Prateek Chaubey

This paper critically examines the thesis of psychological determinism and its implications for free will. An analysis reveals that psychological determinism—which proposes that prior mental states and events entirely determine human behaviour—is conceptually flawed and empirically unsubstantiated. After elucidating the philosophical problem of free will versus determinism, core arguments against strict psychological determinism are presented, including issues of overfitting, the threat of randomness, and the logical limits of physical reductionism when applied to the mental domain. A positive compatibilist account of free will is then sketched, emphasizing the crucial role of agent control through second-order volition. Though physical and psychological factors constrain free will, they do not wholly negate it. The paper concludes that an extreme form of psychological determinism which precludes any meaningful free will is implausible given current evidence and arguments. A more nuanced perspective integrating determinism and indeterminism is needed to capture the complexities of human agency.