Free Will and Determinism. a Philosophical Debate in Psychology

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Free will and Determinism1 - aphilosophical debate in psychology

Explore some issues involved in Free will and Determinismby starting here:

Do we really choose our actions? What if you have beenhypnotised, or you are a brain in a jar (e.g., The Matrix), or ifyour biology has been influenced to such a degree byevolution that you only act in concordance with your inheritedtraits; 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 enactedthem, were really controlled by your upbringing, your life-situation and so on. ...... Can the humansciences explain our actions, and hence show that they were not free? (Can human behaviour be freeand 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 areimplemented?All these questions pose serious threats to the notion of free will. But there is one more question, onethat is far more serious, and which presumably has graver consequences than many of them: that ofdeterminism."Determinism is the view that, for everything that happens, there is a condition or set of conditionswhich 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 weblame, praise, or punish? How would you look upon another, who acted friendly towards you, if youknew that the person had no choice in the matter? And wouldn't you yourself feel trapped, knowingyou 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 determinismis true, then we still can have free will". It does not commit itself to any of these views ("determinism istrue", or "we have free will"), it only states that they are compatible. The view that both statements aretrue is called "soft determinism". The incompatibilist view is that both statements cannot be true; hencean incompatibilist would either be a hard determinist or a libertarian. Hard determinism is the viewthat determinism is true and that we do not have free will. The libertarian view is that we have freewill, and as such, determinism must be false. Libertarians basically think we can tell that we have freewill, just by introspecting at the time we make choices. There seems to be a private sphere in ourintrospection, in which we cannot make mistakes. For example, you cannot be wrong about the factthat you are in pain when you actually are in pain. Who can tell but you? Yet, we might lack the abilityto introspect as to the causes of our sensation as they appear in our brains. If you are a smoker, youknow that taking a cigarette gives you a kick, a pleasurable feeling, and no one can tell you that you donot. But can you tell that this pleasurable feeling is mediated by dopamine release in the nucleusaccumbens? You cer ta inly 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.aspphilosophical thesis that every event is the inevitable result of antecedent causes. Applied to ethics andpsychology, determinism usually involves a denial of free will, although many philosophers haveattempted to reconcile the two concepts. Thomas Hobbes, identifying the will with appetites anddefining freedom as the absence of impediments, concluded that free will exists where nothing preventsa person from satisfying his prevailing appetite. David Hume argued that a person's wilful conductcounts as freely chosen even though his will has itself been determined by his motives. Henry Jamescalled 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 morehttp://www.faithnet.org.uk/AS%20Subjects/Ethics/determinismandfreewill.htm andhttp://philosophy.lander.edu/ethics/notes-determinism.html

s18/sld003.htm


determinism excludes the possibility of free will altogether. The doctrine of determinism is opposed bythe principle of emergence, which states that truly novel and unpredictable events may occur out of thecomposite forces of nature.Free will: in philosophy, the doctrine that an individual, regardless of forces external to him, can anddoes 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 incriminal cases where psychological disorders are involved. Likewise, a murderer having consumedlarge 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 lesspunishment 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 andStoughton.

The issue of free will versus determinism has occupied philosophers and psychologists for centuries. Itis on e of the oldest philosophical debates in the study of human behaviour and it can be seen in almostall areas of psychology. One of the fundamental issues here is the extent to which human beings havecontrol over their behaviour, which is reflected in the questions here: Does our behaviour result fromforces over which we have nor control or do we have fee choice to behave as we wish? or Are thoughtsand 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 attributethese abilities to people and this is why psychologists must take seriously the commonsense view thatpeople make decisions and in many different ways exercise their free will. This implies a mind, ormental processes. However, having a mind does not imply free will because our decisions may becaused (determined) even though it does not seem so. So even if human thinking and behaviour aredifferent from natural, physical phenomena, and that they are not determined in the same way (or that adifferent explanation is required), for most of its history as a separate discipline, psychology hasoperated as if there were no difference. Some examples of determinism within psychology arebiological determinism (internal factors such as genetic make-up and neurochemical processesdetermines behaviour) and environmental determinism (external factors determine behaviour). The ideais 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 you’re acriminal, then you cannot be responsible.

According to those who believe in determinism, people’s actions aretotally determined by external and internal forces operating on them.An example of an external force would be the influence of parentswhen 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 complicatedthan argued by determinists. Most of them accept that external andinternal forces exist. However, they argue that people have free willbecause each individual is nevertheless able to choose his or herown behaviour. The distinction between free will and determinismcan be seen in the following question: “Could an individual’sbehaviour 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, theresponse is ‘no’.


