CymbaIine said:
Therumancer said:
A lot of factual inaccuracy in your post. "Environmentalism" (odd term) hasn't taken a huge beating, it's gone back and forth over time. Currently most scientists and psychologists take a pluralistic approach rather than straight nature/nurture.
An example-
This is from this week
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25198063
It's about how male and female brains are literally "wired" differently. At the end is a nice little quote from a professor of neuroscience Oxford Uni.
"We know that there is no such thing as 'hard wiring' when it comes to brain connections. Connections can change throughout life, in response to experience and learning."
Not at all, I used environmentalism as a term since it's a subset of behaviorism that posits environment is the primary cause of human psychological development and evolution. It goes a little further than behaviorism and is in many cases used to reinforce racism, the basic argument being that the environment in which white people evolved ultimately lead to a stronger, smarter, and more capable group of people than developed in other parts of the world, something which cannot be undone or changed over a period of time. The early "boost" human civilizations received due to conditions around the fertile crescent having in a lot of cases lead to a somewhat "softer" less intelligent and capable breed of humanity in the form of a lot of the darker skinned folks, who hit a peak, but then were rapidly overwhelmed by the same people they themselves once oppressed who in turn created most of the modern civilization. The basic argument turning into one where you might be able to argue in terms of genetics that there are no differences between humans, but psychologically and in term of mental function there is a huge, evolved, difference. Needless to say it amounts to a lot of bunk, you don't see a lot about it recently. On a lot of levels though this is similar to the kind of argument that Bob is making, that women are being conditioned into certain roles by society and conditions, and that without those conditions they would be well... just like men. That's not true, as your looking at an intrinsic, difference. Not that they are inferior, in any mental sense, but that they are wired with some very different sets of instincts, and instinctive likes and dislikes. Like other animals human men and women are intended to fill different roles, and our entire makeup of chemicals, electricity, etc... reinforces this. Sometimes exceptions occur like we also see with animals, but for the most part women are intended to be more docile, domestic, and nurturing, while men are the aggressive, and practical ones. The two different outlooks intended to work together since we are already unified as a species we already need each other to survive. If some girl winds up being a tomboy, or a guy winds up being more passive and introspective, so be it, that's no huge deal, but that kind of thing represents an exception, not the rule, and it's not something that can ever truly be made the rule as much as some people might want to, nor would it really be a good idea to do so as humanity benefits from both perspectives. What's more if the civilization that allows introspective analysis of such things and people to question it "morally" was ever to collapse, we would be in real trouble since we're looking at the instincts and tendencies that allowed us to survive, thrive, and eventually totally dominate our environment.
As far as hardwiring goes, I'm using the term more generally than that article is. That article is generally talking about electronic pathways in the brain for the most part, as opposed to instincts and such intristic to humanity. Yes, people's electronic paths change, as is necessary given the nature of the brain. As parts of the brain die and don't get replaced by new cells, the electrical impulses are forced to reroute. At the end of the day we don't know a whole lot about the specific function of the brain (and likely couldn't find out without a whole new age of Mengela-like experimentation). After all in some cases people can have a metal rod stuck through the brain and be pretty much fine afterwards (rare), but in others even a slight amount of trauma can cause a variety of disorders. Then of course we've got the whole concept of "Electroshock Therapy" which remains controversial to this day.
At any rate, understand that most psychologists and psychiatrists taking a pluralistic approach is exactly my point. Bob's entire argument is one that this phenomena is 100% caused by society forcing specific roles and attitudes onto girls, a sort of paternalistic brainwashing. He's saying "change the environment, and what you tell girls is normal,
and you will change the girls" that's not true, and represents pure, unfiltered, behaviorist thinking, bordering on environmentalist if he wants to take the argument to the point of saying girls have been turned into this simply because of generations of male dominated society. After all once you start saying that, then since it's a universal truth, it by extension applies to everyone, and then we're rapidly entering into racism territory since what applies to men and women also then applies to humanity in general, and you arrive at the simple point where you have no choice but to argue that those at the top of the socio-political food chain culturally have simply become better than those who were ultimately gimped by their environment. I'd personally find it amusing to see Bob ever say that given his general politics, and really I think it's one of those cases where he's so intent to rail against what he thinks are injustices in the social order, that he really doesn't think things through, or consider that any argument he makes on something like this can wind up shooting his overall position in the foot when it's simply applied to something else.... Of course this isn't a problem unique to him, and it's typically why we oftentimes see the amusing situation where the least racist or bigoted person in a room is oftentimes considered the biggest bigot by people who are actually far more racist without realizing the ramifications of what they are saying.
