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MAN BETWEEN FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM
In the human sciences, the dilemma of freedom-determinism in relation to human actions has been one of the central ones for many centuries, although the content of both of these concepts has changed significantly. Historically, the first version of determinism was the idea of fate, fate, and divine destiny. Accordingly, the problem of freedom in philosophy and theology arose in connection with the problems of will (“free will”) and choice (“freedom of choice”). On the one hand, the concept of divine destiny left no room for individual freedom, on the other hand, the thesis about man’s godlikeness, his divine nature (“in the image and likeness”) presupposed the possibility of man to influence his destiny. The last thesis was defended, in particular, by many Renaissance thinkers, who refuted the view of man as a toy in the clutches of fate. Erasmus of Rotterdam in his treatise “On Free Will” argued that a person is free to choose the path of sin or the path of salvation. God can grant salvation to a person, but the choice remains for the person whether he wants to be saved, to entrust himself to God.
In European philosophy and science of the New Age, in connection with the successes of the natural science study of man, the problem of determining man by his physicality, psychophysiological organization, mechanisms and automatisms of behavior arose. The problem of freedom received new impetus in the context of the problem of reason, the possibility of awareness of what influences human behavior.
Our century is characterized by the awareness of a new type of determinism - the determination of consciousness and behavior by objective conditions of existence, social and cultural environment, “social being” (K. Marx) and “social unconscious” (E. Fromm). An extremely important perspective on the problem of freedom was revealed by F. Nietzsche, who belonged chronologically to the 19th century, but ideologically to the 20th. He was the first to pose the problem of human self-transcendence - overcoming oneself as a factual reality, breaking into the sphere of the possible. Nietzsche was also the first to contrast the negative characteristic of “freedom from” with the positive characteristic of “freedom for.” In the works of existentialist philosophers, primarily J.P. Sartre (J.P. Sartre) and A. Camus (A. Camus), the philosophical consideration of freedom was largely psychologized. Freedom appeared as a heavy burden, sometimes unbearable, giving rise to emptiness, existential anxiety and the desire to escape. The latter became the subject of the aforementioned study by E. Fromm, “Flight from Freedom.”
In psychology, since the beginning of the century, there has been a demarcation between the problem of will, understood as the voluntary control of behavior on the basis of conscious decisions, and the problem of freedom itself, which has been pushed to the periphery of psychology for a long time. From time to time it was raised in a general theoretical context in the form of no longer the opposition “freedom-determinism” (since there were no psychologists denying this or that determinism of behavior in our century), but as a opposition to the postulates of “hard determinism”, which assumes that the determination of mental processes and behavior is universal in nature and leaves no room for real freedom, and “soft determinism,” meaning the presence of some space of freedom among deterministic processes (see review works). One example of “hard determinism” is the point of view of P.V. Simonov, who declares freedom to be an illusion that arises due to the fact that we are not fully aware of all the determinants influencing us. From the point of view of an external observer, a person is completely determined in his choice. Interestingly, this opinion is in conflict with a pattern known in psychology as the “fundamental attribution error”: people tend to overestimate the influence of external factors on behavior, being in the position of the “subject” of this behavior, and underestimate it, assessing someone else’s behavior from the position of an external observer .
Extreme variants of “hard determinism” are considered to be psychoanalysis 3. Freud, which considers a person as entirely determined by his past, and neo-behaviorism of B. Skinner, which asserts the possibility and necessity of total control and management of all human behavior through a specially organized system of incentives. At the same time, even regarding Freudianism there are other opinions. Thus, M. Iturate argues that psychoanalysis is characterized by a focus on affirming freedom. A person acquires it by creating meanings that guide his behavior, thereby leaving the sphere of influence of natural laws. A similar position is occupied by the prominent psychoanalyst R. Holt, according to whom freedom and determinism do not contradict each other. He also considers Freud's main merit to be the discovery of the semantic basis of behavior. The behaviorist position also does not necessarily imply "hard determinism" of the Skinnerian type. It was within the framework of neobehaviorism that some versions of “soft determinism” were formulated, linking a certain degree of freedom inherent in a person with independence from the current situation or with goals projected into the future. These arguments, like others, for example, those explaining freedom through reliance on personal motives and values, are limited, however, to individual elements of freedom of choice in a specific situation and have no relation to freedom as a basic anthropological characteristic of a person, especially since the research processes that developed in the post-war period choice and decision-making at different levels “separated” the issues of choice and freedom itself.
Choice is a concrete act that can be recorded by an external observer. It is localized in time; between two acts of choice there may be a space in which no choices are made, although at any moment in time when there is a reflection of the situation, choice is possible. There are no alternative situations; at the same time, a necessary condition for constructing initially non-obvious alternatives is work on reflexive awareness of the situation. Where reflection is not included, there may indeed be no choice. Choice is a complexly organized activity carried out at different levels of complexity and uncertainty of the situation.
Freedom, on the contrary, phenomenologically represents a certain basic state, relating more to the possibility than to the act of its implementation, a specific event. If I have experienced freedom, then I have already found it. "Freedom produces... freedom." If the essence of freedom is control over one’s activity at all points of its trajectory, then it exists both at the points of choice and in the intervals between them, and the choice itself is carried out either freely (if it can be changed) or not (if it is strictly defined ). “A synonym for freedom is life... The living thing differs from the dead in that the living can always be different.” Freedom and personal choice are thus not the same thing, although they are closely interrelated and reinforce each other. "Freedom is cumulative; a choice that includes elements of freedom expands the possibility of freedom for subsequent choices."
Let us now make a short review of the main approaches to the problem of freedom and self-determination in modern psychology.
PSYCHOLOGY OF FREEDOM AND SELF-DETERMINATION: BASIC APPROACHES
The concepts of “freedom” and “self-determination” are very close. The concept of freedom describes phenomenologically experienced control over one’s behavior and is used for global anthropological characteristics of a person and his behavior. The concept of self-determination is used as an explanatory one at the strictly psychological level of considering the “mechanisms” of freedom. In this case, one should distinguish between self-determination, on the one hand, and self-regulation or self-control, on the other. In the latter case, regulators can be introjected norms, conventions, opinions and values of authoritative others, social or group myths, etc.; By controlling his behavior, the subject does not act as its author, as in true self-determination.
Unlike G.A. Balla, we include in our review only explicit concepts of freedom and self-determination, leaving behind numerous domestic and foreign approaches that can be interpreted as related to the mechanisms of self-determination.
Of the two aspects of freedom - external (absence of external restrictions, “freedom from”) and internal (psychological position, “freedom for”) - we chose the second as the subject of analysis. Sometimes clarifying definitions are used (“psychological freedom”, “internal freedom”), sometimes they are omitted, since we do not consider the first aspect, which is more related to socio-political issues, at all.
The problem of freedom received its most complete substantive development in the 60-80s. from a number of existentialist-oriented authors, such as E. Fromm, V. Frankl, R. May, etc., and in the 80-90s. under different names she received a “registration” in academic psychology.
FREEDOM AS AWARENESS: E. FROMM
E. Fromm considers positive freedom, “freedom for,” the main condition for human growth and development, linking it with spontaneity, integrity, creativity and biophilia - the desire to affirm life as opposed to death. At the same time, freedom is ambivalent. She is both a gift and a burden; a person is free to accept it or refuse it. A person himself decides the question of the degree of his freedom, making his own choice: either to act freely, i.e. based on rational considerations, or give up freedom. Many people prefer to run away from freedom, thereby choosing the path of least resistance. Of course, everything is decided not by any one act of choice, but is determined by the gradually emerging integral structure of character, to which individual choices contribute. As a result, some people grow up free, while others do not.
These ideas from Fromm contain a dual interpretation of the concept of freedom. The first meaning of freedom is the original freedom of choice, the freedom to decide whether to accept freedom in the second meaning or refuse it. Freedom in the second meaning is a character structure expressed in the ability to act on the basis of reason. In other words, in order to choose freedom, a person must already have initial freedom and the ability to make this choice in an intelligent way. There is some paradox here. Fromm, however, emphasizes that freedom is not a trait or disposition, but an act of self-liberation in the decision-making process. This is a dynamic, ongoing state. The amount of freedom available to a person is constantly changing.
The result of the choice depends most of all, of course, on the strength of the conflicting tendencies. But they differ not only in strength, but also in the degree of awareness. As a rule, positive, creative tendencies are well understood, while dark, destructive tendencies are poorly understood. According to Fromm, a clear awareness of all aspects of the choice situation helps make the choice optimal. He identifies six main aspects that require awareness:
1) what is good and what is bad;
2) a method of action in a given situation leading to the goal;
3) own unconscious desires;
4) real opportunities contained in the situation;
5) the consequences of each of the possible decisions;
6) lack of awareness; a desire to act contrary to the expected negative consequences is also necessary. Thus, freedom appears as an action arising from the awareness of alternatives and their consequences, the distinction between real and illusory alternatives.
FREEDOM AS A POSITION: V. FRANKL
The main thesis of V. Frankl’s doctrine of free will states: a person is free to find and realize the meaning of his life, even if his freedom is noticeably limited by objective reasons. Frankl recognizes the obvious determinism of human behavior, denying its pan-determinism. A person is not free from external and internal circumstances, but they do not completely determine him. According to Frankl, freedom coexists with necessity, and they are localized in different dimensions of human existence.
Frankl talks about human freedom in relation to drives, heredity and the external environment. Heredity, drives and external conditions have a significant influence on behavior, but a person is free to take a certain position in relation to them. Freedom to desires manifests itself in the ability to say “no” to them. Even when a person acts under the influence of an immediate need, he can allow it to determine his behavior, accept it or reject it. Freedom to heredity is expressed in relation to it as to material - that which is given to us within ourselves. Freedom to external circumstances also exists, although it is finite and not unlimited, it is expressed in the ability to take one position or another in relation to them. Thus, the influence of external circumstances on us is mediated by a person’s position in relation to them.
All these determinants are localized in the biological and psychological dimensions of man, and freedom is located in the higher, poetic or spiritual dimension. A person is free due to the fact that his behavior is determined primarily by values and meanings localized in this dimension. Freedom stems from the fundamental anthropological abilities of a person for self-distancing (taking a position in relation to oneself) and self-transcendence (going beyond oneself as a given, overcoming oneself). Therefore, a person is free even in relation to himself, free to rise above himself, to go beyond his limits. "Personality is what I am, as opposed to the type or character that I have. My personal being represents freedom - freedom to become a person. It is freedom from being exactly this way, freedom to become something else."
