Determinism

Determinism

1. Ted Honderich

   • Honderich is a hard determinist and rejects the idea of hope. Honderich argues that all states of the brain are the effects of other physical states, and since actions are caused by brain events, our actions are determined
     • Can be criticised for being a form of scientific reductionism. Our actions cannot be explained in terms of brain waves just as the colour yellow can't
     • Arguably there are empirical problems with hard determinism, like how we feel moments of real indeterminancy
   • Honderich argues that both incompatibilism and compatibilism are wrong because they presuppose one view of human freedom. Both freedom by voluntariness and freedom by origination are vital for our lives
   • Honderich allows for some small-scale indeterminism and so calls his theory 'near-determinism'

2. Genetics

   • Richard Dawkins
     • Genes interact with the environment in a dynamic way. Humans have developed an altruistic gene. We are able to transcend our selfish gene
     • Children from unstable and violent homes show different brain development, suggesting there is an interaction between genes and the environment
     • We have the ability to rise above our origins and extract ourselves from nature and its values. 'We are the only ones who can escape our genes...'
     • Perhaps a sense in which our moral sense and intuitions are determined, but our actual choices are not
   • Francis Galton
     • Aimed to 'improve the racial qualities of future generations, whether physically or mentally'
     • Encouraged marriages and procreation between high rank families and discouraged 'mating between cretins'
     • 'The feebler nations of the world are necessarily giving way before the nobler varieties of mankind'

3. Psychology

   • Steven Pinker
     • Argues that things like road rage, adultery, marriage, altruism and the small number of women in mechanics all have their roots in evolutionary psychology
       • Crticised by Stephen Jay Gould for putting forward 'just so' stories and for ignoring other evolutionary explanations. Argues evolutionary psychology is involved in speculative searches for mechanisms that must have been adaptive
     • Argues that parenting counts for little in the development of a child's personality
     • Men might be predisposed to sleep around, but this doesn't mean they can't help it or that it makes it right
     • Rules out the theory that some traits evolved accidentally due to findings from computer simulations. These consider how evolution might have solved the problem in different ways, and the fewer of these exist, the more likely adaptation is the answer
     • Argues that punishment is still necessary because our brain systems can anticipate consequences of behaviour and inhibit it
   • Freud
     • The id: contains two parts, the thanatos instinct (the death instinct concerned with domination, aggression, violence and self-destruction) and the eros instinct (concerned with food, sex and self-preservation)
     • Superego: this develops from five years onwards and internalises the disapproval of others, usually imparted by parents
     • The ego mediates between the superego and the id, referred to as the 'reality principle. More rational and concerned with devising realistic strategies to obtain pleasure
     • Our desires are consequently the product of unconscious processes. A desire to kill our father, for instance, can be attributed to the Oedipus complex
     • Alternatively, the power of the super-ego constrains us from acting according to our id. If this is a powerful force, in what sense are our actions free?
       • Freud's theory is not scientific since it is unfalsifiable

4. Darrow

   • American lawyer Clarence Darrow took on the case of Leopold and Loeb, teenage sons of two wealthy Chicago families
   • Accused of killing Bobby Franks, a 14-year-old boy to see if they could commit the ultimate crime. Darrow convinced them to plead guilty and then argued for his clients to receive life imprisonment rather than the death penalty
   • Darrow argued his clients were not comletely responsible for their actions but were products of their environment. They could not be held responsible for basing their desire to murder on Nietszche's philosophy
   • Questioned whether it was fair to hang a 19-year-old for a philosophy taught to him at university. Their crime arose as a mixture of their genes and education

5. Behaviourism

   • B. F. Skinner
     • Argues that behaviour is determined by rewards given to the operant behaviour, which can then be conditioned by reinforcement
     • The pigeon chooses to peck to the green light, but is it free?
   • Pavlov
     • Pavlov: his experiment drew an association between a neutral stimulus (assistant) and an unconditioned stimulus (food) leading to psychic salivation
     • This produced a conditioned response. Behaviour is learnt according to conditioning and associations in our environment and upbringing
   • John B. Watson
     • We enter the world as a blank state. Our unique ways of behaving are a result of our environment and experiences. Rejected Freud's work as unscientific and untestable