Introduction to Philosophy of the Human Person
levels of the mind (consciousness, subconsciousness,
CHAPTER 5: THE FREEDOM OF THE
HUMAN PERSON
Lesson 1: Pan-Determinism’s View of Freedom
as an Illusion
Pan-determinism is “the view which disregards [the
human] capacity to take a stand toward any conditions
whatsoever.” Specifically, it states that a human person
is not free because his/her decisions, actions, and
behavior are determined by his/her biological,
psychological, and sociological conditions.
A. Biological Determinism
• Humans are biologically predisposed to decide, act, or
behave in a certain way.
• What humans are and what they will be is determined
by their biological make-up.
• This explains why some humans are naturally calm,
kind, friendly, and sociable; others have the opposite
traits.
B. Psychological Determinism
• Human actions are not free. They may appear free,
but they are nothing but a manifestation of the various
mental states, which humans are not aware of.
•These mental states, in turn, govern human decisions,
actions, and behaviors.
Sigmund Freud
• He was born in 1856 in Frieberg, Moravia but lived
and worked in Vienna, Austria.
• He is considered as the father of the school of
psychoanalysis.
• He is known for his concepts of the three aspects of
human personality (id, ego, superego) and the three
and unconsciousness).
Three Levels of Mind:
• Conscious Mind contains all of the thoughts,
memories, feelings, and wishes of which the person is
aware at any given moment.
• Pre-conscious Mind contains all of the thoughts,
memories, feelings, and wishes of which the person is
not currently aware at any given moment. However,
this can be brought to the present awareness easily by
the process of remembering.
• Unconscious Mind contains all of the fears, motives,
sexual drives, wishes, urges, needs, and past
experiences that the person is not currently aware of
and which cannot be easily brought to the conscious
mind.
Freud likened his concept of the mind to an iceberg.
• The top of the iceberg represents the conscious mind;
• The part of the iceberg that is submerged below the
water, but still visible, is the pre-conscious mind; and
• The bulk of the iceberg that lies unseen beneath the
waterline represents the unconscious mind
C. Sociological Determinism
• There is no autonomous agent in humans that
determines their actions. Human behavior is shaped by
external conditions (the surrounding environment) and
not by the so-called inner self.
• Actions that produce good consequences are
reinforced; conversely, actions that yield negative
effects have the tendency not to be repeated.
• Human actions, then, depend on their consequences
and not on deliberate choices.
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 Introduction to Philosophy of the Human Person

Burrhus Frederic Skinner
• He is an American psychologist and social philosopher.
• He is known for his defense of behaviorism, a view
claiming that human behavior is conditioned. He refers
to his version of behaviorism as radical behaviorism and
calls his approach operant conditioning.
• He published books such as Walden Two and Beyond
Freedom and Dignity.
Reinforcement
Reinforcement states that behavior is driven by its
consequences. It is used to increase the probability that
a specific behavior will occur in the future by delivering
or removing a stimulus immediately after a behavior.
• Positive Reinforcement – occurs by presenting a
motivating/ reinforcing stimulus to the person after the
desired behavior is exhibited, making the behavior
more likely to happen in the future.
• Negative Reinforcement - occurs when a certain
stimulus (usually an aversive stimulus) is removed after
a particular behavior is exhibited. The likelihood of the
particular behavior occurring again in the future is
increased because of removing/avoiding the negative
consequence
Examples:
• A mother gives her son praise for doing homework.
• The little boy receives ₱1,000.00 for every 95 he
earns on his report card.
• A father gives his daughter candy for cleaning up toys.
• Bob does the dishes in order to stop his mother’s
nagging.
exhibited, making the behavior less likely to happen in
the future.
• Negative Punishment – occurs when a certain
reinforcing stimulus is removed after a particular
undesired behavior is exhibited, resulting in the
behavior happening less often in the future.
Examples:
• A child picks his nose during class and the teacher
reprimands him in front of his classmates.
• A child touches a hot stove and feels pain.
• A person eats spoiled food and gets a bad taste in
his/her mouth.
• A child kicks a peer, and is removed from his/her
favorite activity.
• A child yells out in class, loses a token for good
behavior on his/her token board that could have later
be cashed in for a prize.
• A child fights with her brother and has her favorite toy
taken away.
• To sum up, if human behavior is determined by its
consequences, reinforced if it has pleasant
consequences and not reinforced if it has unpleasant
consequences, then it is externally determined.
• If human behavior is externally determined, then it
makes no sense to claim that a human person is free.
• To claim that a human person is free is to posit an
autonomous agent in the human person that decides
independently of human behavior.

