Different Views And Opinions About Free Will

Their wills, which are believed to be freely gained, are actually the result of a causal chain originating from birth. The fact that humans are governed by their genes and environment means that the ability to make moral decisions as free agents is illusory. For these reasons, the hard determinist position, which is a sound, science-based theory, seems to be incompatible with the concept of free will.

The movement was founded by John B. Watson, and one of his biggest premises was that thoughts were unobservable and, therefore, should not be studied. Actions, or behaviors, on the contrary, were the only objective aspects worthy of scientific inquiry. Such proponents of this theory include classic experimental psychologists such as Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner. The major tenets of behaviorism are targeted at a stimulus and a response. For example, an individual was placed in this situation which caused them to behave this way.

Founded by John B Watson in 1915 the behaviourist approach studies observed behavioural responses of humans and animals. The behaviourist approach believes we learn to behave in response to our environment, either by stimulus-response association, or as a result of reinforcement.

In 1913 Watson gave a lecture called “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It”. It was in this speech that Watson proposed the idea of an objective psychology of behavior called “behaviorism”. John saw psychology as the study of people’s actions and their ability to predict and control their actions. This became known as the behaviorist’s theory. During the next few years, different ideas about behaviorism was studied. (Muskingum.edu) Behaviorism came to be widely accepted among psychologists and the general public, becoming a popular field of study in the 1920’s through the 1960’s. It was a huge contradiction to the views of the eugenics movement, which claimed that heredity was the primary force determining a person’s potential and behavior. Behaviorism, with its promise of the possibility of change, and even improvement. (A science Odyssey, published by

Psychologists today like John B. Watson who wrote Behaviorism, believe that all human behavior is a result of conditioning. Therefore humans can be taught to act any way the manipulator wants them too. Behaviorism, a school of psychology, founded by John B. Watson, is the concept that all behavior stems from a form of conditioning. This conditioning could be being betrayed and thrown in jail, or having you father murdered. In Watsons’s book Behaviorism, Watson states:

Behaviorism has a relation to free will. Watson’s view on behaviorism is “...psychology should embrace behavior as its subject matter and rely on experimental observation of that subject matter as its method” (Moore 451). Also Watson published his paper Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, and in this paper he states:

Many ideas were shared between Watson, Tolman, and Skinner who all played a role in the forming of behaviorism. They did, however, differ on some of their beliefs as well as their methods of study. At this time, methods of studying psychology as well as psychology in general were in the developing stages. Watson was largely credited with the foundation of behaviorism, however, he was by no means the only one to make contributions. There has been some debate as to whether Watson’s contributions were enough to make him the “founder of behaviorism.” It is important to examine contributions from several of the early

Behaviorism is “the view that psychology should be an objective science that studies behavior without reference to mental processes” (Myers, 2011, p. 6). John Watson believed that science is based upon observation. Therefore, Watson developed behaviorism based upon the idea that while you cannot observe a feeling or thought of a person, you can observe their reactions

THe Behavioral perspective believes that our behavior is the result of the environment we are in. Behaviorists believe that psychologists should rely on the stimuli in the environment and our response to the stimuli. There perspective was that our behaviors are the result of our upbringing and environment. The behavioral perspective works on the molecular level to understand an individual 's behavior. They developed research generated evidence. John Watson was the founder of American behaviorism. Watson advocated that psychology is a science and it should be limited to observable, measurable behaviors. Watson studied babies and how they learned everything from their environment. He advocated that nurture was stronger than nature. Watson was famous for his experiment with Baby Albert and a white rat. Baby Albert did not fear the white at at first but began to fear it once it was associated with a loud sound. Watson proved through his experiments that parents should take

John B. Watson, the main founder of Behaviorism, was born in Greenville, South Carolina, and attended Fruman University and the University of Chicago (Weidman, 2005) where he studied in the department of philosophy with Henry Herbert Donaldson and James Rowland Angell. He became a professor in 1908 at John Hopkins University where he taught psychology. During his time as a professor, Watson completed a few experiments that would support his claims about behaviorism, such as The Little Albert experiment where he “emphasized the importance of learning and environmental influences in human development” (Plucker, 2002). In 1920, the same year Little Albert was conducted, he resigned his position as a professor after a personal scandal (Plucker,

John B. Watson coined the term “behaviorism”, or the scientific study of human behavior. Behaviorism is also referred to as behavioral psychology. Behaviorism is a theory of learning based upon the idea that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning, which occurs through interaction with the environment. In addition, Watson proposed the process of classical conditioning, based on Pavlov’s observations, had the ability to explain everything regarding human psychology (McLeod, 2004).

Although Watson was not the first to suggest an empirical and objective approach to psychological research he was the first to offer a coherent and organized program, and is often viewed as the catalyst for behaviorism, especially among American psychologists (Bewsbury, 2013). Perhaps the most famous behaviorist is B.F. Skinner (b.1904-d.1990). Skinner’s approach almost completely disregarded anything outside of observable behaviors, and his strict approach to looking at anything other than observable behaviors resulted in the development of the term radical behaviorism (Feist et al., 2013).

“Why don’t we make what can be observed the real field of psychology” (Watson, 1929). Watson (1878-1958) was born into a poor family in South Carolina. His mother was a religious woman, and his father drank a lot and had multiple affairs (Watson, 1999). Watson himself married twice, having two children in each marriage. He didn’t seem to have good relationships with his children – it is said that one of the main reasons for this may be because he used his children throughout his research. He studied in the University of Chicago where he later became known as the founder of Behaviourism. He wrote an essay in 1914 titled “Psychology as the Behaviourist views it” where he stated that behaviourism is an objective experimental branch of natural science (Watson, 1914). Behaviourism is a theory of learning that argues that all behaviours are acquired through conditioning (Carver & Scheier, 2012). Behaviourists believe

Behaviorism is an approach to psychology based on the assumption that an organism’s behavior—what an organism physically does—can be explained without referring to its internal mental state, and that the sources of an organism’s behavior can be found externally, in its environment (Graham). According to this attitude, the inner mental processes of organisms, such as thoughts and emotions, add little to the study of how or why an organism performs an action, or how it should be made to perform an action. For example, if a researcher was studying the origins of a certain behavior in an organism, he or she would look for the stimuli (what was happening near the organism) that cause said organism to respond (perform an action, move its arms, cry, blink, etc.). As John B. Watson, the founder of behaviorism, said, the purpose of psychology is “[t]o predict, given the stimulus, what reaction will take place; or, given the reaction, state what the situation or stimulus is that has caused the reaction” (Graham).

John B. Watson has been credited for founding the school of behaviourism in 1913, his now renown lecture given at Columbia University begun the official founding of behaviourism and he became well-known for his “Little Albert” study that demonstrated how experience rearranged the stimuli that caused emotional responses such as fear, rage and love. Watson may have founded behaviourism but he paved the way for many individual functionalists such as Ivan Sechenov, Ivan Pavlov, and Vladimir Bechterev to make their own contributions to the broader field of psychology. So what is Behaviourism? Watson insisted that behaviour be psychology’s subject of matter and that psychology’s goal was to be the prediction and control of behaviour.