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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2010 21:56:42 GMT -5
To what extent are our characters embedded within our genes and to what extent are they moulded by our environment?
This is a hotly disputed subject and one on which it seems that experts in the field are unable to reach satisfactory agreement.
I lean towards a mixture of the two but give a slight predominance to the genetic inheritance.
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Erasmus
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Post by Erasmus on May 13, 2010 22:38:14 GMT -5
I have done the rare thing of actually buying a copy of Scientific American (Mind) instead of reading it through in Eason's, because it is all about male-female difference and of course confirms 90% of what I've always said, since we have experienced how social changes change sex expectations, and the other 10% equivocal, however certain uptight individuals calling themselves feminist care to insist that the stereotypes women freed themselves from 40+ years ago are their 'real nature'.
Sadly, apart from them, the thing only went as far as suited the Establishment to exert power over women the same as men instead of changing to value women and what they 'd been doing equally as men, since that would have meant radical change. We are getting there, but much much slower than we thought we would as rampant teenagers.
The brain is not a computer. It is not hardwired. Experience and preference change how the brain develops physically in childhood, and even once adult. So if society exaggerates differences between the sexes (or could conceivable be races or even religions) instead of minimizing them, the brain will develop to reflect those expected differences. Parents can influence children even opposite to what they intend: a child may rebel against a parent too obsessive about wanting it to reject stereotypes.
Some mothers like to exaggerate how difficult their boys are to deal with, in the same kind weird sexism that men and women vie for how awful their lover is. So they'll make a much bigger fuss of the boy getting himself into a mess in a different way from the girl. I had something like this at school, where there were manly things to be punished for that still carried respect, and then unmanly that carried contempt. Smoking in the outside toilets? Surfing at 6 am and smashing yourself into the sea wall? Bad boy (but on the side, your real crime was getting caught and congratulations on having the sense to cal an ambulance). Sex play, pretty clothes, a whole different kettle of fish, not bad boy as much as no boy at all
I don't see any real difference between today's homosexuals and Victorian just plain anti-sexuals and brain structure differences are proven to be as much result of use, just like musculature, not pre-ordained. A little bit of direction is born, the rest develops what it started with. I could never be a fat freak or a muscle-bound slob, but I can decide whether to use my physique if power is required, as feeble or wiry. In fact, it is a fool who is never scared.
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Post by Wonder Woman on May 13, 2010 23:39:34 GMT -5
I lean heavily toward nature these days.
On the other hand, if it was all nature, what's the point of nurture? Will that child grow into the same person whether he's inside a loving and sheltered environment as he would in a home filled with disharmony and regular beatings?
Yet, if it was all nurture and environment, wouldn't two people growing up in the exact same environment and nurtured equally, be very alike?
Maybe nurture shapes some aspects of us, but only working with what nature gave us to begin with.
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Post by gabriel on May 14, 2010 5:12:57 GMT -5
beth and I have been having this discussion in The Learning Curve.
Read the article, if your interested, about babies' sense of morality.
Gabriel
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Kay
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Post by Kay on May 14, 2010 17:27:56 GMT -5
I lean heavily toward nature these days. On the other hand, if it was all nature, what's the point of nurture? Will that child grow into the same person whether he's inside a loving and sheltered environment as he would in a home filled with disharmony and regular beatings? Yet, if it was all nurture and environment, wouldn't two people growing up in the exact same environment and nurtured equally, be very alike? Maybe nurture shapes some aspects of us, but only working with what nature gave us to begin with. If you have a sibling, you actually don't grow up in the same set of circumstances, each child has their own station, and is influenced by their sibling, as well as their parents. My daughter claims her oldest brother taught her how NOT to behave Nature plays a large part, but I think, at least in our case nurture won out. I believe if my oldest son had been raised in a chaotic or violent environment, he would not have turned out to be a productive and responsible citizen.
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Post by beth on May 14, 2010 21:13:38 GMT -5
As Gabe says, we are crossing over a bit, but it's a very interesting subject so can carry on here , I think. I lean toward both influences being important, but the tender shoots of inherited temperament can easily be changed by environment/nurturing influences - not in every case, but in most. Is the abnormal personality - Schizophrenia, sociopathy, actual multi-personality disorder, clinical depression, etc., ever inherited or are they usually caused by physically related defects? I don't think I'm stating that very well, but perhaps you'll see where I'm going with it.
