Free Nature vs. Nurture Essay :: essays research papers

What is inborn and what is learned? The word as to whether nature or nurture were the driving force establishment our cognitive abilities, was for a long time considered interminable. In the 18th century, Locke and the side of meat empiricists claimed that individuals were born with a tabula rasa and only experience could establish mind, consciousness and the self. On the continent, Leibniz envisaged the self as a monad carrying with it some knowledge of a basic understanding of the world. Until the 1960s, this dispute was still very vivid in the mienal sciences B. F. Skinners school of behaviorism in the USA postulated (as reflexology did earlier) brokerral rules for all in all types of learning, neglecting innate differences or predispositions. K. Lorenz was unmatchable of the protagonists of ethology in Europe, focusing on the patrimonial aspects of behavior. It was Lorenz who prohibited the antagonistic view of behavior in showing that there indeed are innate differenc es and predispositions in behavior where only flyspeck learning occurs. Today, it is largely agreed upon that nature and nurture are well cooperating to bring about adaptive behaviors. Probably only in very few cases ontogenetic programs are not subjected to behavioral plasticity at all. Conversely, the possibility to acquire behavioral traits has to be genetically coded for. Today, realising that genes and environment help and interact synergistically, traditional dichotomy of nature vs. nurture is commonly seen as a false dichotomy. Especially operant conditioning, i.e. the learning of the consequences of ones own behavior can lead to positive feedback loops between genetic predispositions and behavioral consequences that fall in the question as to cause and effect nonsensical. Positive feedback has the inherent style to exponentially amplify any initial small differences. For example, an at hand over negligible difference between two brothers in a gene affecting IQ to a sma ll percentage, may lead to one discovering a book the will spark his interest in reading, temporary hookup the other never gets to see that book. One becomes an avid reader who loves dexterous challenges while the other never finds a real interest in books, but hangs out with his friends more often. Eventually, the reading brother may end up with highly different IQ scores in order tests, simply because the book loving brother has had more opportunities to train his brain. Had twain brother received identical environmental input, their IQ scores would just now differ.