FREEDOM AS AWARENESS OF POSSIBILITIES WITHIN DESTINY: R. MAY
Our consciousness, writes the leading theorist of existential psychology R. May, is in a state of constant oscillation between two poles: an active subject and a passive object. This creates the potential for choice. Freedom does not lie in the ability to be a pure subject all the time, but in the ability to choose either one or another type of existence, to experience oneself in either one or the other capacity, and to move dialectically from one to the other. The space of freedom is the distance between the states of the subject and the object, it is a certain emptiness that needs to be filled.
May, first of all, distinguishes freedom from rebellion, which, although it represents “a normal internal movement towards freedom,” is nevertheless structured by the external structure against which it is carried out, and thus is entirely dependent on it. "When there are no established standards against which rebellion is directed, it has no force." Freedom is not laxity, lack of plan and purpose. This is not a rigid, definite doctrine; it cannot be formulated in the form of specific regulations; it is something living and changing.
In its most general form, freedom is a person’s ability to manage his own development, closely related to self-awareness, flexibility, openness, and readiness to change. Through self-awareness, we can interrupt the chain of stimuli and reactions, creating a pause in it in which we can make a conscious choice of our response. By creating this pause, a person somehow throws his decision on the scale, mediates the connection between stimulus and response, and thereby decides what the reaction will be. The less developed a person’s self-awareness, the more unfree he is, i.e. the more his life is controlled by various repressed contents, conditioned connections formed in childhood, which he does not keep in memory, but which are stored in the unconscious and control his behavior. As self-awareness develops, a person's range of choices and freedom increase accordingly.
Freedom is not the opposite of determinism, but correlates with specific givens and inevitabilities (they must be consciously accepted), only in relation to which it is determined. May calls these givens, inevitabilities and limitations that form the space of determinism in human life fate. The paradox of freedom is that it owes its significance to fate and vice versa; freedom and fate are unthinkable without each other. "Any expansion of freedom gives birth to a new determinism, and any expansion of determinism gives birth to a new freedom. Freedom is a circle within a wider circle of determinism, which, in turn, is within an even wider circle of freedom, and so on ad infinitum." Freedom always manifests itself in relation to some realities and givens of life, such as, say, the need for rest and food or the inevitability of death. Freedom begins where we accept some reality, but not out of blind necessity, but on the basis of our own choice. This does not mean that we give in and give in, accepting some restrictions on our freedom. On the contrary, this is a constructive act of freedom. The paradox of freedom is that freedom owes its vitality to fate, and fate owes its significance to freedom. They condition each other and cannot exist without each other.
Freedom is the ability to change what is, the ability to transcend one’s nature. When making a free choice, we simultaneously scroll through and compare a number of different possibilities in our minds, while it is not yet clear which path we will choose and how we will act. Therefore, freedom always fundamentally deals with the possible. This is the essence of freedom: it transforms the possible into the actual due to the fact that, accepting at any given moment the limits of the actual, it works mainly with the realities of the possible. The opposite of freedom is automatic conformity. Since freedom is inseparable from the anxiety that accompanies new opportunities, so many people only dream of being told that freedom is an illusion and they don’t need to worry about it. The goal of psychotherapy is to achieve a state in which a person feels free to choose his own lifestyle, accept the situation to the extent that it is inevitable, and change something to the extent that this is realistically possible. The main task of a psychotherapist is to help people gain freedom to understand and experience their capabilities.
The inevitability of evil is the price we pay for freedom. If a person is free to choose, no one can guarantee that his choice will be one way and not another. Sensitivity to goodness means sensitivity to the consequences of one's actions; By expanding the potential for good, it simultaneously expands the potential for evil.
MULTILEVEL STRUCTURE OF SUBJECTIVITY: R. HARRE
In contrast to the existentially oriented theories of Fromm, Frankl, May and a number of other clinically oriented authors, who write about the problems of human freedom in a language that is close and understandable to non-specialists, the concept of “freedom” is rarely found in academic works. As a rule, this issue is called autonomy, self-determination, or some other designation. One of the terminological guises of the problem of freedom is the concept of agency, an exact translation of which into Russian is impossible. We believe that its most correct translation corresponds to the concept of “subjectivity” (we are talking about the ability to act as an “agent” or subject, i.e. an actor, a driving force of action).
One of the most developed and recognized is the theory of subjectivity, developed by R. Harré in line with his widely known approach to explaining social behavior. The model of the subject is at the center of his theory. "The most general requirement for any being to be considered a subject is that it should have a certain degree of autonomy. By this I mean that its behavior (actions and acts) are not completely determined by the conditions of its immediate environment." Autonomy, according to Harré, presupposes the possibility of distancing both from the influences of the environment and from the principles on which behavior has been based up to the present moment. A full-fledged agent is able to switch from one determinant of behavior to another, make choices between equally attractive alternatives, resist temptations and distractions, and change the guiding principles of behavior. “A person is a perfect subject in relation to a certain category of actions if both the tendency to act and the tendency to abstain from action are in his power.”
The most profound manifestation of subjectivity are two types of “self-intervention”:
1) attention and control over influences (including our own motives and feelings, which usually control our actions, bypassing conscious control),
2) changing your lifestyle, your identity. Logically, two conditions are identified as prerequisites for subjectivity: firstly, the ability to represent a wider range of possible futures than those that can be realized, and, secondly, the ability to carry out any selected subset of them, as well as interrupt any initiated action. Real people differ in the degree to which they conform to this ideal model, as well as in the ways in which they generate action.
Thus, the determination of human actions is very far from simple linear causation. Harré characterizes the system of regulation of human actions in the cybernetic concepts of multi-level and multi-vertex. “This is a system that can examine each causal influence on it from the angle of its correspondence to a set of principles built into higher levels of the system. If the system is multi-vertex, its highest level will also be complex, capable of switching from one subsystem of this level to another. Such a system can have an infinite number of levels and on each of them an infinite number of subsystems. Such a system is capable of horizontal shifts, i.e., switching control of lower levels from one subsystem to another of the same level. that is, to placing horizontal shifts under the supervision and control of criterion systems of higher levels. This system is a pale shadow of those complex shifts and switching that occur in the internal activity of real subjects."
The main problem of Harré's theory is the definition of these "higher level criterial systems." He talks about a “secret” that he tries to expose by referring to the “moral order” that characterizes a person’s relationship with himself, manifested in expressions like “You are responsible for this to yourself,” “Don’t let yourself get down,” etc. . The ambiguity of this definition contrasts sharply with the logical order and comprehensive thoughtfulness of the entire previous analysis.
SELF-EFFICACY THEORY: A. BANDURA
According to the author of the social-cognitive theory of personality and behavior regulation A. Bandura, there is no more significant mechanism of subjectivity than beliefs in one’s own effectiveness. "Perceived self-efficacy is the belief in one's abilities to organize and carry out the actions required to produce given results." If people are not convinced that their actions can produce the desired effects, they have little determination to act.
The basis of human freedom, according to Bandura, is influence on oneself, which is possible due to the dual nature of the Self - simultaneously as subject and object - and causally influences behavior in the same way as its external causes. “People have some influence over what they do through the alternatives they consider, through the prediction and evaluation of the outcomes they imagine, including their own self-evaluative reactions, and through their assessment of their ability to carry out what they intend.” One of the main manifestations of subjective determination is the ability of people to act differently from the forces of the external environment, and in situations of coercion, to resist it. It is thanks to the ability to influence themselves that people are, to some extent, the architects of their own destiny. Bandura's general formula boils down to the fact that “human behavior is determined, but determined in part by the individual himself, and not just by environmental factors.”
On the one hand, self-efficacy is a universal motivational mechanism that operates in almost all spheres of life, on the other hand, the content of self-efficacy beliefs is specific to different spheres. That is why Bandura considers the use of specific scales for diagnosing self-efficacy in different types of activities to be more appropriate than the development of a general standardized questionnaire.
THEORY OF SELF-DETERMINATION AND PERSONAL AUTONOMY: E. DECI AND R. RYAN
The most authoritative and developed theories of subjective causation also include the theory of self-determination by E. Deci and R. Ryan. Self-determination in the context of this approach means a feeling of freedom in relation to both the forces of the external environment and the forces within the individual. According to the authors, the hypothesis of the existence of an internal need for self-determination "helps predict and explain the development of behavior from simple reactivity to integrated values; from heteronomy to autonomy in relation to those types of behavior that are initially devoid of internal motivation." In recent works by these authors, the concept of autonomy comes to the fore. A person is called autonomous when he acts as a subject, based on a deep sense of self. To be autonomous thus means to be self-initiated and self-regulated, in contrast to situations of coercion and seduction, where actions do not flow from the deep self. The quantitative measure of autonomy is the extent to which people live in harmony with their true self. The concept of autonomy refers to both a process personal development and its results; the first is reflected in the effect of organismic integration, and the second in the integration of the self and self-determination of behavior. In turn, autonomous behavior leads to greater assimilation of experience and increased coherence and structure of the self, etc.
1) autonomous orientation, based on the belief about the connection between conscious behavior and its results; the source of behavior is awareness of one’s needs and feelings;
2) controlled orientation, also based on a feeling of connection between behavior and its result, but the source of behavior is external requirements;
3) impersonal orientation, based on the belief that the result cannot be achieved purposefully and predictably.
Although these orientations represent stable personality characteristics manifested in individual differences, Deci and Ryan argue for a model of the gradual formation of personal autonomy through the internalization of motivation and the corresponding experience of control over behavior: from purely extrinsic motivation through the stages of introjection, identification and integration to intrinsic motivation and autonomy. Autonomy appears in the latest works of the authors not just as one of the personality tendencies, but as a universal criterion and mechanism of normal development, the violation of which leads to various types of developmental pathology. Experimental evidence suggests, in particular, that higher autonomy correlates with greater behavioral and emotional congruence; A large amount of empirical data has been accumulated on the conditions that promote and, on the contrary, disrupt the development of autonomy in the process of personal development.
OTHER APPROACHES IN FOREIGN PSYCHOLOGY
Let us briefly look at several more approaches to the problem of freedom and self-determination in foreign psychology. W. Tageson, in his synthetic version of humanistic psychology, relying not so much on general anthropological considerations as on specific psychological data, defines freedom as the experience of self-determination associated with self-awareness. “Psychological freedom or the power of self-determination is inextricably linked to the degree and extent of self-awareness and thus closely correlates with psychological health or authenticity.”
