This chapter, which deals with the psychological origins of goodness in childhood, and the developmental origins of human morality, argues that the socialization model and cognitive maturation model give short shrift to the role of emotions as one of the multiple natural prerequisites for nurturing morality. The primary models of moral development in the field of developmental psychology considered moral acquisition as a derived and “nurtured” consequence of inborn tendencies to either seek knowledge or gain social connection. Morality could not (...) possibly emerge out of hierarchical socialization. Socially constructed moral codes and feelings were derivative of natural emotional appraisal tendencies built on struggles for survival. Morality and convention were psychologically bound together, unified by the syntax of moral importance. The emotional transformation of socialized conventions into underlying moral competence can be likened to the transformation of everyday language performance into the innate syntactic structures indexing linguistic competence. (shrink)

This paper advocates a dispositional account of innate cognitive capacities, which has an illustrious history from Plato to Chomsky. The "triggering model" of innateness, first made explicit by Stich ([1975]), explicates the notion in terms of the relative informational content of the stimulus (input) and the competence (output). The advantage of this model of innateness is that it does not make a problematic reference to normal conditions and avoids relativizing innate traits to specific populations, as biological models of innateness are (...) forced to do. Relativization can be avoided in the case of cognitive capacities precisely because informational content is involved. Even though one cannot measure output relative to input in a precise way, there are indirect and approximate ways of assessing the degree of innateness of a specific cognitive capacity. (shrink)

In this powerful critique, the esteemed historian and philosopher of science Evelyn Fox Keller addresses the nature-nurture debates, including the persistent disputes regarding the roles played by genes and the environment in determining individual traits and behavior. Keller is interested in both how an oppositional “versus” came to be inserted between nature and nurture, and how the distinction on which that opposition depends, the idea that nature and nurture are separable, came to be taken (...) for granted. How, she asks, did the illusion of a space between nature and nurture become entrenched in our thinking, and why is it so tenacious? Keller reveals that the assumption that the influences of nature and nurture can be separated is neither timeless nor universal, but rather a notion that emerged in Anglo-American culture in the late nineteenth century. She shows that the seemingly clear-cut nature-nurture debate is riddled with incoherence. It encompasses many disparate questions knitted together into an indissoluble tangle, and it is marked by a chronic ambiguity in language. There is little consensus about the meanings of terms such as nature, nurture, gene, and environment. Keller suggests that contemporary genetics can provide a more appropriate, precise, and useful vocabulary, one that might help put an end to the confusion surrounding the nature-nurture controversy. (shrink)