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Erasmus
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Post by Erasmus on May 15, 2010 0:40:44 GMT -5
Certain abnormalities do appear to have a physical origin that no amount of Freudian therapy is going to cure. But to regard homosexual rejection of the other sex (or heterosexual rejection of one's own sex for that matter) as one such, goes straight back to distinguishing anybody who has had a homosexual relationship as a homosexual incapable of heterosexuality because born with some pre-natal disorder. We got away from that over 40 years ago, even before that as far as Kinsey can be relied upon. It makes no sense in the light of cultures where homosexual relations have been expected or valued above heterosexual, or just plain insignificant and never expected to prevent heterosexual ones or vice-versa.
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Post by beth on May 15, 2010 7:56:17 GMT -5
That's kind of a puzzle to me, Erasmus. I do think genetics must play a part in whether or not someone is homosexual, but, I don't see that it's something inherited from a parent. I guess that just makes me confused - IOW, not knowledgeable enough to promote an opinion.
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Post by Wonder Woman on May 15, 2010 8:34:54 GMT -5
Sounds more like you're talking about those who're bisexual, Erasmus, which isn't at all surprising. Many different (even seen as perverse) things get people revved up, and *some* of us don't mind exploring our sexuality.
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Post by beth on May 16, 2010 20:01:46 GMT -5
I'm going to add this link for any who are interested. It leads to Nova (PBS) and a great article - Cracking the Code of Life. The subject is exactly what Mike is talking about on this thread. www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/genome/debate.html
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Erasmus
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Post by Erasmus on May 25, 2010 21:49:54 GMT -5
It all sounds very like a modern version or astrology or karma. Simply being born with certain tendencies says nothing about how they might translate within a given culture. Margaret Meade went into this, how a man with exactly the same characteristics born in 1900 in Vienna might grow up to be seen as the ideal ladies' man, while in Ohio totally homosexual divorced from any contact closer than speech with women, though he might prefer their presence as long as it does not become 'intimate'. And what does that say about how we see friendship and intimacy as in contrast instead of intimacy a deeper friendship?
If you call yourself Homosexual, you are excluding the other sex from the equality of giving yourself to make love in advance because of what they are, and if Heterosexual, excluding your own, exactly as were one to define oneself as Homoracial or Heteroracial. It makes no sense and is fairly rare in the world's cultures. Nobody tells children that if they masturbate, they must grow up incapable of sexual relationships with other people. They do tell them that if they masturbate somebody of their own sex or allow it to be done to them, they must grow up incapable of doing the same with the other sex. Else what do the terms Homosexual and Heterosexual mean except which sex is excluded?
Fact is that most of us do not want sex with every person we see, only with a tiny number we feel good friends with. That is a great improvement on past times when sex was more often a purely personal sensation to be enjoyed with any child on sale in the slave market.
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Post by Deleted on May 26, 2010 5:53:50 GMT -5
My dear chap, people can LOVE lots of other folk WITHOUT having the slightest desire to MAKE love to them.
Love, lovemaking and sexual orientation are three related but different things.
Many homosexuals appear to enjoy a promiscuous sexual life that is GREATER than the normal masculine casualness about opposite sex relationships. On the whole, gay men probably have more sexual partners than their heterosexual counterparts.
I believe that both nature and nurture play a part in moulding our character.
On the other hand, sometimes people's behaviour just IS inexplicable!
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Post by fretslider on May 26, 2010 6:30:53 GMT -5
That's kind of a puzzle to me, Erasmus. I do think genetics must play a part in whether or not someone is homosexual, but, I don't see that it's something inherited from a parent. I guess that just makes me confused - IOW, not knowledgeable enough to promote an opinion. Genetics is a highly complex issue. Above it can be seen that the X chromosome of the grandchild is inherited from the grandfather, via the mother, in an unchanged state. Note that only the male grandchildren inherit the unchanged X chromosome from the maternal grandfather. A pattern can be observed in behaviour traits too. You've probably noticed it. Nurture is to my mind fine-tuning. It can be done right and it can be done wrong.
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Post by Wonder Woman on May 27, 2010 21:08:07 GMT -5
Okay, but the question, to my mind, remains, whether nurture can outdo nature... We've all heard that multiple personality disorder comes from severe trauma as a child. And, too, how is a serial 'born' when there's no evidence grampa went around hacking people up and burying them back behind the barn?
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Post by fretslider on May 28, 2010 7:04:00 GMT -5
Yes, you can condition people to do things they would not normally do. Stanley Milgram set out to measure the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.
Milgam wrote, I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
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