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a clockwork orange novel essays on free will
determinism discusion
determinism discusion
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Free Will in A Clockwork Orange and Skinner's Freedom and the Control of Man
Socrates once said, "Know thyself," and over two thousand years later we're still perplexed with the complexities of human behavior. The concept of free will has been debated and challenged by science, religion, and philosophy throughout history. By free will, I mean our ability to choose and behave as we wish, without our choices being determined by outside sources. Such a notion has been discussed and disputed by philosophers like B.F. Skinner, Robert Kane, William Lycan, and Richard Hanley in very different ways.
In order to better understand the arguments of Skinner and Kane, we must first understand the concept of determinism. Determinism is the idea that all events are caused, occurring only as effects of causes before them. For example, the event of my bringing an umbrella to work was caused, or determined, by a rainstorm or perhaps by the day's weather forecast predicting rain. Whatever the reason, determinism follows that a later event is inevitable due to its earlier cause. If true, determinism holds that the future is fixed and unchangeable, in much the same way the past is unchangeable in time travel. If true, determinism leaves only one possible effect for each subsequent event. Influencing the ideas of determinism is the religious conception of predestination. Here the idea is that God has determined beforehand who will go to heaven and hell and nothing can be done to change the fixed and determined outcome. Predestination has been criticized by some because it seems to lead to fatalism. If our destinies are already decided, we seem to lack the free will to control our future. But believers in predestination believe tha...
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...ve it or we don't, whether it's determined or not, the notion of free will can help us better understand why we behave as we do. Perhaps someday, with our understanding of free will, we'll be able to do what Socrates recommended long ago.
Works Cited
Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. New York, NY: W W Norton & Company. 1986.
Kane, Robert. Selections from The Significance of Free Will. http://www.iusb.edu/~lzynda/scifi/kane.html.
Lycan, William. Consciousness. http://www.iusb.edu/~lzynda/scifi/lycan.html.
Hanley, Richard. The Metaphysics of Star Trek. Chapter 3 "Pro Creation" [Abridged] http://www.iusb.edu/~lzynda/scifi/hanley.html.
Persons Handout. X100/220. Philosophy, Science, and Science Fiction. The Concept of a Person.
Skinner, B.F. "Freedom and the Control of Man." http://www.iusb.edu/~lzynda/scifi/skinner.html.
The inability for others to distinct them from each other is emphasized in many episodes more prevalently the first. While shopping at the same store the sales clerk has issues pleasing both twins not knowing that they aren’t the same person and the girls being unaware of one another 's presents. Once, together the girls are unable to separate themselves enough from others to distinct the two despite having different personalities. "One’s own face is the most distinctive feature of the bodily self, and people typically show a clear advantage in recognizing their own face even more than other very familiar identities...monozygotic twins represent a unique model for exploring self-face processing." (Peter James Hills, 2014). Identity development begins with distinct knowledge physical self. Identical twins may seem to be at a slight disadvantage when beginning to formulate self because of extremely similar physical characteristics. However, twins can develop this a little better than others. The issue with identical twins lies with getting others to distinct them. In “Sister Sister” the girls struggle to develop separately as they age because despite recognizing the need for separation themselves others weren’t able to. The fight to set their selves apart from one another to others further pushes Tia’s more intelligent behavior; Tia reads more and pushes to achieve more so
The First five weeks the student’s learn life saving, knot tying, underwater knot tying, basic first aid, and surf passages in small inflatable boats. Along with this is a 50-yard underwater swim, which must be completed and the students are often revived when they pass out. Also throughout out the whole six months of BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition School), the Seal Teams go through many torturous events and lessons. One of these being surf torture. This is where the entire class must wade into the surf zone to their waistline, then sit down with arms linked. Just to let you know the water in Coronado, California never gets above sixty-eight degrees during the summer and fifty-eight degrees during the winter. There the men with linked arms will sit there for hours at a time, soon the cold sucks out all of their body warmth and the whole class is shivering in unison as the waves crash over there heads.
Hoadley, Johanna. “’36 Olympic Hopefuls Remember Nazi Past” Scripps Howard News Service,as provided by SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE 19 July 1996
Merriam Webster defines free will as the ability to make choices that are not controlled by fate or God. For years, philosophers have been contemplating whether or not free will exists. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume presents two opposing views to this debate: determinism and free will libertarianism. Determinism is the philosophical concept that every human decision and action is the result of previous states of affairs (Libet Experiments). This view suggests that there is no such thing as free will. Free will libertarianism is the opposing view which suggests that our actions are not determined. The libertarianism approach claims that we have the power to choose action A over action B or vice versa. These two approaches are contrasted with new experimental philosophy, most notably the experiments conducted by neuroscientist Benjamin Libet in the 1980's. His experiments, rooted in science, support the idea that we possess free will.
