Nature vs Nurture Essay Example for Free

Nature vs Nurture EssayAbstract The discussion surrounding Stephen Pinkers book The inane slate the Modern Denial of Human Nature has sparks some rather interesting arguments as to whether our being is a result of reputation, genetics or is it lettered through nurturing. The discussion revolved around Pinkers idea that there is no such thing as the Blank Slate theory, when it comes to homosexual nature. He believes that the homophile mind, worry the human body, has been designed by natural selection through the process of biological evolution (Bailey Gillespie, 2002, p. 2).The Blank Slate theory derived from John Locke, a great philosopher who lived in the 16th century. In John Lockes philosophy, tabula rasa was the theory that the (human) mind is at birth a blank slate void of all characters, without all ideas or rules for processing data, and that data is added and rules for processing it formed solely by our sensory experiences. As understood by Locke, tabula rasa me ant that the mind of the individual was born blank, and it as well as emphasized the individuals freedom to author his or her own soul.Each individual was free to define the content of his or her character but his or her staple fibre identity as a member of the human species cannot be so altered. Implicit in this theory is the belief that individuals are infinitely and arbitrarily tractable by society by changing the individuals environment, and thus sensory experiences, one can shape the individual with few, if any, restrictions. Steven Pinker challenges the Blank Slate theory. He thinks, we are genetically coded to be whatever we are.The experiences we encounter only have a minuscule impact on how we grow. Pinker argues about the idea of which nurture plays a more of the essence(predicate) role than nature in the development of the human mind. He believes a child is born with a character, and parents cannot cause their children to have a different personality to that which is given. Pinker states in an interview by Bailey and Gillespie that Blank slates do not do anything they just sit there. Human beings do things.They make sense of their environment they dramatise language they interact with one another. They use reasoning to bring about things that they want. Even if you acknowledge, as you have to acknowledge, that learning, socialization, and culture are indispensable aspects of human bearing you have to admit that you cant have culture unless you have some kind of innate circuitry that can invent and acquire culture to begin with. (p. 5) Pinker too has an interesting notion, that there is no such thing as intelligence as we know it.If everyone is born void of everything, how do we explain noetic rest among humans? One of his ways to solve the difference, because it is given to us genetically is to have its checks and balance. We have to match social structure to genetics. Pinker stated that the Blank Slate theory made divisions among humans s ocially, intellectually, racially and by gender. Method Participants Research participants stemmed from his research with twins where Pinker with the help of Jennifer Ganger, PhD. They gathered data.On the development of words, sentences and yesteryear tense forms in a large sample of identical and fraternal twins. In the research he looked at there gradual development of their language, if it looked like the development appear in closer synchrony in identical twins (who share all their genes) than in fraternal twins (who share half(a) their genes, among those that vary), it would suggest that language development is paced in part by a genetically influenced maturational timetable. (Pinker research 2002 p.1) Pinker also conducted research studies on Neuroimaging of inflection where he used (functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neural organization of language. He also used a set of projects that focused on inflections such as the past tense and plural to underst and the psychology of language. I have study how past tense forms develop in children. I studied this processed in real time during speech productions. How they vary and do not vary? and how their details, quirks and exceptions are explained by linguistic theory. (Pinker ? research, 2002 p. 1) My view of this topic is that I think to some extent we are born with some kind of personality but our experiences molds what we truly become. I do not believe that nature give us, by genetics all the things we need in life. I think we are born with some intellectual capacity and by nurturing that, we remediate our knowledge. I saw an example of nurturing on an interesting episode of CBS 60 minutes. A little boy was born severely brain damaged and was blind. He could barely walk, talk or move his hands.At the age of two, his parents gave him a piano, he began playing it, and by age five, he was already playing authorised music. The gene found in this child is found, is found in one in ten t housand people and it allows him to read music. He just unavoidably to hear a sound once in its entirety and he can play it on piano minutes later. No everyone with this gene has this ability. His parents nurtured him and invoked the intellectual part of his brain that allows him to be an extraordinary musician. Our experience in life and the way we are nurture plays a vital roll in the individuals we become.In closing, I think we do learn a great deal from nurturing and we are born with a gene that gives us certain personalities. Therefore, a human being cannot be completely void. References Bailey, R Gillespie, N (2002). Reason Biology vs. the blank Slate. http//reason. com/0210/fe. rb. biology. shtml Pinker, S (2005) http//pinker. wjh. harvard. edu Wikipedia. Org http//en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Tabula_rasa http//en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture http//en. wikipedia. org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate.