What is determinism?

1. What is determinism? To know the principle of causality and its implications lesson 9

2. THE PROBLEM OF Free will 1. ARE HUMANS CAUSALLY DETERMINED OR FREE? 2. HOW CAN WE BE RESPONSIBLE IF WE ARE NOT FREE? lesson 9

3. WHAT IS DETERMINISM? • This is the view that all events are DETERMINED by other PRIOR events. • The world of science has brought us the view point. • The white ball causally determines the black ball to go into the hole. • It is what is known as a SUFFICIENT REASON. • The white ball is a sufficient reason to explain why the black ball ends up in the pocket. lesson 9

4. CAUSALITY • Prior to the 19th Century science was dominated by Newtonian Physics which claimed that the universe is governed by natural laws. • Each event therefore, has a scientific explanation for its existence. • Newton claimed that the universe was a closed system and that everything within it can be explained • If you know law A then you can explain fact B. lesson 9

5. CAUSATION • Scientists believe that causation is a true fact. • They believe that the universe is a closed system. • This means that nothing can get in and nothing can get out. The universe is all that there is. • For anything that happens within the universe there is a complete a sufficient cause for the events existence • Because the universe is a closed system that cause must be within the universe. • Therefore, for anything that happens within the universe there is a cause of that thing which also occurred within the universe. lesson 9

6. CAUSATION A B C • If we use letters we can understand how causation works. • For any event C, there must a complete and sufficient reason B for its existence. • Because causation is a chain B must also have a cause A that is a complete and sufficient reason. There are no gaps in the causal chain. • If you search hard enough you will be able to find a complete explanation for a thing happening. lesson 9

7. CAUSATION A B C D Because the universe is a closed system if you were to know the complete state of the universe given causation you would be able to predict the future. If you know A, B and C you should be able to predict event D. lesson 9

8. NO ALTERNATIVE FUTURES A B C As you know moral responsibility required the possibility of doing otherwise. Determinism denies the possibility of doing otherwise because it says given A ... B will occur. Necessarily. The garden of “forking paths” becomes the “straight path” lesson 9

9. Implication The implications for freewill are clear. If a human makes a choice that choice given causation must have a complete a sufficient reason for its existence. If there was a cause for the free choice then there is no way the choice could have been free. Human actions are therefore determined and not undetermined like libertarians would say.

10. DETERMINISM AND CAUSATION Determinists use causation to prove their argument Causation is a fact that applies to all things and actions within the universe Because humans are within the universe causation applies to them and their actions. Therefore, human actions have a complete a sufficient cause for the existence. Humans have no freewill. lesson 9

11. Research what the 6 different types of determinism are; and an example for each. lesson 9

12. Hard determinism To understand the arguments for hard determinism. lesson 10

13. “all our choices, decisions, intentions, other mental events, and our actions are no more than effects of other equally necessitated events.” • Ted Hondrich(One of the theorists for H.D) lesson 10

14. HARD DETERMINISM • Ted Hondrich “all our choices, decisions, intentions, other mental events, and our actions are no more than effects of other equally necessitated events.” • Hard determinists are Incompatiblists. They believe that Free will is incompatible with determinism. • They deny Free will and affirm DETERMINISM. • All our actions are caused by a chain of complex events. • This network includes sociological, psychological, religious, political and cultural influences. • The debate is split into whether causes are internal or external. lesson 10

15. INTERNAL CAUSATION Explain how these are examples of causation. Evaluate them are they good examples? Genetics Gay gene Gambling gene Crime gene Obesity gene lesson 10

16. GENETICS AND CAUSATION Genetics does not seem to give a complete a sufficient reason for a persons actions. Therefore as a sole deterministic theory it is lacking. There is still research needed to see if genetics are the completed explanation lesson 10

17. EXTERNAL causation BEHAVIORALISM • Humans are psychologically conditioned from birth to behave in a certain way. • These influences are caused by external and internal influences. • Each response and action by a human like any other animal happens due to instinct. • Our behaviour is therefore pre-programmed. • P.T.O for example lesson 10

18. Ivan Pavlov – whist investigating the saliva of dogs Pavlov noticed that dogs tended to salivate when they knew that they were going to be fed. • This was a pre-programmed response to the stimulus of food. • He began to signal his feeding of the dogs with the ringing of a bell. • Eventually the dogs would salivate simply at the sound of the ringing of the bell and without the smell of food. • This he called CLASSICAL CONDITIONING Ivan Pavlov 1849 - 1936 lesson 10

19. BEHAVIORALISM in action • Skinner (whilst experimenting on rats) believed that behaviours were conditioned by positive and negative experiences. • Actions are in fact behavioural responses to a stimulus which is interpreted in light of previous experiences with similar circumstances. • Imagine I want to kill my neighbour. Previous experience (watching the television) tells me that people who commit murder go to prison. Having watched ‘Bad Girls’ I decide that prison is a negative place to be and therefore, I do not kill. B F SKINNER 1904 - 1990

20. Skinner’s Walden Two expresses behaviourism nicely. Here citizens are controlled by behavioural engineers. • They live in a commune where they share duties and have a pleasant existence. • The founder of Walden Two, Frazier says that their pleasant existence is brought about by the fact that, in his community, persons can do whatever they want or choose because they have been behaviourally conditioned since childhood to want and choose only what they can have and do. • Frazier then adds provocatively that, in his view, Walden Two “is the freest place on earth,” since people there can choose and do anything they want. lesson 10

21. THEOLOGICAL DETERMINISM Will go over this when we look at religious determinism PREDESTINATION JOHN CALVIN 1509 - 1564 Calvin affirmed that because God is: • Omnipotent – all powerful • Omniscient - all knowing • God because he is omniscient already knows who will go to heaven and who won’t go to heaven. • Future events including human choice is predestined to happen because God knows it before it does happen. There can therefore be only one possible future because if not then God would not be omniscient. • If this is so then humans have no moral choice. • Human salvation is predetermined by God and not by the actions of humans themselves. lesson 10

22. Implications of Hard determinism To know the implications Hard Determinism has for responsibility lesson 10

23. The case of LEOPOLD and LOEB • Clarence Darrow was an American attorney who defended two boys who murdered a 14yr old called Bobby Franks. • The two boys were rich and very intelligent who had planned the “perfect crime” to show their superiority over society. • Darrow successfully argued for their sentence to be demoted to life imprisonment because they were the product of their upbringing and were not fully responsible for their actions. lesson 10

24. The Milgram experiment • Milgram performed a number of experiments to suggest that ordinary people could be persuaded to perform acts of cruelty simply because they were told to by a person in authority. • The experiments were carried out after the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann who gave the excuse of following orders for his role in the Holocaust. • In the experiment their were two actors one pretending to be a scientist and the other a man strapped to a chair. • Genuine volunteers were asked to take part in a memory test and would deliver electric shocks to the actor-volunteer when told to by the scientist-volunteer. • In reality there were no shocks the real test was to see what extent people would go to if they were told to by a person in authority. • A massive 65% of people delivered the final lethal 450 volt shock. Despite witnessing the extreme (fake) pain of the victim.