It is formed in the process of individual development. The individual variable is the “zone of personal freedom,” which also varies in different situations. Tijson identifies three parameters of freedom:
1) its cognitive basis - the level of cognitive development,
2) the volume of external restrictions,
3) subconscious internal determinants and limitations. A key process in gaining and expanding freedom is reflective awareness of the determinants and limitations of one's own activity. “As I increasingly bring into the field of awareness the subconscious depths of my personality (or peaks, if I gradually become aware of previously hidden or unrealized potentials), my psychological freedom grows.”
Similar views are developed by J. Easterbrook, who pays special attention to control over basic needs and anxiety arising in relations with the outside world. The effectiveness of control and the degree of freedom are directly related to intellectual abilities, learning ability and competence.
J. Rychlak also highlights the problem of self-determination. He sees the basis of freedom in the ability of the subject himself, based on his desires and meaningful goals formulated on their basis, to determine his own actions, to be included in the system of determination of his activity and to restructure it, complementing the causal determination of the target’s behavior. The basis of what is usually called “free will” is, according to Richlak, the dialectical ability of self-reflection and transcendence, which allows the subject to question and change the premises on which his behavior is based.
ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM AND SELF-DETERMINATION IN POST-SOVIET PSYCHOLOGY
In post-Soviet psychology, over the past decade, original works have also appeared that pay tribute to the problems of freedom and self-determination of the individual.
In the reflexive-activity analysis of E.I. Kuzmina characterizes freedom through a person’s self-determination in relation to the boundaries of his virtual capabilities based on the reflection of these boundaries. Three aspects of freedom are distinguished: sensory (subjective experience of freedom), rational (reflection of the boundaries of possibilities) and effective (the ability to actually change the boundaries of virtual possibilities). Freedom, as Kuzmina shows, is associated with age-related stages of development, in particular, it depends on the formation of intelligence.
In the multilevel model of personal self-regulation E.R. Kaliteevskaya and D.A. Leontief freedom is considered as a form of activity characterized by three features: awareness, mediation by the value “for what” and controllability at any point. Accordingly, a lack of freedom may be associated with a lack of understanding of the forces influencing the subject, with a lack of clear value guidelines and with indecision and inability to interfere in the course of one’s own life. Freedom is formed in ontogenesis in the process of a person acquiring the internal right to activity and value guidelines. The critical period for the transformation of children's spontaneity into freedom as a conscious activity is adolescence, when, under favorable circumstances, freedom (a form of activity) and responsibility (a form of regulation) are integrated into a single mechanism of autonomous self-determination of a mature personality. Psychologically unfavorable conditions for the development of personality in ontogenesis, associated with an unstable self-attitude and lack of the right to one’s own activity, on the contrary, lead to the experience of life as entirely determined by external requirements, expectations and circumstances. The degree of development of individual freedom is manifested in the grounds of personal choices.
G.A. The score defines freedom to a first approximation through conditions that promote “the harmonious development and manifestation of the individual’s versatile abilities.” Ball's approach to the problem of internal or personal freedom is more descriptive and synthetic than analytical. Starting from the first definition, he formulates a number of holistic psychological characteristics of the individual that act as such conditions. However, he practically does not touch upon the mechanisms of self-determination and autonomy at the level of a single action.
Finally, it is necessary to mention the concept of free causality by V.A. Petrovsky. He takes an unconventional path, focusing on the analysis of various aspects of the self as carriers or sources of various types of causation. In this approach, I appears as the subject of freedom, and freedom itself is associated with going beyond the limits of what is predetermined in human activity - into the sphere of the infinite.
SOME THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The above review shows that, although the problems of freedom and self-determination of personality are not yet included in the number of traditional psychological studies, nevertheless, the history of attempts to consider the phenomena of freedom, autonomy and self-determination as key to the study of motivation and personality is already quite solid. “Roll calls” between different authors and invariants in the understanding of freedom are also obvious. Let's try to give the most general definition of freedom. It can be understood as the possibility of initiation, change or termination by the subject of its activity at any point in its course, as well as abandonment of it. Freedom implies the possibility of overcoming all forms and types of determination of personality activity, external to the current existential Self, including one’s own attitudes, stereotypes, scenarios, character traits and psychodynamic complexes.
Let us highlight a number of key, in our opinion, aspects of the problem of freedom and consider them separately.
Multiplicity and multi-level regulation of behavior. Transcendence. In the theories of V. Frankl and R. Harré, this aspect is most clearly manifested. The processes of human interaction with the world and the regulation of these processes are carried out at several levels. Higher regulatory authorities located at higher levels allow the subject to free himself from the determining influence of the lower ones and transcend them. A flying airplane does not abolish the laws of gravity, but it is able to oppose them with other forces and laws that overcome their influence, due to the fact that these laws are carefully taken into account in the design of the aircraft. A shift to a higher level of regulation, Transcendence of patterns operating at lower levels, give a person relative freedom, freeing him from many types of determination (but not all). The general principle of such transcendence is expressed by Hegel’s brilliant formula: “Circumstances and motives dominate a person only to the extent that he himself allows them to do so.” Freedom thus lies in the rise to a higher level of regulation, at which the others are overcome. This principle is deployed, in particular, in the multi-regulatory personality model we propose.
Determination gaps. Bifurcation processes. How, in principle, can one escape from the laws of nature that operate at all levels of the development of matter? Is the idea of full freedom compatible with the scientific picture of the world as a whole? Existential psychology owes a lot to the Nobel laureate in chemistry I. Prigogine, who made it possible to answer this question positively. He discovered the so-called bifurcation processes in inanimate nature, at a certain point of which there is a break in determination; an unstable process can go either in one direction or the other, and this “choice” is not deterministic, depending on random factors. Although causal determinism is irresistible “head-on”, it is not continuous; Even if there are gaps of determination in inorganic processes, then they certainly exist in human behavior. The “pauses” between stimulus and response that R. May spoke about seem to be these points of bifurcation, at which there is no other determinism other than the determining force of my conscious decision.
Awareness as the basis of freedom. In almost all the approaches discussed above, the authors in one form or another emphasized the role of consciousness. Of course, awareness of the factors influencing my behavior is decisive in freeing myself from their influence. But we are talking about awareness not only of what exists, but also of what does not yet exist - awareness of existing opportunities, as well as anticipation of future options. In general, the category of possibility, which is just beginning to enter the lexicon of psychologists, has, in our opinion, extremely high explanatory potential, and its development can significantly advance research into personality self-determination.
I cannot be free unless I am aware of the forces influencing my actions. I cannot be free if I am not aware of the here-and-now possibilities for my actions. I cannot be free if I do not understand the consequences that certain actions will entail. Finally, I cannot be free if I am not aware of what I want, if I am not aware of my goals and desires. One of the first and clearest philosophical definitions of freedom, based on the central idea of awareness, is that it is the ability to make a decision knowledgeably.
One of the most interesting psychological embodiments of the idea of awareness is the theory of needs by S. Maddi, who identifies, along with biological and social needs, a group of so-called psychological needs - in imagination, judgment and symbolization. It is the dominance of psychological needs that determines the path of personality development, which Muddy calls individualistic and which is based on self-determination, in contrast to the conformist path of development determined by the dominance of biological and social needs.
Finally, another aspect of the problem of consciousness in the context of the problem of freedom is associated with the already mentioned fundamental attribution error. From this tendency to underestimate the role of external causes of behavior if one is in the position of an outside observer, and to overestimate them if one takes the position of an acting subject, the conclusion follows about a natural blindness to one’s own subjectivity. It can, however, be cured or compensated, at least in part, by learning to take the position of an observer in relation to oneself, to look at oneself “from the side” or “from above.” This change in perspective sometimes comes as insight, but can also be trained; it, as far as we can judge from unsystematized experience, leads to a significant increase in self-attributed freedom and helps to see the possibilities of actively changing the situation in the right direction.
Instrumental resources of freedom. This aspect of the problem of freedom lies on the surface. It is quite obvious that, although a certain degree of freedom remains even in a concentration camp, the amount available differs in different situations. We prefer to talk about the resources of freedom, distinguishing between external resources, determined by the objective situation, and internal resources, determined by the instrumental equipment of the subject. The former define an abstract field of available possibilities in a situation; the latter determine which of these capabilities a particular subject, possessing certain physical and mental abilities and skills, is able to use and which are not. The totality of internal and external resources determines the degree of freedom of a given subject in a given situation.
Let's explain this with examples. If a person needs to cross a river, there are different possibilities: firstly, look for a bridge or ford, secondly, cross the river by boat or raft, thirdly, swim across it. But if the first two possibilities are open to anyone, the third can only be taken into account by a person who can swim. In this situation, he has one more opportunity and, therefore, is freer than a person deprived of this skill. Ability to drive a car, work with a computer, speak foreign languages, shoot well, etc. and so on. in appropriate situations will give their owner additional degrees of freedom. Of course, different abilities and skills vary in the range of situations in which they can benefit their owner; for example, speaking English can be more beneficial than speaking French or Spanish, much less Finnish or Bulgarian. But this difference is purely probabilistic; In certain situations, Finnish may be more important than English.
In addition to external (situational) and internal (personal) instrumental resources of freedom, there are two more groups of them that occupy an intermediate position between them. First, these are social resources: social position, status, privileges and personal relationships that allow a person in a social situation to act in ways that others cannot act (for example, “telephone rights”). These resources, however, are ambivalent, since, while increasing the degree of freedom on the one hand, on the other hand, they also increase the degree of unfreedom, imposing additional obligations and introducing additional “rules of the game.” Secondly, these are material resources (money and other material goods). They, of course, expand the space of possibilities, but they “work” only insofar as they are directly at the disposal of the subject in a given situation (but can also be separated from him), while personal resources are of an inalienable nature.
