Re: Against Behaviorism

Don Geddis wrote:
Wolf <ElLoboViejo@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote on Thu, 14 Jun 2007:
Yes, but if the environmental cues are absent, the "development" does not
occur.

Sure, of course.

And the consequences of this insight are....?

It should be obvious by now that the nature vs nurture dichotomy is simply
stupid. Piaget's work is valuable, because it was the first good
demonstration that there is a sequence to human development. But to infer
from this that the environment plays no significant role is IMO silly.

But I think you missed the point, which is that there is still a "nature"
role in human cognitive development. That it is not ONLY environment.
Behavioralism, at least as described in this newsgroup, doesn't seem to
address the forces influencing human cognition which are not environmental.

No, I didn't miss the point, you did. And you did it again. Note that I said that the "nature vs nurture dichotomy is stupid." Just what do you think I meant by that? More precisely, do you know what "vs" means? And what a dichotomy framed as "A vs B" implies? (Do I sound testy? Damn right. I'm getting more than a little tired of repetitions of errors even after they have been pointed out as errors, such as your belief that behaviourism assumes a blank slate, or that it denies the role of "nature.")

Of course "nature" plays a role. But even to say that nature and nurture both "play a role" is already to contrast the two as if what each did is somehow independent of the other. That's a subtle misconception. Fact is that the genes that affect development depend on environmental cues. And any given environmental cue will work only with certain genes. Nature cannot function without nurture. Nurture is merely a label of environmental factors that affect nature.

I recommend Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human by Matt Ridley. The Amazon URL for it is:

http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Via-Nurture-Genes-Experience/dp/0060006781

It's a book worth buying IMO.

I don't think anybody was proposing that "the environment plays no
significant role".

Yeah, well, that may be so, but then why complain about "behaviouralism's blank slate?"

--


Wolf

"Don't believe everything you think." (Maxine)
.

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