Nancy Tuana holds that the nature/nurture dichotomy does not accurately represent the world and hence that a whole series of assumptions about human nature is mistaken. She rejects both biological determinism and alternative interactionist views. I argue that although her arguments and political concerns do rule out any kind of simple biological determinism, they do not show that the alternative interactionist view is untenable: in fact, she uses the distinction in her attempt to demolish it. I argue (...) that the assumption that "nature" implies fixity is the source of difficulties here, not the dichotomy itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nature and Nurture in French Ethnography and Anthropology, 1859-1914Martin StaumThe adaptability of non-European peoples to "civilization" was a critical issue deriving from the perennial nature-nurture question that haunted debates in the human sciences in late nineteenth-century France.1 The emerging scholarly disciplines of anthropology and ethnography helped provide a scientific veneer that bolstered existing cultural prejudices concerning the innate limitations or retarded development of non-Europeans. Certainly (...) there were many other pragmatic reasons for imperial expansion, and racists did not automatically become imperialists. But if, as Edward Said contended, imperialism "depends upon the idea of having an empire," there is no doubt that many ethnographers and anthropologists helped legitimate the idea.2 Their debates retain a resonance in our twenty-first century postcolonial world struggling with questions of identity, integration, and cultural diversity.Relying on reports from travelers, missionaries, or colonial officials, human scientists from across the political and religious spectrum justified European superiority. Although a few journalists and philosophers outside the scholarly societies represented a minority anti-imperialist counter-current, the remarkable pervasiveness of hierarchical thinking affected both socially radical anthropologists and more conservative ethnographers.3 While ethnographers proclaimed universal fraternity, they conceded that physical differences affected [End Page 475] intellect and character. The later attack on hereditarianism by Durkheimian sociologists and isolated anthropologists with the catalyst of the Dreyfus Affair is all the more striking.4 As George Stocking has argued concerning a British Victorian thinker, the cultural differences between Europeans and non-Europeans became so entangled with biological issues that there was "difficulty conceptualizing them except in terms of 'race.' "5The two most notable anthropological scholarly societies of the late nineteenth century, both founded in 1859, were the Société d'ethnographie orientale et américaine and the Société d'anthropologie de Paris. Historians have justifiably noted their mutual aversion and have contrasted their differences over scientific method, politics, and religion.6 The ethnographers, inspired by a student of Japanese language and Asian religion, Léon de Rosny (1837-1914), were largely linguists and specialists in Asian texts and pre-Columbian codices that represented partly civilized peoples. Rosny invented the term "ambiantisme" for a philosophy that ostensibly privileged the cultural milieu rather than inborn human nature.7 The society membership varied between 115 in 1864 and 470 in 1878, though it declined to 165 by 1903.8 As a group, compared to the anthropologists, they were more politically conservative, more socially elite, and more inclined toward conventional religion, with its belief in the unity of the species. Their "science of destiny" stressed human freedom and unalterably opposed philosophical materialism.9 [End Page 476]The anthropologists, headed by physician and anatomist Paul Broca (1824-80) consisted of a hard core of like-minded medically trained colleagues. The anthropologists' membership peaked around 500 both in 1885 and 1905, though, they, too declined to 165 by 1914.10 Historians have analyzed the nature-nurture issue more subtly for the anthropologists.11 While the Society almost always expressed interest in both physical and cultural spheres, they privileged the study of crania as an index to the intellectual and moral characteristics of "races." The more extreme hereditarians thought that the nature of allegedly inferior "races" precluded perfectibility. Armand de Quatrefages (1810-92), professor of anthropology at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle and pioneer of the so-called Muséum school, in his later years cast doubt on whether physical indicators actually demonstrated human superiority. However, the Muséum school did not generally renounce racial hierarchy, though they believed that environmental influences formed and continued to shape human varieties.12 In addition, philosophical materialists, militant atheists, and politically radical thinkers dominated the society in the generation after Broca's death. Almost all were neo-Lamarckians who leavened the idea of a fixed human nature with the possibility of adaptation to a milieu and transmissible acquired characteristics.13 The medical physiologist Charles Richet reported that "heredity and milieu are not antagonistic, but synergistic."14 However, many accounts underplay the differential application of neo-Lamarckianism. In this "racial evolutionist paradigm" already noticed by Laurent Mucchielli, even the Muséum school found only civilized people adaptable... (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Phenotypic plasticity integrates the insights of ecological genetics, developmental biology, and evolutionary theory. Plasticity research asks foundational questions about how living organisms are capable of variation in their genetic makeup and in their responses to environmental factors. For instance, how do novel adaptive phenotypes originate? How do organisms detect and respond to stressful environments? What is the balance between genetic or natural constraints (such as gravity) and natural selection? The author begins by defining phenotypic plasticity and detailing its history, including (...) important experiments and methods of statistical and graphical analysis. He then provides extended examples of the molecular basis of plasticity, the plasticity of development, the ecology of plastic responses, and the role of costs and constraints in the evolution of plasticity. A brief epilogue looks at how plasticity studies shed light on the nature/nurture debate in the popular media. (shrink)

Research on the origins of human social smiling is presented as a case study of how a species-specific, species-typical behavior may emerge from thousands of momentary events in which a continuously changing biological organism acts to make, respond to, and learn from its experience.

From a cultural-historical perspective, nature and nurture are contested concepts. The paper focuses on the nature/nurture debate in the work of William Shakespeare and in the Romantic tradition, and argues that while our Romantic inheritance problematises nurture, it tends to mystify nature. Given that conceptions of nature are culturally driven, there is an urgent educational challenge to problematise nature as well as nurture.

From a cultural-historical perspective, nature and nurture (and thus education) are contested concepts. The paper focuses on the nature/nurture debate in the work of William Shakespeare (influenced by Montaigne) and in the Romantic tradition (evidenced by Rousseau and Wordsworth), and argues that while our Romantic inheritance (still highly influential in education) problematises nurture, it tends to mystify nature. Given that conceptions of nature are culturally driven, there is an urgent educational challenge to problematise (...) nature as well as nurture. (shrink)

One formative idea behind the workshop on expertise in Berkeley in August of 2010 was to develop a viable “trading zone” of ideas, which is defined as a location “in which communities with a deep problem of communication manage to communicate” (Collins et al. 2010, p. 8). In the current case, the goal is to have a trading zone between philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists who communicate their ideas on expertise such that productive interdisciplinary collaboration results. In this paper, I review (...) Harry Collins' three-dimensional model of expertise and provide a very brief and non-inclusive overview of a psychological response. In addition, I propose an addendum to the model by adding a fourth—natural talent—dimension. (shrink)

Vallortigara & Rogers's (V&R's) proposal that directional asymmetries evolved under social pressures raises questions about the ontogenetic mechanisms subserving the alignment of asymmetries in a population. Neuro-ontogenetic principles suggest that epigenetic factors are decisively involved in the determination of individual lateralization and that genetic factors align their direction. Clearly, directional asymmetry has an epigenetic trait.

