotions). Psychoactive drugs may produce involuntary hallucinations and actions. Determinism, a key assumptions of science_cause and effect laws have explained, predicted + controlled behaviour (in some areas) above the levels achieved by commonsense. Most psychologists, even those sympathetic to the idea of free will, accept determinism to some degree.

For
Introspection upon our decisions when many possible equally desirable options are available often seems to indicate free choice. Subjective impressions should be considered. Even if humans do not have free will, the fact that they think they do has many implications for behaviour. Rotter (1966), for example, has proposed that people having external locus of control suffer more from the effects of stress than those who feel they can influence the situations (internal locus of control). Brehm (1966) said that people react if their freedom is threatened.

Against Difficult to define what free will is and what the self that does the choosing consists of. Philosophers (e.g. Descartes) the self as the non-physical soul or spirit, while Jean-Paul Sartre (existentialist philosopher) Sartre preferred to think that free will is a product of consciousness. Evidence for the existence of free will is mostly subjective but objective studies (Libet 1985) claims that brain processes initiating the movement of a hand occurs almost half a second before the moment a participant reports choosing to move it. A pure free will approach is incompatible with the deterministic assumption of science.

Determism is inconsistent with ideas of selfcontrol and responsibility underlying our moral and legal assumptions. Only extreme examples of determinism such as insanity are taken into account. Determinism cannot lead to complete prediction because of many complex influences of behaviour, nothing can be proved to 100%, and notions of unpredictability (e.g. Heisenbergs uncertainty principle). Determinism is unfalsifiable since it always assumes a cause exists, even if one has not been found yet.