The value basis of freedom. It is about what gives meaning to freedom, distinguishing the positive “freedom to” from the negative “freedom from.” Liberation from restrictions is not enough; In order for freedom not to degenerate into arbitrariness, it needs a value-semantic justification. You can refer to two more ideas that are similar in essence. One of them is the idea of “telosponding” by J. Richlak, which suggests that human actions are always based on a system of premises that make the subject’s actions consistent, intelligible and predictable. Such a system of prerequisites, however, is not given, but is chosen by the subject himself and can be changed. This act of changing the determinants of one’s behavior, which is a unique property of human consciousness, is what Richlak calls “goal-aguration.” Another idea emphasized by the prominent cultural anthropologist D. Lee is the necessity of certain sociocultural structures for the realization of human freedom. According to Lee, these structures act as restrictions on freedom only for an outside observer; from the point of view of a representative of the culture in question, freedom is impossible without them. We associate the value basis of freedom with existential values according to A. Maslow, their special role and functioning mechanisms. This issue deserves special detailed consideration.
In concluding this article, we leave it open. Our task was limited to stating the problem and indicating the main guidelines for its more detailed development. We consider the most important shift in the perspective of considering human actions, the need for which is undoubtedly ripe. This was noticed three decades ago. "It is a mistake to assume that behavior should be a dependent variable in psychological research. For the person himself, it is an independent variable."
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From the huge array of judgments about freedom, at least three main interpretations can be distinguished. These are fatalistic, subjective-anarchist and dialectical approaches.
Fatalistic approach to freedom presupposes a position of strict determinism, that is, the idea that everything in the world is subject to the harsh law of necessity: a cause causes an effect, it in turn becomes a cause, and thus a chain of dependencies is woven into infinity, from which no one and nothing can break out. Stars and people, mountains and microbes - everything is subordinated to a single necessary connection of things. In addition, from a fatalistic point of view, the statement “we cannot be different from what we are and cannot get what we want” is true.
Nowadays, the fatalistic approach (to which we will return in more detail in the chapter on fate) is based on the principles of mechanistic determinism, clearly formulated in modern times. Even the development in the 20th century of probabilistic mathematics and physics of the microworld does not dissuade the advocates of a mechanistic vision of the universe that everything is predetermined, and human life is no exception. From this point of view, freedom is only a fiction, a human illusion, in which what is desired is presented as reality. We think that we act freely, while every act of our activity, every action is strictly determined by the events of the past. It is worth noting that the arguments of supporters of this concept are built around the concept of “absolute freedom”. “Absolute freedom does not exist! – shout the adherents of the mechanistic view, “everything is causally determined!” One cannot but agree with the second part of the argument, but a real person does not seek “absolute freedom,” which acts as a theoretical abstraction. People seek specific freedom in specific circumstances, in which most often they themselves are able to determine events through goal-setting, will and actions. And in this case, they are no longer a passive toy of external determinants. They become an important part of the determination process, and act not only out of necessity, but also “by will.”
Second, subjectivist-anarchist or voluntarist the approach, due to the fact that indeterminism is little confirmed by life, is more moral than ontological in nature. From this point of view, we are not limited by any prohibitions in our behavior. It is clear that the physical world easily refutes such fanfare: if you try to break through a wall with your forehead or try to fly without a parachute by jumping from the roof of a skyscraper, then laws and restrictions will instantly remind you of themselves. That is why the voluntarist prefers to assert his freedom from responsibility to other people for his own immoral, aggressive and selfish behavior. The subjective anarchist approach relies on the “right of the strong”, on the cynical “What I want, I do.” The theme of absolute, unlimited freedom is present here as an ideal, but as an ideal associated with the possibility of complete power over the world and other people. The voluntarist believes that he can be whatever he wants and get everything he wants, using any means and trampling on the rights of others: “There is no God (the source of restrictions), which means everything is permitted!” It is easy to see that in purely practical terms this is not the most sensible position.
The third approach, which we will call dialectical, extends both to the ontological sphere and to the area of human consciousness and behavior. He does not demand “absolute freedom” for people and does not seek it. This view is characterized by consideration of the relationship between freedom and necessity, which appear inextricably linked when necessity dominates: we can be different, but under special circumstances; we can get what we want, but under certain conditions. The dialectical approach has two main interpretations: Spinozian-Hegelian and Marxist-Sartrean.
For Spinozian-Hegelian The reading is characterized by the idea “freedom is a recognized necessity.” This kind of understanding comes from ancient times, from the Stoics, who argued that the main thing for a sage is to follow the world Logos. From Spinoza’s point of view, the world is also governed by necessity, the understanding of which is obscured by affects - emotions, passions, desires. But the one who falls into passion is not free. Blinded by his small private desires, he fights against a force many times superior to him, and, of course, will be defeated. Therefore, it is necessary, throwing away passions, to turn to intellectual intuition, which will help you become truly free - to go with the flow, and not against it. For Hegel, man from the inside is logic, the same logic that controls all world processes, the unfolding of history and spiritual life. The path of logic is the path of the spontaneously unfolding Absolute Idea, the path of necessity. Essentially, the need is already within us, and we just need to rise to the level of awareness of it. Once we have become aware of the movement and breath of necessity within and outside ourselves, once we have submitted to it, we are free.
The Spinozian-Hegelian understanding of freedom is well illustrated by an example from an American popular science film about the life of insects. The film showed a termite nest that was swept away from its usual place by a flood and thrown into a waterfall. However, the termites did not drown. They did not fight against the waves, writhe their paws and try to get ashore (one must think that, due to their termite nature, they also did not cry, sob or curse fate!) On the contrary, they grappled with each other and surrendered to the flow. Like a large wreath, the termite mound floated across the water for many miles, only to then calmly land on land in a completely different place. Representatives of the idea “freedom is a conscious necessity” offer a person something similar.
The only difficulty is that a person is not a termite (whether this is good or bad, everyone decides in their own way). If a person sits in prison, fully aware of the necessity of this situation, then he still does not feel free. Human nature protests against pressure, coercion, fate, tyranny. Even the dictates of reason - it would seem that it could be better! – is perceived by people as annoying and unlawful. How can one not recall F. M. Dostoevsky’s work “Notes from Underground”, where the main character, although a very unpleasant type, expresses a completely fair idea that it is preferable for a person to “live according to his own stupid will” rather than submit to learning.
The approach described above is opposed to another, which we called "Marxist-Sartrean" Despite all the differences in the vision of freedom, it retains the main premise characteristic of Spinoza and Hegel, the idea that it is impossible to evade necessity. However, his main thesis is: “freedom is a choice made within the framework of necessity.” Now the emphasis falls not on passivity and submission, which a person voluntarily undergoes under the pressure of forces superior to him, but on activity and selection of opportunities, which the person himself produces through his own efforts. As we can see, the category of possibility is active here. Necessity is no longer viewed as continuous, monolithic, but looks like a kind of bundle of prospects, a spectrum of more or less probable options. In society and human life, what operates primarily is not dynamic laws that are implemented in each case, but statistical, probabilistic laws that realize themselves in a large mass of cases. These are laws-trends, they leave room for our freedom - to choose according to our will and understanding. The need here is not forgotten, not ignored, but it serves only as a framework for personal decisions and initiatives. This idea of freedom as choice was developed on many pages by J.-P. Sartre in his work “Being and Nothingness.” However, Sartre sometimes exaggerates our ability to choose, insisting on free choice even where it is clearly not realizable. The topic of freedom as choice was discussed quite subtly and balancedly in the 70s and 80s in Marxist philosophical literature, and in further conversation we will rely, among other things, on these theoretical developments.
On the issue of defining “personal autonomy” based on the understanding of freedom in philosophical and psychological aspects
Ezhevskaya Tatyana Innokentievna,
Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Chamber of Commerce and Industry,
Starnovskaya Ekaterina Evgenievna,
graduate student.
Transbaikal State Humanitarian and Pedagogical University named after. N. G. Chernyshevsky.
Man is a social being and inevitably, in the course of his life, when interacting with other people, he has to resort to limiting his own desires and reckoning with the reality around him. However, regardless of the restrictions present in his life, a person strives for independence, independence, and personal autonomy.
In the scientific literature, personal autonomy is understood as a certain degree of freedom of action of a person in making decisions regarding the performance of tasks and control. In addition, autonomy is defined as one of the strong desires to act independently, to control the physical and social environment, to be competent and successful. From our point of view, human autonomy is based on personal freedom, self-government, sovereignty, independence, responsibility, self-confidence, etc. Being an “inner core,” it allows a person to remain committed to his own views, positions, norms and values.
A review of scientific literature showed that the concept of personal autonomy is in one way or another connected with the concept of freedom. A.V. Petrov calls these two concepts synonymous, pointing out their equivalence, and the ideas and approaches of different authors regarding “individual autonomy” agree that autonomy is freedom in actions and motives, or some kind of non-freedom, or both other together . The World English Dictionary defines autonomy as freedomtodetermine one"sownactions, behavior, etc., which translated means "freedom to determine one's own actions, behavior, etc." Grace Craig and Don Bokum also argued that autonomy is the freedom of a person to make decisions regarding the fulfillment of tasks and control, which largely determines his sense of responsibility. E. Berne understood autonomy as “the same as freedom from a script,” saying that a person has the right to freely decide according to which “scenario” he should live. Thus, the definition of personal autonomy is based on the concept of freedom, which in turn is its synonym or is an equivalent definition.
The synonymy and equivalence of the concepts of personal autonomy and freedom determined the expediency of considering “personal autonomy” through the prism of understanding freedom in philosophical and psychological aspects.
Scientists, philosophers and psychologists have different approaches to understanding freedom. So, for example, St. Augustine (354 - 430) understood freedom as divine predestination, but a person’s life, his actions and actions are predetermined from above and as such the individual does not have freedom.
B. Spinoza (1632 - 1677) adhered to a different point of view, saying that freedom exists and this is not God’s predestination, but the result of man’s hard work in reality - an ability that appears and develops thanks to human activity. After all, freedom is known by man in connection with the existence of conditions for the possibility of this freedom. From his point of view, “freedom is liberation from a person’s slavish dependence on external circumstances, but not from them in general…. And, conversely, dependence on the universal connection of things, acting in accordance with them...” Based on what B. Spinoza said, we can assume that human freedom still exists, and it is connected with personal activity, striving to overcome slavish dependence on various circumstances, conditions and moves towards the goal or need that has arisen in a person.
For I. Kant, man is both free and subject to natural laws. His works give rise to the modern concept of human autonomy, which includes a combination of dependence and at the same time independence. The philosopher notes that “one and the same thing is both free (as a thing in itself) and not free (as a phenomenon).” Freedom is inherent in a rational subject who is aware of his ability to act based on reason. Man, being a rational being, acts according to the laws of reason, therefore, he is free, but at the same time he is subject to natural laws, for example the law of gravity. According to I. Kant, if “if it were possible to scientifically study all the reasons that prompt me to act one way and not another, then this will not turn me into an unconscious automaton, will not deprive me of the consciousness of my freedom as a rational being.”
