Determinism from the Biological Perspective

440 Words2 Pages
Determinism is the assumption that all behaviour has specific causes. The biological perspective suggests that behaviour is linked to physiological processes such as genetic and hormonal. Determinism is related to the biological perspective in a way that the concept of biology links with the concept of determinism. This creates the hypothesis of biological determinism. From a biological perspective, the biological factors such as an organism's individual genes (opposing environmental/social factors) determine how it behaves or changes over time. An example of this is Raine’s experiment, which focused on the 'brain abnormalities in murderers'. Raine tried to obtain evidence showing how each murderer would react when they were on defense in a court trial. Raine checked to see if having brain abnormalities (such as schizophrenia) could have an effect on the murderer's behaviour and tested a serum on them. Raine also did this on 'normal subjects' to test if there were any differences. Using this method of experimentation, Raine was able to ignore the external factors and look at the innate factors, such as brain activity, indicating whether or not a person would exhibit different behaviours. Another example that relates the biological factors to the concept of determinism is Lorenz imprinting. The Lorenz concept was supported by the idea of determinism, in a way that the image of the first moving stimuli a baby/newborn animal would be 'imprinted' into their brain. This is related to the biological perspective as 'imprinting' images into a brain links to how the newborn organism would act (innate behaviour). Although biology may influence how the brain acts, there are still some flaws in this perspective, such as ignoring cognitive and behavioural explanations. The environment, for example, is but one of the main concepts that have not been taken into
Open Document