• Joe presses a button that turns off a loud alarm.

Punishment
Punishment is a process by which a consequence
immediately follows a behavior which decreases the
future frequency of that behavior.

• Positive Punishment – occurs by presenting an

aversive consequence after an undesired behavior is

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 Introduction to Philosophy of the Human Person
Lesson 2: The Human Person as Self-
Determining Being
Viktor E. Frankl
• He is an Austrian philosopher, neurologist, and
psychotherapist.
• He was born on March 26, 1905 in Vienna Austria
where he practiced as a neurosurgeon and
psychotherapist before he was imprisoned in
concentration camps during the Holocaust.
• After his three-year incarceration, he published many
books including the best-selling Man’s Search for
Meaning, an autobiography of his life in the
concentration camps.
• He died on September 2, 1997.
• All persons are biologically, psychologically, and
sociologically destined.
• While the pan-determinists are correct in pointing this
out, for Frankl, they are wrong in claiming that human
behavior is nothing except what is pre-determined by
these factors.
• Human freedom does not exist in a vacuum. To be
free means to be free from. Freedom always
presupposes a condition or a restriction.
• Human freedom is destined freedom.
• To speak freedom is to speak of condition from which
a person seeks to be free.
• A human person is self-determining, the innate
capacity to determine his/her decisions and actions
amidst constraining conditions.
• The human person has the power to transcend all the
factors that condition human freedom
A. Against Biological Determinism
• If we are nothing more than our biological
endowment, how can we explain the triumphs in life of
those persons who suffer from physical disabilities, and
failures of those who got what it takes to succeed in
life?
• If biological determinism is true, then how can we
explain also the lives of identical twins who are said to
have the same genetic make-up but who turn out to
have different attitudes, behaviors, and personalities?
• Physically challenged individuals can go far beyond
what their biological conditions permit them to do.
Nick Vujicic
• He was born without arms and legs. As a child, he
struggled with life, experienced loneliness and
depressions, had ups and downs and questioned the
purpose of his life.
• The child who attempted to commit suicide at the age
of ten is now one of the world’s most popular
evangelical and motivational speakers spreading the
power of love, hope, faith, and will power.
• His life is a powerful testimony against the claim of
biological determinism.
• Given the positive mental attitude, a huma person,
just like Nick, can transcend his/her physical condition
in order to succeed in life.
B. Against Psychological Determinism
• Freud is correct that there exist mental states such as
instincts and drives, hopes and wishes, past frustrations
and successes. But these mental states do not govern
our decisions, behaviors, and actions.
• Human person can control, process, and direct his/her
mental states for whatever purposes; use them to
his/her advantage rather than being driven by them.
• Frankl negates the idea that the human person’s
attitudes, perspectives, values, and beliefs are nothing
but a product of social condition.
• While it is true that a person is unavoidably influenced
by his/her environment, the environment does not
completely determine his/her behavior.
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 Introduction to Philosophy of the Human Person
• He/she cannot be reduced into a mere mechanical
object completely determined by the outside world
• A human person is not a mere mechanical object;
he/she ultimately self-determining.
• What becomes of a person is a product of his/her
decisions and creations.
• A person determines his/her own thoughts and
actions, and the surroundings are not capable of taking
this capacity away from him/her.
Lesson 3: The Human Person as Being
Condemned to be Free
Jean-Paul Sartre
• He was a foremost existentialist, novelist and
playwright whose works emphasize freedom and
responsibility.
• He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964
but refused to accept the award.
• He published his magnum opus, Being and
Nothingness, in 1943.
A. Existence Precedes Essence
• Existence refers to the totality of how a person has
lived his/her life. It refers to his/her life from the day
he/she was born to the day he/she died.
• Essence refers to the nature or the whatness of a
human person. That which makes a person ‘person,’
that which makes him/her distinct from other beings
constitutes his/her essence.
Existence comes before essence:
•A human person does not have a pre-given nature,
meaning, purpose, and value;
•There is no universal human nature, meaning,
purpose, and value;
•Individual human nature, meaning, purpose, and value
are created by each and every person depending on
how he/she lives his/her life.
B. Abandoned to be Free
• We are abandoned to be free according to Sartre. We
are abandoned in the sense that we did not choose to
be free.
• We are free, but we did not choose freedom; it is a
human condition we are thrown into.
• This is the price of freedom – abandonment: the
existential condition of being thrown into one’s
existence with nothing to cling as guide.
• The path of life is not ready-made; it is for us to
create.
C. Freedom in Despair
• We are not just free; it is our responsibility to create
the kind of life we want.
• However, while we are free to create our own lives,
our lives do not always turn out to be what we want
them to be. Reality is not always compatible with what
we want.
• We are free, but we exercise this freedom in despair.
• We are, therefore, in despair according Sartre. We are
in despair when we have no control over the realization
of our plans in life.
• According to Sartre, we can only rely on those things
within our power of control and on the sum of
probabilities that made our actions possible.
• We have control over our will but we have no control
over things beyond our will. This is the condition under
which we exercise our freedom.
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 Introduction to Philosophy of the Human Person

