1. Nature determines if the stimulus will be benign or cause a reaction.
True. However, whether or not the stimulus is there determines if there actually is a reaction.
2. Nature determines the severity and type of reaction to the stimulus.
Well, sort of. Let's take the example of my favorite type of cell, the neuron. The level of response to a given amount of glutamate definitely depends on the number of glutamate receptors embedded in its membrane. More receptors=more places for glutamate to bind=bigger reaction.
However, with a given number of receptors, the response to glutamate is dose-dependent. The more glutamate injected into the extracellular environment, the higher the response.
Also, the timing of glutamate release at a given synapse can also make the neuron insert more glutamate receptors into the synapse, so even the nature part is influenced by the environment.
But I guess you can also argue:
3. Nature determines how it is internalized and assimilated BASED ON the type of stimulus.
This is extremely true and not to be ignored. GABA receptors, for example, aren't going to react to glutamate. Still, the presence or absence of glutamate (and the levels of glutamate present if it is present) at a glutamatergic synapse that ultimately determine whether or not the neuron will fire.
4. Nature creates a scaffolding from the onset that guides the decision making process and reactions to stimulus.
Agreed. No problems here.
5. Therefore, nature plays the central role in personality development with the NEEDED aspect of stimulus input.
...eh. I'd say this is almost correct, except both nature and environment are both important. Prenatal conditions are something I'd say count as part of the environment, too, because it is external to the genetics of the developing fetus. I provided a paper in my earlier post saying it was around 50-50 in terms of genes and the environment for personality development, but it could be a little higher or lower. Even if it were 60-40 in favor of genetics, I'd still hardly call genes "THE central thing," because 40% is still very sizeable. For you to say genes are THE central thing, they'd have to count for around 80% of personality IMO.
6. Nurture, on the other hand, merely needs to be present to cause a reaction.
well, yeah. but I take issue with your word "merely," because it absolutely has to be present to cause a reaction. with phenylketonurics (as discussed earlier), the phenylalanine being present is key to their developing mental retardation. at a glutamatergic synapse, the presence of glutamate is key to making the neuron actually fire: the glutamate receptors can be there all you want, and indeed they're there the whole time, but they don't open up to let in ions and therefore depolarize the cell until glutamate is actually present at sufficient levels.
7. The nature of a discrete individual is there regardless of stimulus, though I've never denied that it can create a layering effect one the scaffolding and tendencies are in place.
well, yeah, to an extent. if you're born with human dna, you'll be a human-- you'll look like a human and act like one for the most part. you'll most likely have the same drives as most other humans: drives to get food and sex, drives to avoid danger, although these can be absent in some individuals...
Still, if you raise a person in extreme conditions, they might fail to achieve some of the characteristics we take for granted. Take the case of
Genie, whose parents abused her severely: she lived the first 12 years of her life locked in her bedroom tied to a child's potty chair and was beaten with a stick if she tried to vocalize. When she was first rescued, Genie had developed a characteristic "bunny walk", in which she held her hands up in front, like paws. Although she was almost entirely silent, she constantly sniffed, spat, and clawed.
Over the years after her rescue, she was able to acquire some language skills, but never really grasped grammar. She had passed the critical period for language acquisition, so this can be partially be chalked up to nature in that respect, but she had also not been exposed to language before the critical period had passed, so that's chalked up to nurture.
She also had issues expressing anger, and after she was returned to the custody of her mother, after a few months "the mother found that taking care of Genie was too difficult, and Genie was transferred to a succession of six more foster homes. In some of the homes she was physically abused and harassed, and her development regressed severely. She returned to her coping mechanism of silence and gained a new fear of opening her mouth. This new fear developed after she was severely punished for vomiting in one of her foster homes; she didn't want to open her mouth, even to speak, for fear of vomiting and facing punishment again." Clearly, her environments were not favorable and directly caused her abnormally regressed development.
In the absence of normal stimuli that occur when one is raised in a normal household, you get a person with far fewer personality traits coinciding with the general population.
8. The evolution of discrete natures is a response to stimulus, so in a longer term thought process continued and repeated stimulus is actually more important than a short term one, ESPECIALLY at the population level, but even with this buff nature takes the drivers seat in assessing HOW to deal with it.
I agree with you up to the "but". Ok, nature decides HOW to deal with it, but it can't do that without the stimulus present. The level of stimulus is even important. But I guess we do agree on one level: all responses require a stimulus, and without the proper machinery to deal with the stimulus, there will be no response.
You can argue both back and forth, but it's easier and more parsimonious to make genetics the uniting feature than to look at stimulus on a case by case feature. What this means is that it is more likely to be central so, according to occam's razor, it should be taken as the correct answer until it is demonstrated incorrect. Of the papers Lanturn has cited, one of them actually backed me up (or at the very least didn't back her up adequately, depending on how you spin it), two of them contradicted each other and the others had a great deal of stats and treatments without really talking about cause, which is the point.
Well, if genes are a
lot more dominant, then fine. But with treatments, it's best to consider every aspect of the disease, or at least every significant aspect. So even if nurture was only 25% responsible for the development of a certain disease, that is still a sizeable proportion and thus ought to be considered.
When treating diseases, it's best to focus on two things: how easy the treatment is and how effective it is. If you look at
one of the papers i cited focusing on treatment of depression, the meds worked just as well as the talk therapy, but the
combination of the two is what worked best. Now, Morm might yell at me for this paper looking at treatment rather than cause, but isn't treatment extremely important in this too? Practically speaking, one of the most important parts of this debate is the implications for treatment. And what this study demonstrates is that a treatment for depression just focusing either on drugs or on feelings is not nearly as good as one that combines them. So while it might not be the simplest treatment, it is the most effective one. And
that is what matters.
EDIT:
It's important when determining and mitigating the formation of mental illness and detrimental/socially crippling personality qualities. If you know the cause you can prevent it.
Even if you know the cause, you might not be able to prevent it. For example, one of the popular theories for the development of schizophrenia is that at least some cases are partially due to prenatal viral infections... but you can't exactly prevent viral infections. I mean, you can try to be more hygienic, but that only works up to a point.
Also consider the example of Huntington's: you have the defective huntingtin gene, and you get the disease. You know the cause, but that doesn't do shit for you... you can't exactly eliminate that gene and replace it with a functional copy. At least not yet.
Prevention is an extremely important aspect of medicine, and anything that can be prevented should be prevented. But that shouldn't stop us from also focusing on treatments for things that have evaded preventative methods.
And hell, even some of the nature-focused treatments don't focus on cause necessarily but rather products downstream of the cause. In Parkinson's disease, for example, the cause is the deterioration of the substantia nigra, which releases dopamine. Treatment involves taking L-DOPA, a precursor to dopamine which effectively raises dopamine levels. That's treating a downstream symptom caused by the deterioration of the substantia nigra... and the cause of that is currently unknown. Maybe if we could figure out the cause, we could prevent it, but perhaps it might also be too difficult (it is hypothesized that in some cases, a virus acquired sometime during the patient's life might also play a role in this). A vaccination for the virus might be developed, but if the virus is rapidly-mutating, that might be impossible.
So knowledge of causes is not enough to determine what is effective. It's best to take everything into account and come up with treatments from there.
Sorry for the wall of text!!!! lol