DeterminismDeterminists argue that a proper science of human behaviour is only possible ifpsychologists adopt a deterministic account, according to which everything thathappens 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 behaviourwith any precision. According to determinists, it is often possible with other sciencesto make very accurate predictions from a deterministic position (e.g. forecasting themovements of the planets or the reaction of mixing certain chemicals). Watsonwanted psychology to be truly scientific so that it could be used to predict and controlbehaviour, i.e. the goal of psychology was to find the universal laws that determinebehaviour. However, if determinism is regarded as not applicable to psychology, thenit is either a very different science from physics and chemistry, or it is not really ascience at all, as some have in fact also argued.

Determinism in the physical sciencesSuch arguments were greatly weakened by the progress of science during the 20th

century. Precise prediction based on an understanding of causal factors involved is theException rather than the rule even in physics and chemistry. For example, accordingto Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle (1927)2, you are not able todetermine both the position and the velocity of a subatomic particlesimultaneously because when you start to measure one or the other, youchange the other measurement. Chaos theory3 goes even further in that itsays that the flap of a butterfly wing might ultimately change a wholeweather system (the so-called ‘butterfly effect’), and therefore such achain of event does not lend itself to prediction. These views challengethe determinism that underlies science.

Behaviourist and Freudian approachesDeterminism is accepted by more approaches in psychology than is freewill, i.e. it is integral to most perspectives. Skinner argued thatpractically 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, hesuggested that we repeat behaviour that is rewarded, and that we do not repeatbehaviour that is not rewarded. Other behaviourists argued that we can predict howsomeone will respond if we have knowledge of the current stimulus situation and theindividual’s previous conditioning history. However, a later development within thebehaviourist approach was social learning theory, which departed from Skinner’s harddeterminism. Bandura suggested in his theory of ‘reciprocal determinism’ that peopleare both products and producers of their environments. Bandura (1973) argued, “theenvironment is only a potentiality, not a fixed property that inevitably impinges uponindividuals and to which their behaviour eventually adapts. Behaviour partly createsthe environment, and the resultant environment, in turn, influences the behaviour”.

2 http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/3 http://www.imho.com/grae/chaos/chaos.html brief intro to chaos theory (and the butterfly effect)


Soft determinismMany psychologists favour a position that was labelled ‘soft determinism’ by WilliamJames.4 According to this position, there is a valid distinction between behaviour thatis highly constrained by the situation (and therefore appears involuntary) andbehaviour that is only somewhat constrained by the situation (and so appearsvoluntary). For example, a child may apologise for swearing because he or she will bepunished if there is no apology (highly constrained behaviour) or because the child isgenuinely upset at causing offence (somewhat constrained behaviour). In both cases,however, behaviour is determined but the underlying causes are more obvious whenbehaviour is highly constrained by situational forces. Evidence consistent with theviews of James was reported by Westcott (1982) in a study where Canadian studentsindicated how free they felt in various situations. They felt most free in situationsinvolving an absence of responsibility or release from unpleasant stimulation (e.g. anagging headache). In contrast, they felt least free in situations in which they had torecognise that there were limits on their behaviour (e.g. when they had to curtail theirdesires to fit their abilities). The view of soft determinism suggests that determinismis not an all-or –nothing situation, but must be related to the circumstances in whichbehaviour occurred.

TestabilityThe major problem with determinism (whether soft or not) is that is not reallypossible to submit it to a proper test. If it were, then the issue of free will versusdeterminism would have been settled, and so would no longer exist as an issue ofdebate!!! If all behaviour is determined by internal or external forces, then in principleit should be possible to predict behaviour from knowledge of these causal factors. Infact, we usually only have very limited knowledge of the internal and external forcesthat might be influencing an individual’s behaviour, and as a result, it remains nomore than an article of faith that human behaviour can eventually be predictedaccurately.

Free WillMost people feel that they possess free will, in the sense that they can freely choosefrom 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 theirbehaviour. Humanistic psychologists such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow areamong those who believe in free will. They argued that people have choice in theirbehaviour, and they denied that people’s behaviour is at the mercy of outside forcesalone. Roger’s client-centred therapy is based on the assumption that the client hasfree 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 insuch a ways as to maximise rewardingness of the client’s life. Humanisticpsychologists argue that regarding human behaviour as being determined by externalforces is ‘de-humanising’ and incorrect.

CausalityThose believing in free will have to confront two major problems. First, it is hard toprovide a precise account of what is meant by free will. Determinism is based on the

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


assumption that all behaviour has one or more causes, and it could be argued that freewill implies that behaviour is random and has no cause. However, very few peoplewould want to argue for such an extreme position. Anyone whose behaviour seems tobe random would probably be classified as mentally ill or very stupid. If free will doesnot imply that behaviour has no cause, then we need to know how free will plays apart in causing behaviour. Second, most sciences are based on the assumptions ofdeterminism. It is possible that determinism applies to the natural world but does notapply to humans. If that is the case, then there are enormous implications forpsychology that have hardly been adressed as yet.