Lesson 4: Freedom and Responsibility 3. COMPATIBILISM

• Compatibilism rejects the premise that determinism

A. Views on the Possibility of Human Freedom
1. HARD DETERMINISM
• Hard determinism believes that human actions and
choices are causally determined by forces and
influences over which a person exercises no meaningful
control.
• It accepts determinism, and further believes that
determinism and freedom are incompatible – they
cannot both be true.
and freedom are incompatible. For compatibilism, even
if determinism is correct and thus all human actions are
caused by previous events or conditions along with
natural laws, still such actions can be free.
• The actions of a human person are free not because
they are not caused by previous events or conditions
along with natural laws, but because the human person
is not forced, compelled, or constrained to do actions
to satisfy his/her own desires or to carry out his/ her
own intentions.

• Determinism is the view that all events that happen in

the world are caused by previous events or conditions
along with the laws of nature. It follows that if we know
the relevant conditions for an event to occur and
natural laws governing its occurrence, we will be able to
predict the occurrence of this event.

• Principle of alternate possibilities for freedom states

that a person is morally responsible for what he/she has
done if he/she could have done otherwise.

• In determinism, actions or choices are determined. If

an event is caused by previous events following some
natural laws, this event could not have been otherwise.
2. LIBERTARIANISM
• Libertarianism rejects determinism. It accepts that
while certain events in the world are caused and thus
determined, there are also some events that are not –
referring precisely to human choices.
• It accepts the premise of hard determinism that
determinism and freedom are incompatible but rejects
its premise that determinism is correct.
• It believes that it is only the self that produces these
free choices because he/she is capable of choosing to
perform these actions/ choices (will).
B. Meaning of Accountability
• Accountability refers to our deservingness of blame
or praise (punishment or reward) for the actions we
perform.
• It is a natural result of our intelligence and freedom,
or of our capacities to know and choose.
RESPONSIBILITY
• As Accountability – the deservingness of blame or
praise for the actions we perform;
• As Duty – having certain obligations by virtue of your
status or position;
• As Agency – being the cause of something or being
the one that brings about something.

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 Introduction to Philosophy of the Human Person
C. Conditions for Accountability
Questions:
• What are the conditions for attributing moral
responsibility?
• What are the conditions for determining the degree of
one’s moral responsibility?
INCRIMINATING CONDITIONS
A person is morally accountable if the two conditions
are present:
• Knowledge condition – capable of knowing that the
action is either right or wrong.
• Choice condition – capable of choosing to perform
the action.
Example: Leo is trying to shoot John with the intention
of killing him. Martin, a security guard, upon seeing Leo
trying to shoot John suddenly decides to save the life of
John by using his body to cover John’s body. Which one
of them is morally accountable?
EXCUSING CONDITIONS
A person is not morally accountable if either one of the
incriminating conditions is absent.
• Knowledge condition – action is done out of
ignorance.
• Choice condition – action is not done intentionally
Examples:
• Gabby, a 12 years old child, mistakes a real gun for a
toy gun and then shoot Tony, his father.
• Jesse, a factory manager, does not do or fails to do
preventive measures to protect the health of his
workers from the hazardous fumes emitted in his
factory; and as a result, many of his workers get sick
seriously. Which of the two examples can be exempted/
excused from moral accountability?
MITIGATING/ AGGRAVATING CONDITIONS
There are reasons and circumstances that would
lessen/increase the degree of accountability; mitigating
and aggravating conditions.
Bases for determining the Degree of Accountability:
• The Degree of Difficulty/ Pressure
• The Intensity of the Wrongdoing
• The Degree of One’s Involvement
• The Degree of Knowledge
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