DETERMINISM VERSUS FREE WILL Introduction The

Philosophical Notions of Determinism and Free Will

As a philosophical doctrine, determinism can be defined as the conceptual proposition that every event, mental and physical, has a cause, and the cause being given, the event invariably follows (Berofsky, 1971). In other words, the cause "determines" the nature of what will happen.

With respect to human behavior, the core of determinism is the notion that all human action is caused entirely by preceding events, and not by the exercise of the will (Honderick, 1993). On the other hand, the philosophical doctrine of Free Will posits the power or ability of the human mind to choose a course of action or make a decision independent of other influences, such as heredity, environment, or divine predetermination (Kane, 1996).

Several views of free will have been developed by philosophers, metaphysicians and theologians (Felt, 1994). Some metaphysicians and theologians propose that a rational universe must be based on a

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ermine an objective framework through which one can distinguish cause from effect and whether one can know an objective effect if one is always a part of its cause (Liboff, 1997). Pervin (1980) reports that philosophical assumptions about human nature (e.g., are human actions determined or do they have free will?) are important in psychology because they influence all aspects of the discipline including its focus, its research and clinical methods, and its interpretations of observed behavior. According to Pervin, the father of psychology, Sigmund Freud postulated a deterministic view of human nature. Specifically, Freud viewed the human as an energy system that was subject to the same physical laws that regulated all phenomena, one of which is, of course, the law of cause and effect. According to Pervin (1980), Freud viewed the human as an energy system whose behavior was driven by the "causes" of sexual and aggressive instincts. In more recent times, deterministic psychological views have been associated with behavioristic theory. In general, these theories postulate that all human behavior is environmentally determined; in other words, one's behavior is not motivated, it is elicited by environmental stimuli (Pervi
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