ConclusionsThe issue of free will versus determinism has created more heat than light for variousreasons.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 anunrestrained way. As the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) pointed our, “ Wemay as properly say that the singing faculty sings and the dancing faculty dancesas that the will chooses.”

2. The issue is philosophical rather than scientific, as it is impossible to design anexperiment to decide whether or not free will influences human behaviour. AsWilliam James (1890) put it. “The fact is that the question of free will is insolubleon strictly psychological grounds.” In other words, we can never know whether anindividual’s psychological grounds”. In other words, we can never know whetheran individual’s behaviour in a given situation could have been different if he orshe had so willed it.

3. Although those who believe in determinism or free will often seem to haveradically different views, there is more common ground between them than isgenerally realised. Regardless of their position on the issue of free will versusdeterminism, most psychologists accept that heredity, past experience, and thepresent environment all influences our behaviour. Although some of these factors(such as the environment) are external to the individual, others are internal. Mostof these internal factors (such as character or personality) are the results of causalsequences stretching back into the past. The dispute then narrows to the issue ofwhether a solitary internal factor (variously called free will or self) is somehowimmune 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 individual’sactions 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 ispossible to believe in free will and human responsibility at the same time asholding to a deterministic position. This would not be the case if free will isregarded as an intruder forcing its way into the sequence of physical activities inthe 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 ofless 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


physiological determinism may be a valid argument because physiologicalfactors provide explanations of behaviour but do they offer a completeexplanation? They may be more applicable to non-human animals wherelearning has less influence on behaviour. Non-human animals also lack self-awareness, which is associated with the concept of “will”. Without self-awareness and consciousness, can you say about an organism that it has awill? One line within the biological approach is genetic determinismclaiming that your genetic make-up (e.g. intelligence) is given from birthand cannot be altered. Within socio-biology the genetic make-up oforganisms determines ‘natural’ behaviour, e.g. related to biological sex. Thenatural selection is seen as the result of inherited characteristics that hasbeen naturally selected and passed on to the next generation

The behaviourist approach proposes that all behaviour is learned and can beexplained solely in terms of external (environmental) factors. This is environmentaldeterminism. Skinner argued forcefully that freedom is an illusion, maintained onlybecause people are unaware of the environmental causes of behaviour. Humans areseen as ‘blank slates’ when they come into the world and being totally determined bytheir experiences. Bandura suggested ‘reciprocal determinism’, a position where theenvironment influences the individual who on the other hand influences theenvironment.The cognitive approach is to a large extent seen as mechanistic, and any mechanisticexplanation is said to be determinist because it suggests that a particular action willresult in a predictable result. Cognitive psychology is divided in several areas but inits 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) andthat thinking takes place in sequential patterns, one step causing the next. So where isfree will? The common-sense idea of free will is that our actions follow from aconscious intention to act. However, the philosophical argument to this would be thatthere are limitations on our freedom to act, e.g. because we’re not conscious aboutmany of the acts we commit (e.g. that you take the train to get to work) and that mostof 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 lifein a deterministic universe. There is a strong divide between an inside world and anoutside world, and thoughts must get out in order to cause action, i.e. bodily actionsmust be caused by non-physical symbolic thoughts. It seems that e.g. skills (related toprocedural memory) that are so well learned that they are incorporated into a flow ofbehaviour take place without much consciousness, i.e. each sequence of the behaviouris not the result of deliberation. In spite of this, it can be argued that all behaviour isto some extent caused, but it is often argued that Cognitive psychology is related tosoft determinism in that free will is not freedom from causation but freedom ofcoercion and constraint (James 1890), i.e. if actions are voluntary and in line with ourconscious desired goals they are free.

The humanistic approach represented by e.g. Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow areamong those who believe in free will. According to this perspective, people have afree will, and they denied that people’s behaviour is at the mercy of outside forcesalone. Free will is most apparent in humanistic therapies where the terms client andfacilitator indicate the voluntary nature of the situation, and the idea that the


individuals have the power to solve their own problems through insigt in a usuallynon-directive theapy.

Six Schools of Psychology: Assumptions

ApproachNature /Nurture

Determinism / FreeWill

Focus of StudyResearchers

ClassicalBehaviourism

Nurture DeterminismStimulus-responseassociations

PavlovWatson

RadicalBehaviourism

BothEnvironmentalDeterminism (“freedomis an illusion”)

Environment-behaviourinteractions

Skinner

Social learning Both Reciprocal determinismEnvironment-behaviourinteractions

AlbertBandura

Humanistic NurtureFree Will/determinisme.g. due to. conditions ofworth)

Individual Experience(phenomenology)

RogersMaslov

Psychoanalytic Nature Psychic DeterminismMind processes/psychicprocesses

Freud

Cognitive BothSoft determinism e.g. some free will incoping strategies?

