Essay on "Determinism, as the Belief That All Actions"

Essay 6 pages (1706 words) Sources: 1+ Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

determinism, as the belief that all actions are causally related and have an initial first cause, basically denies the existence of human free will. Indeed, determinism, in its pure form, follows the idea according to which the decision that an individual is able or likely to make at a certain point in his life, corroborated with his individual behavior, is based on the assumption that a decision is not made by the individual taking into consideration the variables at that point, but that it is caused by causes from the past.

The impact that such a perception has on morality is somewhat shown in the previous paragraph. With determinism, morality is also predetermined, which means that there is a direct causality that impacts morality at any given time. This comes in contrast with a free will proposition, where morality is determined by the variables with which the individual is confronted at a certain moment of time, when he or she needs to make a decision based on the elements at hand.

With determinism, morality could thus be deemed as assumed or inherited, which makes it harder to believe that somebody with immoral genes could make a moral decision at a certain point or in a given situation. According to determinism, something causes morality or immorality, and if this is so, it is then increasingly difficult to impact morality or immorality, unless one works on or affects the initial cause that determined the respective morality or immorality.

If that cause is genetic (like, for example, if the individual is behaving immorally because his family and relatives are all known for being immoral and for their immoral behavior), it is probably difficult to rationally address immorality from a deterministic perspective. This will have an impact on our further discussion of the implications for punishments and rewards.

Assuming the deterministic perspective, punishments and rewards will not necessarily help the modification in behavior of the individual, unless these punishments and rewards are addressing the actual cause of the problems, properly modifying it as a result. As an example, assuming that an individual is put in jail as a punishment for his actions, this will not address the actual cause of why he has committed those actions. On the other hand, in some of these cases, it is also difficult to determine the actual cause of the immoral behavior.

Previously, we have mentioned genetics as the potential cause. One can also discuss the educational framework and environment in which the individual grows. Punishing or rewarding the individual is not going to change his underlying principles he has on life, which, according to determinism, could be the cause that triggered the entire change leading towards his potential immoral actions.

One could thus conclude that the implications for rewards and punishments on morality according to determinism can be considered relevant only if they target, in any way, part of the causal chain that determines the evolution of the individual and his moral or immoral behavior. Following this perspective, they may not even have a relevant impact if we think of some of the causes of immoral behavior that cannot really be modified, such as, potentially, genetic causes.

2) Knowledge and the origins of knowledge have been subjects for study for both philosophy and psychology. There are two major theories that explain human behavior either through nature, that is "being born with" or through nurture, that is through experience.

Philosophers in Antiquity, like Plato, believed that humans were born with certain abilities, crediting nature for our behavior, while others like Aristotle and later, Avicena, claimed that human behavior was the result of experience. In the seventeenth century, Locke developed the theory of empiricism based on the theory of the mind as "tabula rasa" at birth.

Psychologists became interested in the debate over knowledge acquired through experience or innate when psychologists became interested in changing behavior, during the nineteenth century. At the time, the main idea in psychology was that behavior was mainly determined by heredity. On the other hand, there were new ideas based on Locke and Hume's empiricism that asserted that any changes in behavior that a scientist would be interested in influencing in a patient were to be determined by environment.

The thoughts of the 1950s were split between Europe and America, the former being focused on the effects of nature on behavior, while the latter conducted studies that appeared to show that behavior is the result of "trial and error," thus of experience.

The contemporary philosophy tends to agree that both nature and nurture have certain influences on behavior. Psychologist Alison Gopnik, explains that nature and nurture are interrelated since human beings are able to use their capacities to learn not only to be influenced by the environment but also to influence it.

As we can see, the nature approach somewhat emphasizes an irreversible trend (it is more difficult to act if these are characteristics passed on genetically), while the nurture approach believes that education can help in defining the individual's behavior and personality.

The philosophical debate nature vs. nurture is proved to be very important not only for the field of epistemology, but also for psychology.

The debate "touches upon a host of important real-life questions. To what extent can parents influence their children's personalities and intellects? What are the limits of educational enrichment? Are geniuses born or made? Is sexual orientation innate, learned or chosen? Can mental illness be in our genes? Does violence come from bad blood or bad environments?" (Lippa, 2005). These are only a few questions from a whole area contemporary psychology is dealing and trying to answer.

Today, psychology deals with a lot more sciences than it ever dealt with. A common position among contemporary scientists summarized by Steven Pinker: "No one today believes that the mind is a blank state; to refute such a beliefs to tip over a straw man. All behavior is the product of an inextricable interaction between heredity and environment during development, so the answer to all "nature-nurture" questions is some of each"(Pinker, 2004).

The fact that humans are born with all senses is an argument that supports the innate psychology. But the studies performed on subjects that lost one of their senses at a certain age and later regained showed that learned coordination of two or more senses in important to the human development. Traditional psychology was doubled by behavioral genetics that divided the notions furthermore. For example, the notion of environment was also divided into shared and non-shared features (Plomim, McClearn, 1993).

The researches done in the filed of behavioral genetics have proved that inherited factors influenced numerous areas of psychology. Estimates point toward a 35% rate of influence of inherited features on human behavior, especially in the area of cognitive abilities and less in that of personality traits (idem).

3) in many ways, we can consider that Greeks have laid the grounds for a laical and secular perception of the world and society in general, as we see it today. With the Greek philosophy primarily structured on reason and inquiry, the Greeks have influenced the Modern world, starting with the Renaissance, where the thread of thought was virtually picked up again by the Western philosophy.

If we look at modern scientific thought, this is obviously greatly relying on inquiry, analyzing, reasoning things and looking at the facts, using the existent variables to derive conclusions from them. All these have their initial origins and roots with the Ancient Greeks. When Archimedes discovered the laws regarding floating, he primarily followed these simple steps of observing, noting causes and effects, trying to link these through a hypothesis and demonstrating that hypothesis to turn it into a proper theorem that could later be scientifically applied. At the same time and in a similar manner, modern scientists use all these components of scientific discovery to draw conclusions about the scientific world.

However, this can also be translated to the human individual and human behavior. Scientific analysis has helped observe the relationship between individuals, the way the individual behaves in society and determine, through these observations, some of the scientific explanations for human nature.

On the other hand, the Greeks also seemed to be significantly more laical than today's society. If we look at the Greek gods, they are also common individuals, involved in the same arguments that human beings have and having almost some of the same interrelations problems that individuals have. At the same time, despite their supernatural powers, they are sometimes vulnerable to some of the other gods' actions and some of the tricks that the human beings can act on. This is all very different with the monotheistic religions, where God is almighty and impacts, in that position, the human society, as well as today's individual perceptions on the world and the role of human beings in today's world.

Following this train of thought, today you have many individuals proclaiming themselves as atheists, but who will always have a small, potential… READ MORE

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