I. Kant's thoughts formed the basis for future concepts. Thus, Karl Marx, when defining freedom, said that a person is limited in his freedom, since the conditions of reality in themselves largely predetermine the range of his aspirations, interests, claims, etc. However, a person has sufficient freedom to determine the purposefulness of his activities, because There is not one, but several ways to develop it. Consequently, human freedom is not absolute and is embodied in the form of choosing a specific goal and plan of action. Therefore, the general idea of the scientist is that freedom is primarily manifested “not in independence” from external circumstances, the laws of nature and society, but in the ability to intelligently choose among many ways of behavior the necessary one, while placing enormous moral and social responsibility on freedom .
R. Steiner solves the issue of freedom in his own way in the book “Philosophy of Freedom”. His concept is based on an appeal to the freedom of human consciousness. The author believes that it is not the brain that automatically thinks, but the thinking process includes a free consciousness, autonomous from rules, terms and their components, which, regardless of our will, arise in our brain and give standard assessments of what is happening. Therefore, according to Steiner, real freedom is determined by the emancipation of her thoughts, because only thinking is capable of cognizing reality, which means that in the process of thinking, a person is completely independent of external circumstances.
Another thinker, philosopher and psychologist V. Frankl, considering freedom, says that a person is not free from both external and internal circumstances, but these circumstances do not completely condition him. Human behavior is influenced by various factors, but a person is able to take a certain position in relation to them, because behavior is determined, first of all, by a person’s values and meanings. “Ultimately, man is not subject to the conditions he encounters; rather, these conditions are subject to his decision.” The main idea of V. Frankl's views is freedom as a position. Even when a person is under the influence of his immediate need, he can determine his behavior by its acceptance or non-acceptance, thereby expressing the person’s ability to take one or another position in relation to something.
Scientists and psychologists also paid special attention to freedom. The first to raise the question of freedom was E. Fromm. In his opinion, a person is independent in deciding the issue of his freedom and it is up to him only to accept it or refuse it. Relying on rational considerations, a person makes a choice either in favor of free actions or in favor of giving up freedom. Continuing to develop his ideas, E. Fromm points out the inextricable connection between freedom and responsibility. The scientist notes that human freedom is based on his awareness and understanding of the situation and is associated with the possibility of choice, which means that a person is responsible for it. “The decision is up to the individual. It depends on his ability to take himself, his life and happiness seriously; it depends on his readiness to solve both his moral problems and the moral problems of his society. It finally depends on his courage to be himself and live for himself."
In humanitarian psychology, G. Allport paid attention to the issue of freedom. He viewed freedom in direct relationship with personality. He defined personality as a certain entity that is in the process of continuous change and formation. He called such a person “mature,” which means free, demonstrating emotional non-concern and self-acceptance. According to G. Allport, a “mature personality” is a person who has freedom in the emotional aspect, i.e. tolerance towards himself, his shortcomings and others, since he is able to independently manage his own emotions. However, we believe that in this understanding, the presented point of view of the formation of personal freedom is quite idealized, since, as the author himself admits, not every adult reaches this “maturity”.
Freedom became the subject of study in existential psychology. R. May, for example, considers freedom as an individual’s awareness of his capabilities. In his opinion, a person is in a state of constant oscillation between two poles: an active subject and a passive object. This creates the potential for choice. “Freedom begins where we accept some realities, but not out of blind necessity, but on the basis of our own choice.” But, the author warns: “this does not mean that a person gives in and gives up, accepting some restrictions on our freedom, but, on the contrary, this is a constructive act of freedom. . Therefore, summarizing the thoughts of R. May, we can conclude that personal freedom is a certain awareness by a person of his own capabilities, one of these is the possibility of independent choice, which means this is how human freedom is expressed.
Thus, freedom is a contradictory, ambiguous concept; the opinions of philosophers and psychologists in the definition of freedom are different. At the same time, having determined the close relationship, equivalence, and synonymy of the concepts of personal autonomy and freedom, having examined the concept of freedom in philosophical and psychological aspects, we can correlate the above with the concept of “personal autonomy.” Thus, in the philosophical understanding, personal autonomy is defined as a phenomenon that cannot exist in a person’s life, since from birth he is limited not only by natural phenomena - external circumstances, but also by internal ones. However, this position is not unambiguous, because it does not completely determine a person. Personal autonomy can be achieved through one’s own activity, free thinking process, or independent choice. In the psychological understanding, the autonomy of a person is defined by designating it as both a component of a person and his ability to independently decide the issue of his freedom, that is, to make a choice to achieve autonomy or not.
From the above it follows that the concept of personal autonomy includes all the versatility, versatility and breadth of the concept of freedom. Accordingly, our understanding of personal autonomy becomes broader. We define the concept as the “inner core” of a person, which is based on freedom. Despite the lack of absolute freedom, a person has the opportunity to manifest it in activity, independence of thinking and choice, which allows a person to isolate himself, distance himself from the social context in asserting his individuality, maintaining his own life strategy in different situations, while remaining committed to his views and positions , norms and values.
Literature
1. Grace Craig, Don Baucum. Developmental psychology. 9th ed. – St. Petersburg: Peter, 2005. 944 p.
2. I. Letova Goals of change in modern transactional Analysis. Autonomy [El. resource] URL:http://letova.com (24.02.2012).
3. Kant. Freedom from the point of view of Kant's philosophy [El. resource] Information portal Excelion. URL: http://articles.excelion.ru/science/filosofy/21357.html (24.02.2012).
4. May R. The Art of Psychological Counseling. M.: Klass, 1994.
5. Petrov A.V. Personal autonomy as the right to make decisions // Journal “State and Law”. 2006. – No. 1. – P. 18.
6. Dictionaries - Dictionary.com [ El. resource] URL: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ autonomy (9.03.2012).
7. Spinoza B. Ethics. Part 5. About the power of reason or about human freedom M.: Publishing house "AST", 2001.336 p.
8. The essence of the category freedom [Electronic resource] Website tarefer.ru URL: http://works.tarefer.ru/91/100106/index.html (03/9/2012).
9. Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language by V. Dahl [El. resource] URL:http://slovardalja.net/word.php?wordid=37262 (9.03.2012).
10. Frankl V. Man in search of meaning: Trans. From English and German M.: Progress, 1990. -368 p.
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12. Fromm E. To have or to be? M.: Progress, 1990.
28-11-2014
In recent decades, psychology has been quite intensively developing issues related to the implementation of evaluation processes, which inevitably affect broader problems of goal setting and freedom of choice. These studies allow us to better understand the psychological aspects of fundamental philosophical categories.
- Concepts of freedom and will
Will is a mental function that consists in an individual’s ability to consciously control his psyche and actions in the decision-making process to achieve his goals. F. N. Ilyasov (2013) defines will as “the ability of a subject to create a hierarchical system of values and make efforts to achieve higher-order values, neglecting lower-order values.” The concept of will is closely related to the concept of “freedom”. Free will is the ability of a person to make choices regardless of certain circumstances. D. A. Leontiev (1993) defines freedom as the possibility of initiation, change or termination by the subject of its activities at any point in its course. Freedom implies the possibility of overcoming all forms and types of determination of personal activity(Nietzsche F., 1990).
In philosophy, there has long been a debate about the existence of free will, its correct definition and nature. There are two opposing positions: hard determinism - the claim that determinism is true and free will does not exist, and metaphysical libertarianism, which claims that determinism is false and free will exists or at least is possible. According to the concept of determinism, absolutely everything that happens was causally predetermined by what happened earlier.
The idealistic theory of free will states that man is the primary cause of his actions. To be responsible for your choice, you must be the cause of this choice, so if free will exists, then a person is responsible for his actions. If determinism is true, then any choice a person makes is caused by events that are beyond his control. The concept of free will implies that an individual, under certain circumstances, can choose from several possible options. In non-physical theories of libertarianism, it is believed that events in the brain that lead to action are not reducible to physical processes and that a non-physical mind, will or soul influences physical causation.
Determinism is compatible with free will; it would be more accurate to say that free will is defined in such a way that it can coexist with determinism. Freedom may or may not exist for reasons unrelated to metaphysics. Compatibilists define free will as the freedom to act according to one's own motives, without the interference of other people. They argue that the truth of determinism does not matter, only that a person's will is a consequence of his own desires and is not determined by external conditions. In contrast, the incompatibilist position is concerned with a kind of metaphysical free will.
The principle of free will has consequences in religion, ethics and science. For example, in religion, free will implies the possibility of coexistence of human desire and choice with divine omniscience, although this is difficult for an unbiased person to understand. In science, the study of free will can reveal ways to predict human behavior. There is also a point of view that free will is impossible under both determinism and indeterminism.
It seems quite obvious that your actions depend entirely on you. You appear to be free to choose what to do next and are thus morally responsible for your choices. For example, if there is a person outside a store collecting donations, you are faced with a dilemma: put your money in the donation box or go inside and buy a cake. You are completely free to make a choice in a given situation, but you are not free not to make one. Free choice is the destiny of every person; a person is “doomed to freedom,” he inevitably chooses even when he does not want to choose (Jean-Paul Sartre).
Contemporary philosopher Galen Strawson (2010) believes that the concept of free will leads to infinite regress and is therefore meaningless. The main argument is as follows. What you do will be determined by what you are, so if you are responsible for what you do, you must be responsible for what you are. But you cannot be held responsible for either, since what you are is determined by your heredity and previous experiences. Every action you take now is predetermined by previous events, and these previous events are predetermined by earlier events. Eventually we will reach the initial phase, which is entirely determined by genetic components for which you are naturally not responsible.
However, this argument does not prevent you from feeling responsible for what you do. Responsibility and choice are two different things. Responsibility is determined by consciousness and you will consider yourself responsible if your dog bites someone or your car rolls down a hill and hurts someone, even though you have no control over these events. A person cannot create himself and his fortune out of nothing. This argument implies that free will itself is absurd, not that it is incompatible with determinism.
Modern science is a combination of deterministic and stochastic theories. Quantum mechanics predicts events only in probabilistic terms, calling into question whether the universe is deterministic. Modern theories cannot resolve the question of whether determinism is true, which has many interpretations. From the point of view of physicalism, the laws of quantum mechanics are assumed to provide a complete probabilistic description of the motion of particles, regardless of whether free will exists.