Progressive family policy regimes typically aim to promote and protect women’s opportunities to participate in the workforce. These policies offer significant benefits to affluent, two-parent households. A disproportionate number of low-income and impoverished families, however, are headed by single mothers. How responsive are such policies to the objectives of these mothers and the needs of their children? This chapter argues that one-size-fits-all family policy regimes often fail the most vulnerable household and contribute to intergenerational poverty in two ways: by denying (...) at-risk children adequate parenting, and by undermining their mothers’ legitimate interest in nurturing and caring for their own children. The capabilities of these mothers and the well-being of their children are better served by policies which recognise maternal caregiving as a productive and valuable occupation meriting equal respect and social support. (shrink)

This paper serves as an introduction to the special issue on “Reconciling Nature and Nurture in Behavior and Cognition Research” and sets its agenda to resolve the 'interactionist' dichotomy of nature as the genetic, and stable, factors of development, and nurture as the environmental, and plastic influences. In contrast to this received view it promotes the idea that all traits, no matter how developmentally fixed or universal they seem, contingently develop out of a single-cell state through (...) the interaction of a multitude of developmental resources that defies any easy, dichotomous separation. It goes on to analyze the necessary ingredients for such a radical, epigenetic account of development, heredity and evolution: 1. A detailed understanding of the epigenetic nature of the regulatory mechanisms of gene expression; 2. The systematical questioning of preconceptions of 'explanatory' categories of behavior, such as 'innate' or 'programmed'; 3. Especially in psychological research the integration of the concepts of 'development' and 'learning', and a richer classification of the concept of 'environment' in the production of behavior; 4. A fuller understanding of the nature of inheritance that transcends the restriction to the genetic material as the sole hereditary unit, and the study of the process of developmental niche construction; and last 5. Taking serious the role of ecology in development and evolution. I hope that an accomplishment of the above task will then lead to a 'postgenomic' synthesis of nature and nurture that conceptualizes 'nature' as the natural phenotypic outcome 'nurtured' by the natural developmental process leading to it. (shrink)

Keller explains the persistence of the nature/nurture debate by a chronic ambiguity in language derived from classical and behavioral genetics. She suggests that the more precise vocabulary of modern molecular genetics may be used to rephrase the underlying questions and hence provide a way out of this controversy. I show that her proposal fits into a long tradition in which other authors have wrestled with the same problem and come to similar conclusions. - Review of 'The mirage of (...) a space between nature and nurture' by Evelyn Fox Keller, Duke University Press, 2010, ISBN 9780822347316. (shrink)

As Edward Hundert--a philosopher, psychiatrist, and award-winning educator--makes clear in this eloquent interdisciplinary work, the newly emerging model for ...

Studies of childhood abuse and neglect haveimportant lessons for considerations of natureand nurture. While each child has uniquegenetic potentials, both human and animalstudies point to important needs that everychild has, and severe long-term consequencesfor brain function if those needs are not met. The effects of the childhood environment,favorable or unfavorable, interact with all theprocesses of neurodevelopment (neurogenesis,migration, differentiation, apoptosis,arborization, synaptogenesis, synapticsculpting, and myelination). The time coursesof all these neural processes are reviewed herealong with statements of core principles forboth genetic (...) and environmental influences onall of these processes. Evidence is presentedthat development of synaptic pathways tends tobe a ``use it or lose it'' proposition.Abuse studies from the author's laboratory,studies of children in orphanages who lackedemotional contact, and a large number of animaldeprivation and enrichment studies point to theneed for children and young nonhuman mammals tohave both stable emotional attachments with andtouch from primary adult caregivers, andspontaneous interactions with peers. If theseconnections are lacking, brain development bothof caring behavior and cognitive capacities isdamaged in a lasting fashion.These effects of experience on the brainimply that effects of modern technology can bepositive but need to be monitored. Whiletechnology has raised opportunities forchildren to become economically secure andliterate, more recent inadvertent impacts oftechnology have spawned declines in extendedfamilies, family meals, and spontaneous peerinteractions. The latter changes have deprivedmany children of experiences that promotepositive growth of the cognitive and caringpotentials of their developing brains. (shrink)