Anarcho-capitalist rants with a focus on Real Estate, Books and Technology
Monday, December 18, 2006
impromptu thoughts
In the never-ending debate of nature vs. nurture; doesn't the latter approach run into a regression problem? What I mean is that if we consider a man's behavior to be the product of the inputs of his social environment, where did the social environment originate those inputs?
Your query exposes the falsity of the dichotomy that some establish between "nature" and "nurture". The simplistic rendering of "nature" as consisting of inherent attributes and every input other than sociocultural inputs leaves the sociocultural realm out on its own as unnatural or artificial when, more truthfuly, the sociocultural realm is a product of "nature" itself and not something opposed to it.
On the other hand, if we ask "nature vs nurture" to stand in for the less loaded issue of "sociocultural vs not sociocultutral", it is less problematic. It is still complex in that it is difficult and sometimes meaningless to draw the line between these categories and to recognize the dynamic interplay between them.
Finally, it is too easy to fall into the reification trap and to begin to think that our categories really exist in the world as soemthing more than mental constructs.
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Your query exposes the falsity of the dichotomy that some establish between "nature" and "nurture". The simplistic rendering of "nature" as consisting of inherent attributes and every input other than sociocultural inputs leaves the sociocultural realm out on its own as unnatural or artificial when, more truthfuly, the sociocultural realm is a product of "nature" itself and not something opposed to it.
On the other hand, if we ask "nature vs nurture" to stand in for the less loaded issue of "sociocultural vs not sociocultutral", it is less problematic. It is still complex in that it is difficult and sometimes meaningless to draw the line between these categories and to recognize the dynamic interplay between them.
Finally, it is too easy to fall into the reification trap and to begin to think that our categories really exist in the world as soemthing more than mental constructs.
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