According to S. Hawking and L. Mlodinow ("Greater Design", 2010), the molecular foundations of biology indicate that people are a kind of complex biological machines, and although in practice our behavior cannot be precisely predicted, free will is just an illusion. It can only exist if determinism is denied, i.e. in a compatibilist interpretation.
Some philosophies of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology assume that free will does not exist as an entity. Because of the need to create complex behavior, the interaction of a finite set of rules and parameters creates the illusion of free will. This sense of free will arises from the unpredictability of the outcome obtained through deterministic processes. Examples include some games that have a set of strict rules, all information is open to any player, and no random events occur in the game.
However, the strategy of games such as chess, despite a simple set of specific rules, can have a huge potential for unpredictable moves. By analogy, it is believed that the feeling of free will arises from the interaction of a finite set of rules and parameters that generate endless and unpredictable behavior. But if there was a way to account for and calculate all events, then seemingly unpredictable behavior would become predictable.
In biology, issues of free will are often considered within the framework of sociogeneticism or biogeneticism, the essence of which is the relative importance of the influence of genetics and biology on human culture, environment, development and behavior. Many researchers believe that the main aspects of human behavior can be explained by genetics, the evolutionary development of the human brain. This view is troubling because in this situation people cannot be held accountable for their behavior. Steven Pinker believes that fear of determinism in matters of genetics and evolution is a mistake, and should not be confused with justification. Responsibility does not require behavior to be gratuitous as long as it is responsive to praise and punishment. Moreover, it is not entirely clear that environmental influences pose less of a threat to free will than genetics.
In psychiatry, the problem of free will is associated with a certain group of mental disorders, primarily schizophrenia, in which actions are not completely under the control of the subject. Although such disorders in themselves do not disprove the existence of free will, studying them can help to understand how the brain creates such sensations.
Psychology, based on an idealistic understanding of the nature of will, at one time gave three different answers to the question of what is the nature of the motivating reasons for the implementation of volitional actions - these are intellectual processes, emotions and the will itself.
In the intellectualistic theory of will (Meiman), the source of a person’s volitional activity is his ideas, which are a necessary component of all mental processes, including such complex manifestations of consciousness as feeling and will. A person never desires what he has no idea about. Human consciousness is filled with a mass of ideas of varying degrees of clarity, each of which fights for its predominant position. The clearest and most distinct ideas win in this struggle, which give rise to volitional processes: volitional aspirations arise in the process of the struggle of ideas.
Psychologists of the empirical school adhered to the emotional theory of will (Ribault). They considered feelings to be the only reason for an act of will. The basis of volitional activity, according to this theory, is the desire to experience or prolong pleasure and avoid suffering. A person's actions are caused by the emotions he is experiencing at the moment. Ideas that are not accompanied by feelings remain just “cold ideas” that are not capable of causing even the simplest action.
Intellectualistic and emotional theories of will did not recognize the independence of volitional processes. They considered will to be a secondary phenomenon, built on the basis of ideas or feelings. Adherents of the voluntaristic theory of will (Wundt, James) asserted the originality and initial independence of the will from feelings and ideas - the motivating reasons for the will are contained in it itself.
The last century is characterized by the awareness of the determination of consciousness and behavior by objective conditions of existence, social and cultural environment, and the social unconscious (E. Fromm). For psychology, this period is characterized by the demarcation of “hard determinism,” which assumes that the determination of mental processes and behavior is universal and leaves no room for real freedom, and “soft determinism,” which allows for the presence of some space of freedom among deterministic processes.
Examples of hard determinism are the points of view of P. V. Simonov (1984), who considers freedom as an illusion that arises due to the fact that we are fully aware of all the determinants influencing us, Z. Freud, who believes that a person is entirely determined by his past, B Skinner (B. Skinner), who asserted the possibility and necessity of total control and management of human behavior.
Speaking about freedom, D. A. Leontyev draws attention to the multiplicity and multi-level regulation of behavior. In this situation, higher regulatory authorities allow a person to free himself from the determining influence of lower ones and transcend them. The basis of freedom is awareness of the factors influencing activity and the consequences to which it can lead. The degree of freedom is determined by the totality of resource capabilities (external and internal). Finally, the value basis of freedom gives it meaning by distinguishing the positive “freedom to” from the negative “freedom from.”
E. Fromm (1990, 1992) identifies positive freedom, “freedom for,” as the main condition for human growth and development, linking it with spontaneity, integrity, creativity and biophilia - the desire to affirm life as opposed to death. At the same time, freedom is ambivalent. She is both a gift and a burden; a person is free to accept it or refuse it. A person himself decides the question of the degree of his freedom, making his own choice: either to act freely, i.e. based on rational considerations, or give up freedom. Many people prefer to run away from freedom, thereby choosing the path of least resistance.
V. Frankl (1987) believes that a person is not free from external and internal circumstances, but they do not completely determine him. Heredity, drives and external conditions have a significant influence on behavior, but a person is free to take a certain position in relation to them. He can find and realize the meaning of his life, even if his freedom is noticeably limited by objective reasons. Freedom coexists with necessity, and they are localized in different dimensions of human existence. Freedom in relation to desires is manifested in the ability to say “no” to them. Freedom to external circumstances also exists, although it is not unlimited and is expressed in the ability to take one position or another in relation to them.
According to R. May (1981), freedom does not lie in choosing the state of an active subject and a passive object - to experience oneself in either one or the other capacity. The space of freedom is the distance between the states of the subject and the object, it is a certain emptiness that needs to be filled. Freedom is the ability to change what is, the ability to transcend one’s nature. As self-awareness develops, a person's range of choice and freedom increase accordingly.
In the theory of subjectivity by R. Harré (1979, 1983), freedom is the ability to act as an “agent” or subject, i.e. an actor, a driving force of action and have a certain autonomy, which implies the possibility of distancing both from the influences of the environment and from internal principles. The determination of human actions is far from simple linear causality and is multi-vertex. Its highest level determines the probability of switching from one subsystem to another. Such a system can have an infinite number of levels, and on each of them an infinite number of subsystems. It is capable of carrying out horizontal shifts, i.e. switch control of lower levels from one subsystem to another, and also provide vertical switching.
According to the author of the theory of self-efficacy and behavior regulation A. Bandura (1997), the basis of human freedom is the ability to influence oneself, which becomes possible due to the dual nature I– simultaneously as subject and object. The self influences the subject's behavior in the same way as external factors. One of the main manifestations of subjective determination is the ability of people to act differently from what is dictated by the external environment, and in situations of coercion, to resist it. It is thanks to the ability to influence themselves that people are, to some extent, the architects of their own destiny: “human behavior is determined, but determined in part by the individual himself, and not just by environmental factors.”
E. Deci and R. Ryan (1985, 1986, 1991) have proposed the existence of an internal need for self-determination that helps predict and explain the development of behavior from simple reactivity to integrated values; from heteronomy to autonomy in relation to those types of behavior that are initially devoid of internal motivation." Autonomy consists in the fact that the subject acts based on a deep sense of self. To be autonomous means to be self-initiated and self-regulated, in contrast to situations of coercion, when actions are not stem from the deep self. The quantitative measure of autonomy is the extent to which people live in harmony with their true self.
It seems to us that such a wide range of variations in the interpretation of the concept of freedom is determined by the complexity and multifactorial nature of the problem. The situation can be simplified if we try to isolate these factors and determine the role of each of them in the problem under consideration. The criterion of “freedom-non-freedom” refers to the choice of goal and the decision to implement an activity. In this situation, our task comes down to identifying those mental mechanisms that determine the formation of a goal and establishing the influence of each of them on the category of freedom. Fortunately, the development of the concept of assessment processes provides such an opportunity.
Goal setting and decision-making on the implementation of activities are based on the amount of knowledge that the subject has. This volume is provided by three sources of information: mechanisms of inheritance formed in the process of evolution; experience of previous generations, i.e. knowledge transmitted through learning (socialization), and the subject’s personal experience gained in the process of any form of interaction, including observation. These sources provide the formation of three goal-setting factors - life support, species support and cognitive processes. Let's look at each of them.
Life support.
Target pyramid. In psychology, there is a tendency to consider the needs and motives of an individual not as isolated entities, but as a hierarchically organized structure. The presence of hierarchical relationships may not be entirely obvious in the division of needs into basic and additional, basic and superstructural, biological and social. This idea is most clearly seen in A. Maslow (1999) in his concept of the hierarchy of motives, where he emphasizes the advantage (superiority) of physiological needs over social ones.
A hungry man lives in thoughts of bread, but as soon as he receives this bread, the need for spectacles arises. The author does not specifically talk about the systematizing basis of such hierarchization, but implicitly this concept assumes that needs have their own value and can be ranked according to this criterion. This is also evidenced by the functional purpose of this phenomenon - establishing the order of activation of needs.
There are quite a few options for such hierarchizations, but we want to draw attention to something else. There is one purely logical inconsistency in stating the presence of hierarchization. Need is a remitting function and at any given moment the subject realizes only one. Need activity is provided by transient mental constructs, which, upon completion of the activity, either disintegrate (expectation) or interact with the context (result of activity) and therefore cannot be used to implement hierarchization. In such a situation, the question of hierarchization cannot even be raised, since there is simply nothing to hierarchize.
Nevertheless, everyday experience suggests that hierarchy still exists and when there is nothing to eat there is somehow no time for self-actualization, and the presence of a threat to life does not contribute to aesthetic development (“when the guns speak, the muses are silent”). Without going into details, we can assume that the concept of hierarchization does not refer to the need in its traditional understanding, but to some of its constant components. The most likely candidates for this role are the need underlying the need and the goal of activity formed by it.
The goal of an activity in the process of its implementation almost always breaks down into subgoals, forming a target series, the function of which is to implement procedural control. For example, obtaining a diploma of higher education as an activity goal is divided into completing individual courses and semesters, which represent subgoals in relation to the first one. Completing the semester, in turn, is divided into performing laboratory work, listening to lectures, studying sources, passing tests and exams, which are subgoals in relation to the previous one. In turn, each of these subgoals consists of performing specific actions that can be considered as its components.
But obtaining a diploma itself is not the final goal of the subject; it is carried out for something else. Establishing this “other” is quite simple. To do this, you just need to ask the question - why? Why does a person need a diploma? It is needed in order to improve one’s financial situation, increase one’s social status, and assert oneself. But these goals are also not final and, in turn, are aimed at more fully satisfying the needs of the body that determine the survival of the individual, and these goals are an expression of the basic biological goal behind them - life support.