Humans have always question if we have free will or if we are unconsciously control by someone, and to understand or to answer the question, first we have to understand what is free will. According to the oxford dictionary, free will is the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion. However, most philosophers have decided that there might not be one single concept for the definition of free will.
The discussion as to whether nature or nurture were the driving force shaping our cognitive abilities, was for a long time considered interminable. In the 18th century, Locke and the English empiricists claimed that individuals were born with a tabula rasa and only experience could establish mind, consciousness and the self. On the continent, Leibniz envisaged the self as a monad carrying with it some knowledge of a basic understanding of the world. Until the 1960s, this dispute was still very vivid in the behavioral sciences: B. F. Skinner's school of behaviorism in the USA postulated (as reflexology did earlier) general rules for all types of learning, neglecting innate differences or predispositions. K. Lorenz was one of the protagonists of ethology in Europe, focusing on the inherited aspects of behavior. It was Lorenz who ended the antagonistic view of behavior in showing that there indeed are innate differences and predispositions in behavior where only little learning occurs. Today, it is largely agreed upon that nature and nurture are intimately cooperating to bring about adaptive behaviors. Probably only in very few cases ontogenetic programs are not subjected to behavioral plasticity at all. Conversely, the possibility to acquire behavioral traits has to be genetically coded for.
In A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess provides many examples relating to the topic of free will. Throughout the novel Burgess makes several attempts to show the importance of free will and many other themes through Alex, the main character. Alex goes through trials and tribulations in his journey through life. From being with his “droogs” in a milkbar to prison to being a guinea pig as they were trying to “cure” him. “Ultimately A Clockwork Orange shows that free will and choice can be harmful and dangerous but is ultimately an inherent part of human beings that cannot be repressed or manipulated for the benefits of the state” (Kolker, 2003).
Scientists make a good point about genes but I believe physical aspects come through genetics, but that personality development is shaped based solely on how a person has been nurtured through their lives. All children are bad at one time in their lives; consider this, a 4 year old girl throws a book at her brother, and is punished she is put in the corner.
Nature vs nurture debate is one of the oldest arguments in the history of psychology. It is the scientific cultural, and philosophical debate about whether human culture, behavior, and personality are caused primarily by nature or nurture. Nature and nurture are both equally important. They are the two are major influences that affect the person you grow to be and will determine what your children will be tomorrow. Nature refers to heredity, which are traits and features that are inherited from your parents and ancestors. At birth you, as a person, inherits 50% of each parent 's genetic material that are passed along through the chromosomes found in the DNA. Hair color, height, body type, and eye color are some examples of characteristics
Throughout the history of human existence, there have always been questions that have plagued man for centuries. Some of these questions are “what is the meaning of life” and “which came first, the chicken or the egg”. Within the past 400 years a new question has surfaced which takes our minds to much further levels. The question asked is whether nature or nurture has more of an impact on the growing development of people. It is a fact that a combination of nature and nurture play important roles in how humans behave socially. However, I believe that nature has a more domineering role in the development of how people behave in society with regards to sexual orientation, crimes and violence and mental disorders.
Nature by itself can affect a child’s development. If the child is born with a disease or mental illness, they may develop at a slower pace. For example, if a child is born with Asperger’s syndrome, the child will have a difficult time with social skills and understanding emotions. Nurture deals with the environment. If a child was raised in a hostile environment, that child is more likely to be hostile when they get older. Environment may play a larger role in most cases due to everyday lifestyle, from the city you live in to the way you are raised. If one was raised in a healthy house hold, someone who lived in a toxic household may behave differently.
We could have everything we wanted regarding our height, hair colour and intelligence level but at the same time it does depend on our surroundings and what environment we grew up in t...
more than half the variation was found to be due to heredity. Among these traits were
A reason why some think that free will is not possible is because many believe that the only way we know about nature is from observations that we collect. Since observation can not give us a justification of free will, it is easy to think that there isn’t any such thing. Free will may not be something that we can see directly, but what best explains what we do see in human life. This may include, for example, the mistakes that human beings make in contrast to the few mistakes that other animals make. We also notice that human beings do all kinds of odd things that cannot be accounted for. We can examine a person’s background and find that some people with bad childhoods turn out to be decent, and vise versa. ...
It is true that identical twins who are raised together have many things in common,