Debate Nature Vs Nurture

Let's say you take a bowling ball and chuck it through your parent's window on purpose. Naturally, your parents will yell at you and will serve you the consequences... and thus you're influenced by your parents. You're changed because of your parent's decisions and what they feel is right or wrong. Yea, you're influenced... cuz most people honestly aren't considerate, good-humored people from birth... I'd think that's obvious to see.

 

Let's say you take a bowling ball and chuck it through your parent's window on purpose. Naturally, your parents will yell at you and will serve you the consequences... and thus you're influenced by your parents. You're changed because of your parent's decisions and what they feel is right or wrong. Yea, you're influenced... cuz most people honestly aren't considerate, good-humored people from birth... I'd think that's obvious to see.

 

Nature does dictate our lives and society more than many of us will admit. You brought up some good examples of how people will revert to instintual ways to survive. Also finding a sexual mate is another thing that our instincts rely on and how we go about obtaining that mate. Our senses control how we react to situations band how we go about living. Everyone has preferences in food,men/women mates,surroundings,ect. We rely on ourselves to survive and if you don't theres a chance you will fail thinking someone greater than you will save or help you. I don't believe in Nurturing. Everything we do is because of things we like and dislike .

 

From when you are born to around the age of 8,you learn and acquire all of your morals and "rights and wrongs" from 1) your parents 2) family 3)Anyone else you may spend an extended amount of time around etc.After that,you begin to develop your own view and opinions.Some of them are based on your own way of thinking and some are learned form society (friends,school,religion etc).

So the answer I give to your first question(are we the way we are because we're raised that way?) based on my knowledge of psychology and own opinion would have to be....Yes,but not all the time.

To support my "but not all the time" response to your first question im going to vaguely discuss something that has its roots in genetics.I know a guy who was adopted by this couple that lives in my neighborhood since he was 3.The boy is 18 now and shows no signs of personality relations to his foster parents.Point is that its not always how you were raised that determines what kind of a person you are,but what certain genes you posses.

I am personally a fan of "outside forces" shaping a persons personality and behaviors.

Personal answer to Q2.Yes,but outside forces shape who you are in positive and negative ways.

Homosexuality is a genetic disorder,not nessasarily brought upon by the parants,but more of a mutation.Also psychological disorders such as Gender Identity Disorder and social influence can bring about homosexuality.The reason why it is not classified as a mental disorder is because mental health professionals and researchers have long recognized that being homosexual poses no inherent obstacle to leading a happy, healthy, and productive life, and that the vast majority of gay and ******* people function well in the full array of social institutions and interpersonal relationships.


As for your third paragraph and again you said you wanted our opinion on the topic.

( After reading a few books I noticed its a common argument, an example is Lord of the Flies in which english children revert to savage ways, but thats merely to survive. )Yes that is true,in order to survive the children needed to strip themselves of moral dignity and adapt.It doesnt make them wrong,or bad people it was simply the environment that manipulated there behavior.

(Is society the way it is because we make it so or does nature change the role we play? ) Im not sure what you mean.But in my opinion,we shape society and society shapes us.

(f you take a random dog and place it the wild can it survive?) Im not ruleing out that it cant,but the probability is low.A dog is a product of nurture not nature,it was because we domesticated the wolfs that dogs even exsist.The way I see it Dog=Nurture Wolf=Nature.

(If you take a wolf and raise it as a dog then place it into a home will it not revert to it's savage ways?) ok,in order to raise the probabitiy of it not attacking you,you would need to raise the wolf from since it was still a baby.But then again,its a wild animal,it still has the genetic makeup to be wild.Its not like a dog,who have been domesticated for thousands of years,im sure the first wolfs humans tryed to domesticate of few went nutts and attacked.Its over thousands of years the domesticsted wolves gentic sequense changed to become less hostile,even there physical appearance is less threat full.


Do you want to know what the best answer for these two qustions are(If you take a random dog and place it the wild can it survive? If you take a wolf and raise it as a dog then place it into a home will it not revert to it's savage ways?) Maybe....

Theres know yes or no...thats what you need to understand,its that there are so many things that influence your life and the way you think and live and behave and change you that nothing is certain...its all about the situation.Anythings possible man just remember that.

 

It could be Nature, very plausibly. You could be the same personality, just acting under different circumstances or experience.

 

I believe that it can work both ways. In the beginning of life I believe that your genes decide your tendencies and how you will act (Its not like you have been being disciplined in you mothers womb), however later on in life I believe that nurture mainly decides how you act, how you were brought up.

Nurture because if you take some and raise them up in a very high class home then they would be more well-mannered than someone that has been raised up in a home that has less rules.

Nature because people with downs syndrome or autism, their different mannerisms are affected by a missing chromosome or a simple disfigured one. Also you have the two gender chromosomes the x and y chromosomes. Generally a man with the x and y chromosome likes women and a woman with both x chromosomes likes men. However this statement can be contradicted by homosexuality. Scientific studies have not yet found a “gay” gene so we are left to realize that that is left to nurture. Scientific studies have found that boys raised in a home without a father to guide them tend to grow up more feminine and less masculine. There are many different factors that contribute to that such as if a boy does things that most women do.

I believe that it is not one or the other it is mainly both nature and nurture both have an effect on how you grow up.

 

Nature and Nurture both have their influence in psychological development. I find that speech development provides a good illustration on how both are present.

I live in America, I speak English. Someone who lives in France speaks French (typically). We speak our respective languages due to the environment in which we learned to speak. In a society speaking (for all intents and purposes) English, I learned how to communicate by speaking English. The same goes for the French man speaking French. We are nurtured into a form of lingual communication, however, we all know that children don't plop out of the womb with such skills in tact.

Around the age of 4 months, infants are known to start perceiving language, and also at this time, they enter what is known as the babbling phase. This phase is their first attempt at speech, in which they form primitive sounds such as "ah-goo" and overtime, progress toward forming distinguishable words. However, this babbling phase is alike for both the American and French infant, with both forming sounds that are present in many forms of language, not just their native one. Even deaf children babble. Since these observations generally discounts the idea that such babbling is mere imitation, we are left to assume that these attempts at speech or inborn in people, and therefore are a result of nature. So, speech is a natural action that is then shaped through nurturing.