The structure that arises in this case can be designated as a target pyramid, which is a system of life support methods used by a given subject. In this regard, all human life activity can be presented as a single expectation series, ranked depending on the degree of globality of the goal, in which the main goal is set by the biological factors of life support, and its detail is determined by the real conditions of the present interaction.
Despite all the variety of activities that the subject carries out, they turn out to be connected with each other, giving purposefulness to human existence. These connections may not always be obvious or conscious, but they are always there. If we take the goal of any activity and try to establish supergoals that stand above it, then we will certainly come to a similar construction.
Thus, the main purpose of human activity is to provide life support; everything else is a subgoal that determines how to implement the first one. Conceptually, life support is a psychobiological drive, the significance of which extends to all underlying subgoals, meaning them depending on their place in this system and the role they play in life support.
Thus, the hunger that arises can be satisfied by eating bread, but the subject does not need bread as such. He needs to normalize those psychobiological parameters that have shifted during the process of hunger. Bread in this case is only an external way of normalizing them, i.e. performs the function of a condition. That is why the items of need can vary: hunger can be satisfied in many other ways, but their effect should be unambiguous - normalization of deviated parameters. Accordingly, the value of these methods will be determined by their ability to restore disturbed homeostasis.
In this sense, free will is just an illusion of consciousness. What we understand by free will is actually the use of consciousness to optimize the achievement of a genetically determined goal. This understanding of freedom is close to the definition of freedom as a conscious necessity, with the only clarification that this necessity is genetically determined and does not even require awareness for its implementation. It is used only to more optimally implement this genetic predestination.
Freedom, it seems, exists and a person can indeed make arbitrary decisions regarding whether to eat a sandwich with cheese or oatmeal for breakfast, but the ultimate goal of these actions is common - the satisfaction of food needs, and through it - the implementation of life support; he can arbitrarily decide whether to go visit friends today or stay at home and read a book, but both are forms of rest necessary for life support.
A person can arbitrarily change his daily routine, but in any case it will include all the components necessary for life support; he can change the time and place of work, but he will still work; he can build his relationships with others in any way he likes, but in In any case, he will maintain a reasonable balance of his interests and the interests of others. This defines the following output − freedom usually consists of choosing means while preserving more stable goals.
The presence of freedom (especially absolute freedom) presupposes the absence of an initially defined goal outside the will of the subject himself and the possibility of its arbitrary establishment (freedom of choice of goal). It would seem that the presence of a genetically determined goal of life and its prevailing significance, the subordination of all other subgoals to it makes the very possibility of using the term “freedom” in application to human existence questionable. Freedom comes down not to the choice of goals, but to the choice of means aimed at optimizing the achievement of a genetically determined goal. A person is a creature with a programmed development stereotype, its direction and goals.
This focus is determined by a basic psychobiological drive - the need for life support. Similar concepts already exist in psychology (McDougall’s vital energy, “life instinct” in the psychoanalytic concept of S. Freud). In biology it is referred to as the “instinct of self-preservation.” It is only necessary to note that in all these cases these concepts are used regardless of the problems of goal setting.
Subjectivity and procedurality. The concept of purpose, which at first glance seems understandable and self-evident, actually belongs to the number of complex categories of philosophy, economics, management theory and sociology. Without being able to go into details, we will highlight only one point that is necessary for us: goals can be general or procedural and private or substantive. The fundamental difference between procedural goals, such as the desire for power, self-affirmation, career growth, wealth, creative development, is the impossibility of achieving them. They, like the horizon line, move away all the time as you approach them. Due to their procedural nature, they cannot form substantive goals, and therefore, needs.
To form them, the procedural goal must be divided into subgoals that have objectivity, i.e., be specified. For example, the desire for wealth can be realized in business, where each specific transaction of a businessman will form a need activity that has its own objective purpose. Its presence allows the subject to make a preliminary assessment of the degree of success of the proposed activity, make a decision on its implementation, and then evaluate the result obtained.
Subjectivity and procedurality as qualitative characteristics of a goal are located on opposite sides of the target pyramid: the higher the goal, the more global and procedural it is, the greater the role hereditary psychobiological processes play in it, the less it is realized. But such a goal cannot be realized directly, but only through division into many specific goals. The lower the goal, the more objective it is, the higher the possibility of its awareness, the more variable it is.
Possibility of choice (range of freedom). Why are we bringing all this up? The subjective perception of freedom to choose a goal is determined precisely by the possibility of varying objective goals while maintaining procedural ones. Procedural and objective goals have different degrees of freedom: the more procedural the goal, the lower the degree of freedom, and vice versa, the more objective it is, the greater the degree of freedom it has. The most procedural goal is life support, which cannot be changed or ignored. Life support determines only the general direction of activity, while specific goals are variable and situationally determined.
A person cannot avoid life support. As soon as the subject goes down a step and begins to determine how he will carry out this life support, the possibility of variation appears, i.e. element of freedom. This possibility of variation will increase all the time as we move down the target pyramid, reaching complete arbitrariness at its very base: the more significant the goal, the less its degree of freedom, and vice versa. The least significant goals have the greatest freedom.
Life support has the highest significance, all other goals are more specific, they represent only a specification of this main goal in given conditions and receive their significance from it in accordance with their role in this process. This mechanism for signifying goals determines the nature of their significance - it is induced.
Species support.
But life support is not able to explain the entire diversity of human behavior, for example, the presence of people of reckless courage, demonstrating contempt for danger, people sacrificing their lives for others, choosing extreme professions, the presence of conflicts associated with the risk of life, and finally, the occurrence of wars. The explanation for these phenomena is that life support is not the only basic psychobiological drive; there is also species support.
It carries out the same functions as life support - the designation of objects, phenomena, events of the external environment and the formation of activity goals, but it does this based on the need to preserve the population as a whole. The task of species support is the preservation and development of the species. These two basic psychobiological drives partially overlap each other and in some cases may be in conflict.
Species provision forms a certain number of psychobiological drives of a private nature, of which we will highlight three - competitive relations, hierarchization of the community, provision and protection of offspring. The implementation of competitive relations often leads to the emergence of conflicts, aggressive behavior (struggle for the right to leave offspring, for the right to distribute the group product, for power, for possession of resources) and can pose a threat to life, conflicting with the life-support instinct.
A similar phenomenon is observed in the animal world. To attract the attention of the female, the peacock in the process of evolution acquires a bright color, which is a masterpiece of decoration, but at the same time it unmasks the bird. The black grouse is a very cautious bird with excellent hearing; it is almost impossible to get close to it unnoticed. But during the mating period, he vocalizes so loudly that he loses his hearing and becomes easy prey for the hunter. Instinct is blind, and while ensuring the implementation of some functions, it can become an obstacle to the implementation of others.
In other words, a person can arbitrarily violate the genetically laid down principles of mental organization, not to mention those developed in the process of life. But not everything that a person can do according to his psychophysiological capabilities, he should do. People act in accordance with their ideas about the world around them and their role in it, but these ideas are subjective and as such may differ from similar ideas of other people.
Cognitive mechanisms of goal setting.
The freedom gap is determined by the above. But in some cases a person may act contrary to these principles and violate them. It turns out that he can adjust the highest goals - life and species support. Any mental act, any need activity is provided not only by hereditary, but also by cognitive mechanisms. The former provide constant mechanisms for these processes, the latter provide their adjustment in relation to the conditions of a given interaction. Only their share participation can vary here.
The genetic component cannot shape activity (neither substantive nor procedural), it determines only the motivation for activity and its strategy, for example, the tendency to carry out aggression or retrusion when danger arises. But how should it be expressed, i.e. To whom this aggression should be directed and with whom to avoid interaction is determined by learning and personal experience.
The very possibility of making such an adjustment determines the dominance of cognitive mechanisms over genetic ones. The instinct of self-preservation may dictate the need to preserve life at all costs, but the fear of looking like a coward or losing respect may be stronger and force the subject to play Russian roulette. In some cases, this cognitive adjustment can be so great that it allows the subject, contrary to the instinct of self-preservation, to commit suicide if it is impossible to pay off a gambling debt.
Cognitive activity is also ensured by evaluative processes and is built on three principles - necessity, possibility and feasibility. Necessity is determined by the need, which, in order to carry out an activity, forms an appropriate expectation, which includes the goal of the activity (external and internal) and the method of achieving this goal (the activity algorithm) with their significant characteristics. The significance of this need should be higher than the significance of the labor costs for carrying out the activity (the game should be worth the candle). The opportunity is determined by comparing this algorithm of activity with self-esteem formed by past experience.
The greatest interest in this triad is the definition of expediency. It is based on the hedonistic principle - activity should either reduce the negative component of the need, or provide the positive component of the goal, or both. Only after all these assessment processes have been carried out, the subject has the opportunity to make a decision on the implementation of the activity.
The fundamental point of this process is the control system, which ensures the expediency of mental activity, naturally limiting its freedom. A person, on the one hand, is free in his choice, on the other hand, he is “doomed” to choose the optimal option, and therefore is not free. He, of course, can act contrary to the principle of expediency, i.e. has the opportunity to do this, but chooses not to do so. The tool for implementing this principle is another psychobiological drive - hedonism, the desire to receive positive emotions and avoid negative ones.
Psychological content of the concept of freedom.
So what happens to free will in this case? It certainly exists, but within the framework limited by the same biological predetermination. To understand the mechanism of this limitation, we need to differentiate the analyzed concept into a goal and a method of achieving it. The fact is that the same goal can be achieved in different ways. So, the subject cannot change the basic goals: the need for life support and the satisfaction of biological needs that ensure this process - nutrition, respiration, excretion, etc. He also cannot change the goals associated with functioning in the community, which determine the possibility of coexistence in it. But he can choose how to achieve these goals. Moreover, here it is also not very free, since all these methods must comply with the principle of expediency.
Speaking about the significance of life support as a psychobiological goal of life, we mean its subjective significance and, accordingly, the subjective hierarchization of goals. In some cases and under certain conditions, this structure may become deformed. For example, the fear of appearing to be a coward in the eyes of others may be higher than the fear of death; the need to take risks may be determined by the desire to overcome oneself, as happens in extreme sports, when choosing life-threatening professions.
