Heidegger

A NEW VIEW OF BEHAVIOUR AND THE OMNI-ENVIRONMENT
Jud Evans.

What is meant by behaviour and what is meant by acting? Is the beating of
our heart behaviour? Is uttering sentences like: *Mother – I feel ill!*
behaviour? Is knowing that the capital of England is London, behaviour? Which of
the above could be described as acting? To act is to do something or cause
something to happen. Is organic function and organic behaviour the same thing?

It will help the reader if it is realised from the start that I DO believe
that my genes make me who I am - at least to a far greater extent than is
generally believed in relation to environmental effects. I DO believe that
organic function and organic behaviour are the same thing. I also think it that
we are born with gene-engendered pre-dispositions to behave in certain ways,
if the pre-dispositional causal desiderata are met and satisfied. Along
with the compilers of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Report, I hold that it
is plausible to say that we are very much determined behaviouristically by
our genes.

The idea of a genetic selfhood is nothing new, and though modern
technological advances in the genetic sciences provide some evidence to lend
authoritative support to a ductile hereditable self, it has long been known that we
inherit parental appearance and traits, to which old claims such as:
*He is the image of his father,* or *Though her mother died when giving
birth to her – in her ways she acts just like her mother did.*

THE NATURE OF BEHAVIOUR
For the human brain, ensconced on high in its protective bony carapace, the
human body is as much a part of the environment as anything else. I do not
hold with a psychological environmental dualistic model of environmental
intrinsicality – extrinsicality. There is plenty of empirical evidence to support
the view that corporeally we are a result of our genes. For me behaviour is
the brain’s manner of exercising control over its own constitutional
(corporeal ) environment together with, and in an overall response, to the
exterior environment. This article must be read in the sense that the word
*environment* refers to the brain’s somatic milieu, as well as the exterior
environment of which the human holism is a part.

On this interpretation the tapping of the born-blind man’s white stick as he
walks along the pavement is a behaviour. So to the forming of alphabetic
signs to communicate with others is a behaviour of the born-deaf person. The
utterance: *I am not feeling well – I must see a doctor,* is a behavioural
response by the brain to its own internal physiological environment. So if
they are behaviours, and I believe they are, and I was born blind or deaf
then who and what I am almost certainly would be the work of my genes.

>From that I see no reason why other (normal) behaviours should not be
genetically programmed, default, instinctual, gene-engendered, drives and traits
responding and undergoing modification to the changing omni-environment. I
agree with those experts who define behaviour as BOTH standard physiological
responses (the tortoise withdrawing into its shell) and *intentional
activity* or *purposeful behaviour* - the emotional and aggressive throwing of a
brick through the window of a child molester perhaps? In that sense if I run
away from a man with a gun, or throw an egg at a corrupt politician I am
responding in a way my genes dictate – and my genes are determining who I am.

Others, who confront the gunman, or do not throw eggs at politicians are
[genetically] who they are too. The combined forces of genetical and
environmental determinism would not allow our *who-ness* to be any different.

Let us see how Ruth Millikan [1] defines ‘behaviour:’

1) It is an external change or activity exhibited by an organism or external
part of an organism.
2) It has a function in the biological sense.
3) This function is or would be fulfilled normally via mediation of the
environment, or via resulting alterations in the organism’s relation to the
environment.

Viewed from a perspective that *environment* means *that which surrounds the
processing neurons* – this makes perfect sense.

Regards,

Jud
Personal Website:
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
 http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…)

“The greatest of all the spirit’s task is to produce a worldview.
The reconstruction of our age can begin only with a reconstruction
of its theory of the universe. There is hardly anything more urgent
in its claim on us than this which seems to be so far off and abstract.”

-From The Philosophy of Civilization by Albert Schweitzer

Posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
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