Our Ethical Decisions Are A Result Of Social Conditioning
Our ethical decisions are a result of social conditioning. Discuss. (35marks)
Clarence Darrow could be said to be the most famous person who supported the idea of social conditioning. He argued that human beings cannot be held responsible for their actions because nurture has brought them up a certain way. In his case where he legally represented Leob and Leopold, he argued that morality can't exist if humans are responsible for their actions, because no-one can be held morally responsible for anything; it is a result of social conditioning. A strength of this view is that it cannot expect us to change who we are, since it is not their fault that they are this way. However, some people argue that you can’t be held responsible for their actions.
However, other would claim that human’s cannot be free agents because we don’t choose things of our own volition. We are hard-wired to behave in a certain way by our social conditioning. Ted Honderich is a supporter of hard determinism. His argument starts from the premise that nothing happens without reason, and the reason for everything is out of the control of humans. Events are determined and anything humans do is as a result of what has already happened. Therefore we are not responsible for our actions; we are simply a part of a chain of events. Some, like Heisenberg, would argue against this view of Honderich. He argues for his uncertainty principle to claim that some events are uncaused and so human have free will. This states that we cannot know the both the location and momentum of atomic particles; events are simply unpredictable.
On the other hand, a view which supports this idea of social conditioning is Behaviourism, which assumes our moral actions are carried out as a response to external stimuli. One such person who argues for this is Ivan Pavlov, who believed that humans can be trained to behave in certain ways in certain circumstances. He exemplified this in his experiment with dogs. He used a bell to
Clarence Darrow could be said to be the most famous person who supported the idea of social conditioning. He argued that human beings cannot be held responsible for their actions because nurture has brought them up a certain way. In his case where he legally represented Leob and Leopold, he argued that morality can't exist if humans are responsible for their actions, because no-one can be held morally responsible for anything; it is a result of social conditioning. A strength of this view is that it cannot expect us to change who we are, since it is not their fault that they are this way. However, some people argue that you can’t be held responsible for their actions.
However, other would claim that human’s cannot be free agents because we don’t choose things of our own volition. We are hard-wired to behave in a certain way by our social conditioning. Ted Honderich is a supporter of hard determinism. His argument starts from the premise that nothing happens without reason, and the reason for everything is out of the control of humans. Events are determined and anything humans do is as a result of what has already happened. Therefore we are not responsible for our actions; we are simply a part of a chain of events. Some, like Heisenberg, would argue against this view of Honderich. He argues for his uncertainty principle to claim that some events are uncaused and so human have free will. This states that we cannot know the both the location and momentum of atomic particles; events are simply unpredictable.
On the other hand, a view which supports this idea of social conditioning is Behaviourism, which assumes our moral actions are carried out as a response to external stimuli. One such person who argues for this is Ivan Pavlov, who believed that humans can be trained to behave in certain ways in certain circumstances. He exemplified this in his experiment with dogs. He used a bell to