Thus, goal-setting processes are provided by both hereditary and cognitive mechanisms. At the same time, the former are based on the principles of life and species support and determine the framework of the function, the latter, based on the principles of necessity, possibility and expediency, determine its subtle adaptation to existing conditions. The scope of this adjustment can vary widely, reaching the possibility of completely blocking hereditarily determined goals. However, as a rule, such a possibility will conflict with the principle of expediency.
Genetic processes are carried out at an unconscious level, while cognitive processes are largely conscious, which determines the possibility of their control and, therefore, freedom of choice. The phenomenon of “freedom-unfreedom” is determined by this correlation of hereditary and acquired factors in the structure of need activity. The ability of the former to correct the latter determines the fundamental possibility of choosing a goal and a method of achieving it, which makes the subject responsible for his actions.
And, finally, the last thing is the attitude of the individual regarding his freedom, his readiness to dispose of it at his own discretion. Freedom is not a sweet carrot. Undoubtedly expanding a person's ability to provide life support, freedom simultaneously imposes on him responsibility for their consequences. The fact is that any activity of the subject is assessed by him, the totality of these assessments forms self-esteem. The subject also continually evaluates all others with whom he interacts and hierarchizes the community based on these evaluations.
Self-esteem is extremely important here, since it, in comparison with the assessments of others, allows the subject to make social orientation and determine his place in the structure of the community. In this regard, a decrease in the assessment of the result of an activity is very painful, since it is accompanied by a corresponding change in social orientation and a subjective feeling of a decrease in one’s place in the hierarchy of the community.
In this situation, the subject has one defense mechanism - this is attribution, which gives the opportunity to choose: accept a negative assessment, placing responsibility on himself with all the ensuing consequences, or not accept it, shifting it to circumstances beyond his control (attributing it to external factors , chance or ineffectiveness of others). In this case, the low performance of the subject may not be attributed by the subject to himself, but attributed to “mediocre leadership.”
The psychology of a “cog in the system” is like a cocoon that protects the subject’s already rather low self-esteem from the destructive influence of reality. Religion performs the same function, allowing one to shift responsibility to the all-knowing and omniscient Creator. This phenomenon of “flight from freedom,” described by E. Fromm (1990), is dominant. It is believed that less than 10% of the population is able to make decisions independently and take responsibility for their consequences.
Summary.
First of all, it is necessary to state that freedom is a concept that has a quantitative characteristic. This means that we cannot talk about the presence or absence of freedom, we can talk about the degree of freedom. And the degree of freedom is determined by the scale of the goal - the more procedural it is, the less free the subject is in relation to it, and vice versa, the more objective it is, the higher the degree of freedom. Since the concept of procedurality correlates with the significance of the goal, this pattern can be formulated differently: the more significant the goal, the lower the degree of its freedom and vice versa.
Since significance is the systematic basis for the formation of the target pyramid, this dependence determines the place of a given goal in this pyramid: the most significant goals, such as the need for life support (life instinct), the need for hedonism, the tendency to objectify and initiate activities, are at the top and determine the significance of all underlying goals. They cannot change. All underlying goals acquire a certain degree of freedom, which increases as you move towards the base of the pyramid. Therefore, the answer to the question of whether there is free will or not varies depending on what level of purpose it relates to.
Human activity is determined by both genetic mechanisms and personal experience. Genetically determining the goals of life, evolution is not able to strictly determine the methods of achieving them, since they are too variable and dependent on the state of the organism, the external environment and society, determined by the principle of expediency - achieving an optimal result with minimal means. The freedom to choose means while keeping basic goals constant determines the range of freedom that evolution has granted to man.
A person is truly doomed to freedom of choice, but the principle of its implementation is predetermined by the need for self-preservation, preservation of offspring and achieving optimal decisions. Despite the high degree of genetic and psychological predetermination of behavior, a person can and should control his actions, which makes him responsible for them.
Freedom as the ability of a subject to make decisions independently exists, but the vast majority of the population does not know what to do with it. It perceives freedom as a burden of responsibility for the consequences of its actions and builds a behavior strategy in such a way as to avoid it.
Eduard Bechtel, Doctor of Medical Sciences
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3. The concept of “freedom” in the psychology of E. Fromm
Experiencing the anxieties of existing in a difficult world, being exposed to neurosis or depression, fear or psychoasthenia, people strive to free themselves from the suffering and restrictions of their lives. But freedom is not a uniquely positive state. Psychology and psychoanalysis ask the question: how do people overcome the stress, feelings of loneliness, insignificance and alienation that accompany freedom? One way is to give up freedom and suppress your individuality (which, again, is fraught with stress, neurosis and depression). Fromm, as a psychologist and psychotherapist, described several strategies used (both consciously and unconsciously) by people to "escape from freedom."
The first of these is authoritarianism, defined as “the tendency to unite oneself with someone or something external in order to regain the power lost by the individual self.” Authoritarianism manifests itself in both masochistic and sadistic tendencies. In the masochistic form of authoritarianism, people show excessive dependence, subordination and helplessness in relationships with others. The sadistic form, on the contrary, is expressed in the exploitation of others, domination and control over them. Psychoanalyst Fromm argued that both tendencies are usually present in the same individual.
The second way of escape is destructiveness. Following this tendency, a person tries to overcome feelings of inferiority by destroying or conquering others. For Fromm, as a psychoanalyst, it is obvious that duty, patriotism and love are common examples of the rationalization of destructive actions.
Finally, people can overcome loneliness, fear, and alienation through absolute obedience to social norms governing behavior. Fromm applied the term automaton conformity to a person who uses this strategy, due to which he becomes absolutely like everyone else and behaves in a generally accepted way. According to Fromm, in contrast to the three listed mechanisms of escape from freedom, there is also the experience of positive freedom, thanks to which one can get rid of feelings of loneliness and detachment. This is positive freedom. Fromm, as a psychologist, believed that people can be independent and unique without losing a sense of unity with other people and society. He called the type of freedom in which a person feels part of the world and at the same time does not depend on it, positive freedom. Achieving positive freedom requires people to be spontaneously active in their lives. Fromm noted that we observe spontaneous activity in children, who usually act in accordance with their inner nature, and not in accordance with social norms and prohibitions. In his book “The Art of Love,” one of the most famous, Fromm emphasized that love and work are the key components through which the development of positive freedom through the manifestation of spontaneous activity is achieved. Through love and work, people reconnect with others without sacrificing their sense of individuality or integrity, thus avoiding the onset of neurosis or depression.
4. Human existential needs
Fromm believes that human nature has unique existential needs. They have nothing to do with social and aggressive instincts (such as the death drive in Freud's theory). Fromm argued that the conflict between the desire for freedom and the desire for security represents the most powerful motivational force in people's lives. The freedom-security dichotomy, this universal and inevitable fact of human nature, is determined by existential needs. Fromm identified five basic human existential needs.
1. The need to establish connections. To overcome the feeling of isolation from nature and alienation, all people need to care about someone, take part in someone and be responsible for someone. The ideal way to connect with the world is through “productive love,” which helps people to work together and at the same time maintain their individuality. If the need to establish connections is not satisfied, people become narcissistic: they defend only their own selfish interests and are unable to trust others (in this case, psychological help or even psychotherapy becomes in demand).
2. The need to overcome. All people need to overcome their passive animal nature in order to become active and creative creators of their lives. The optimal solution to this need lies in creation. The work of creation (ideas, art, material values or raising children) allows people to rise above the randomness and passivity of their existence and thereby achieve a sense of freedom and self-worth. The inability to satisfy this vital need is the cause of destructiveness (in this case, consultation and help from a psychologist are simply necessary).
3. Need for roots. People need to feel like an integral part of the world. According to Fromm, this need arises from the very birth, when biological ties with the mother are severed. Towards the end of childhood, every person gives up the security that parental care provides. In late adulthood, each person faces the reality of being cut off from life itself as death approaches. Therefore, throughout their lives, people experience a need for roots, foundations, a sense of stability and strength, similar to the feeling of security that a connection with their mother gave in childhood. On the contrary, those who maintain symbiotic ties with their parents, home or community as a way of satisfying their need for roots are unable to experience their personal integrity and freedom (sometimes this feeling becomes possible to experience for the first time in psychotherapy or psychoanalysis).
4. The need for self-identity. Fromm believed that all people experience an internal need for identity with themselves - a self-identity through which they feel different from others and realize who they are and what they really are. In short, every person should be able to say: “I am I.” Individuals with a clear and distinct awareness of their individuality perceive themselves as masters of their lives, and not as constantly following someone else's instructions, even if these are the instructions of their own unconscious. Copying someone else's behavior, even to the point of blind conformity, does not allow a person to achieve true self-identity, a sense of himself.
5. The need for a belief system and commitment. Finally, according to Fromm, people need a stable and constant support to explain the complexity of the world. This orientation system is a set of beliefs that allow people to perceive and comprehend reality, without which they would constantly find themselves stuck and unable to act purposefully. Fromm especially emphasized the importance of developing an objective and rational view of nature and society. He argued that a rational approach is absolutely necessary for maintaining health, including mental health.
People also need an object of devotion, a dedication to something or someone (a higher goal or God), which would be the meaning of life for them. Such dedication makes it possible to overcome an isolated existence and gives meaning to life.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a thing or a person (a striking example: “my doctor”, “my friend”, “my illness”). Conclusion In this work, three works by E. Fromm were examined in detail. They speak in sufficient detail about such human needs as freedom and love, and also examine two ways of human existence. Based on them, the following conclusions can be drawn: 1. The main types of needs according to E. Fromm, ...
And destructive passions were generated in man by history. The author himself considered “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness” as the first volume of an extensive study he conceived in the field of the theory of psychoanalysis. III. Philosophy of love by Erich Fromm: the main provisions set out in the work “The Art of Love”. According to the author himself, the work “The Art of Love,” published in 1956...
It took even more time. In the 12th century, when other ages were assigned status, it was completely absent, and even now the process of its differentiation has not been completed. In particular, in the English-language literature on developmental psychology, such a division is still practically absent: the transition period from childhood to adulthood, which is associated with a chronological framework from 10-12 to 23-25 years, ...
Direction - understands a person as a weak-willed and obedient result of the influence of the environment. The main concept of such theories is learning. The third and newest direction of personality psychology - humanistic psychology - understands a person as an initially positive entity, initially striving for self-improvement. A person in humanism is an active creator of his own life, having...
