The Three Isms

1
The Three Isms

• Modern Literature

2
To which do you subscribe?

• All of my actions and experiences have already
  been determined ahead of time. Therefore, I have
  no control over what happens to me. Even though I
  feel like I make choices, it was already decided
  for me what decisions I would make.
• All of my choices are based on what I have
  experienced in the past. Therefore, I may stop or
  change something I do if I experience negative
  enough consequences. Similarly, I may do
  something new if I observe someone else gain
  rewards by doing that activity. As a result, life
  is a series of trial an error.
• I am my own person, and so I must take
  responsibility for the choice I make because in
  the end, I am the one who has to live with those
  choices. I do not make choices based on past
  experiences because those experiences no longer
  exist. For that matter, I dont feel the need to
  adhere to rules or laws because they were created
  by someone else. If it appears that I am
  following the rules, its only because I have
  independently decided to act the way I do.

3
Behaviorism

• Scenario 2

4
Behaviorism

• Your choices (behavior) is learned through
  conditioning. (Think Pavlov.)
• Your environment can shape you through your
  behaviors.
• Learned behavior comes from consequences and
  rewards.

• "Give me a dozen health infants, well-formed, and
  my own specified world to them up in and I'll
  guarantee to take any one of them at random and
  train him to become any type of specialist I
  might select--doctor, lawyerbeggar manthief." -
  JB Watson, 1924

5
Determinism

• Scenario 1

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Determinism

• Everything is set for you to follow.
• You are born the way you will be.
• You make choices according to your plan.

• "Everything in nature is the result of fixed
  laws." --Charles Darwin 
• "Everything is determined, the beginning as well
  as the end, by forces over which we have no
  control. It is determined for the insect as well
  as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic
  dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned
  in the distance by an invisible piper." - Albert
  Einstein

7
Existentialism

• Scenario 3

8
Existentialism

• People are more than just biology and study.
• Human kind will act against programming and
  circumstances.
• Man is able to break apart from the whole to form
  a self.

• "...the individual is defined only by his
  relationship to the world and to other
  individuals he exists only by transcending
  himself, and his freedom can be achieved only
  through the freedom of others. He justifies his
  existence by a movement which, like freedom,
  springs from his heart but which leads outside of
  himself. Simone de Beauvoir, 1948
• "Forever I shall be a stronger to myself. In
  psychology as in logic, there are truths but no
  truth."      Albert Camus, 1955