M i n d P r o c e s s e s/information processingschema

Bartlett

Ellis

Biological NatureDeterminism/free will(e .g . b iofeedback ,coping strategies)

Brain-behavior interactions,genetics and biologicalprocesses

DelgadoPenfieldWalterCannon

Sociobiology Nature Genetic determinismE v o l u t i o n a n dcomparative psychology

Wilson

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.pdfvery 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.htmlThe argument advanced here is that both school-based learning of genetics and contemporary discourses on popular genetics arelikely 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 andenvironmental influences.Centre for Science Education, The Open University UK Email: [email protected]

The free will vs. determinism debate in psychology6

Free will Determinism Assumptions

5 papers on biological determinismhttp://www.iubs.org/cbe/pdf/thomas.pdf http://theoryandscience.icaap.org/content/vol003.001/pratarelli-mize.htmlhttp://www.thegreatdebate.org.uk/determinismandfreewill.html6 p. 13 in Grahame Hill (1998) Advanced Psychology through diagrams. Oxford revision Guides.


The free will approach assumes that humans are free tochoose their behaviour, i.e. they are essentially self-determining.Free will does not mean that behaviour is uncaused inthe sense of being completely random, but assumes thatinfluences (biological or environmental can be rejectedat free will)Soft determinism (William James, 1890) suggests thatfree will is not freedom from causation, but freedomfrom coercion and constraint. If actions are voluntary+in line with conscious desired goals then they are free.

The deterministic approach assumes that everyphysical event is caused, and since human behaviour isa physical event, it follows that it is too caused bypreceding factors.If all events are caused and perfect knowledge is gainedof the current state of the universe, it follows that futureevents are entirely predictable.Determinism: emphasis on causal laws _ basis ofscience aims to reveal laws to provide prediction andcontrol of the future.

Examples in psychologyHumanistic psychology: strongest advocate of humanfree will _we are able to direct our lives towards self-chosen goal. Free will most apparent in humanistictherapies (non-directive).Cognitive psychology: soft determinism in e.g.problem solving and attentional mechanisms as the‘choosers’ of thought and behaviour. While it seemsthat we select what we pay attention to, thesemechanisms operate with the parameters of their innatecapabilities and our past experience (just as thecomputer cannot choose to do something it was notbuilt or programmed for), e.g. ‘perceptual set’ suggeststhat we are not free to choose what we see and manycognitive processes operate on a more or less automaticbasis (e.g. schema processing).

The majority of approaches in psychology adopt afairly strict view of human behaviour.Behaviourism favours extreme environmentaldeterminism (‘blank slate’). Watson: deterministic lawsof learning can predict and control future behaviour _his claim that he could take any infant at random andturn them into any type of specialist he might select.Skinner: free will is an illusion created by ourcomplexity of learning.Psychoanalysis Freud took the view of ‘unconsciousdeterminism’ (psychic determinism)_behaviour iscontrolled by forces of which we are unaware- thereasons for our actions are merely rationalised by ourconscious minds but neo-Freudians (Erikson) looked atmore conscious ego processes.

For• Introspection upon our decisions when many

possible equally desirable options are availableoften seems to indicate free choice. Subjectiveimpressions should be considered.

• Even if humans do not have free will, the fact thatthey think they do has many implications forbehaviour. Rotter (1966), for example, hasproposed that people having ‘external locus ofcontrol’ suffer more from the effects of stress thanthose who feel they can influence the situations(‘internal locus of control’). Brehm (1966) saidthat people react if their freedom is threatened.

• The illusion of free will is shattered by mentaldisorders (people suffering from OCD lose controlof their thoughts and actions, and depressivepeople of their emotions). Psychoactive drugs mayproduce involuntary hallucinations and actions.

• Determinism, a key assumptions of science_causeand effect laws have explained, predicted +controlled behaviour (in some areas) above thelevels achieved by commonsense.

• Most psychologists, even those sympathetic to theidea of free will, accept determinism to somedegree.

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 thenon-physical soul or spirit, while Jean-PaulSartre (existentialist philosopher) Sartrepreferred to think that free will is a product ofconsciousness.

• Evidence for the existence of free will ismostly subjective but objective studies (Libet1985) claims that brain processes initiatingthe movement of a hand occurs almost half asecond before the moment a participantreports choosing to move it.

• A pure free will approach is incompatiblewith the deterministic assumption of science.

• Determism is inconsistent with ideas of self-control and responsibility underlying ourmoral and legal assumptions. Only extremeexamples of determinism such as insanity aretaken into account.

• Determinism cannot lead to completeprediction because of many complexinfluences of behaviour, nothing can beproved to 100%, and notions ofunpredictabili ty (e.g. Heisenberg’suncertainty principle).

• Determinism is unfalsifiable since it alwaysassumes a cause exists, even if one has notbeen found yet.

Free Will and Determinism. a Philosophical Debate in Psychology

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