Heidegger

Dear Jud;
The slogan “Nature versus Nurture,” insofar as it represents our modern and
post modern confinement to a matricentrific zeitgeist, is woefully lacking in
its antecedent postulates by which *natura naturata* finds its complement in
*natura naturans.* Richard Turner notes: “James spoke of a divided soul in need
of coming to a point of wholeness. To do this we need to imitate, as Leonardo
pointed out, natura naturans because imitation of active nature was equal to
an imitation of God. In order to come to that point of restitutio ad integrum
we need to imitate those powers that created it in the first place.” (  http://www.artnetweb.com/iola/journal/hi… )

Addressing the subject further, James get to the point in his:

“THE DILEMMA OF DETERMINISM.
What does determinism profess? It professes that those parts of the universe
already laid down absolutely appoint and decree what the other parts shall be.
The future has no ambiguous possibilities bidden in its womb; the part we
call the present is compatible with only one totality. Any other future
complement than the one fixed from eternity is impossible. The whole is in each and
every part, and welds it with the rest into an absolute unity, an iron block, in
which there can be no equivocation or shadow of turning.
With earth’s first clay they did the last man knead, And there of the
last harvest sowed the seed. And the first morning of creation wrote What the
last dawn of reckoning shall read. Indeterminism, on the contrary, says that the
parts have a certain amount of loose play on one another, so that the laying
down of one of them does not necessarily determine what the others shall be. It
admits that possibilities may be in excess of actualities, and that things
not yet revealed to our knowledge may really in themselves be ambiguous. Of two
alternative futures which we conceive, both may now be really possible; and
the one becomes impossible only at the very moment when the other excludes it by
becoming real itself. Indeterminism thus denies the world to be one unbending
unit of fact. It says there is a certain ultimate pluralism in it; and, so
saying, it corroborates our ordinary unsophisticated view of things. To that
view, actualities seem to float in a wider sea of possibilities from out of which
they are chosen; and, somewhere, indeterminism says, such possibilities
exist, and form a part of truth.
Determinism, on the contrary, says they exist nowhere, and that necessity on
the one hand and impossibility on the other are the sole categories of the
real. Possibilities that fail to get realized are, for determinism, pure
illusions: they never were possibilities at all. There is nothing inchoate, it says,
about this universe of ours, all that was or is or shall be actual in it having
been from eternity virtually there. The cloud of alternatives our minds
escort this mass of actuality withal is a cloud of sheer deceptions, to which
“impossibilities” is the only name that rightfully belongs.”

The above, Jud, adds to what you cite below and however more abstract raises
othe questions for consideration.
Sincerely;
Bernard

In a message dated 8/8/2006 7:43:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
GEVANS613 at aol.com writes:
NATURE VERSUS NURTURE.

There are powerful arguments on either side of the so-called *Nature versus
Nurture* controversy, but if you will allow me I will by way of introduction
first outline briefly the reason why I have suddenly introduced the subject of
inherited predisposition. Note that I write: *inherited predisposition* meaning
a disposition in advance to react in particular ways, and not in the sense of
a *preconceived belief* or an idea or opinion formed beforehand.

FIRST OF ALL – WHY INTRODUCE THE SUBJECT ANYWAY?

I have come to realise that in order for my theory of eliminative determinism
to be wholly unified and balanced, the concatenational influences of both
nature and nurture need to be reconciled and harmonised into a perspective which
unites, merges or incorporates both nature and nurture into an exclusive
model.

I have now formed the opinion that the whole traditional notion of *nature
versus nurture* is flawed, and that in fact both deterministic phenomena are
really manifestations of the same outcomes, or different sides of the same
deterministic coin – as discovered and observable in the behaviour of the natural,
living, deterministically nurtured human being.

I also have a feeling that the whole subject of nature versus nurture, like
the various amusing and curious adaptations of Heideggerianism which is applied
as a philosophically faded palimpsest or indistict template to the most
absurd domains of the human experience, is to a large extent hyped-up by those
academics who deliberately engender the contrived polarisation of the disputation
if they have a book to write or sell, or an ontological axe to grind, or who
wish draw attention to themselves for reasons of academic preferment.

For me the so-called *divide* between the two types of deterministic physical
influence is a myth. When, incidentally, I say *physical influences* I really
mean by that the two different sets of causal objects which characterise on
the one hand the intrinsic influential genes, [the dna] and on the other - the
extrinsic influential human and other causal objects which we encounter in
life, which bring about our experiential, predispositionally moderated change
after we are born.

What I am suggesting I suppose is that much of that which makes us human -
our predisposition or propensity to love, acquire language and to integrate in
the family, group or society is also deterministically prone to
concatenational influences, some of which can be perceived by men in women as innate
glitches and vice versa in that they are considered dysfunctional in relation to
society as a whole - the religious are a prime example [see twin towers and
general world history.] I believe on average women are more ready to believe in
the existence ghosts, astrology, luck, God, angels and non-existent dualisms..
etc. I believe that it was men that assumed the vast majority of positions of
priests and shamans, to the exclusion of women as part and parcel of the same
fact that there was little or no opportunity for females to be educated and
given a chance in those fields. Now that things have changed in this regard,
women can’t wait to don the priestly robes and start to lead the congregations
in their meaningless chants and lead the ritualistic ingestation of Christ’s
blood and flesh in a macabre let’s pretend version of a cannibal feast.

In saying this I am not claiming that the development of the individual human
is WHOLLY due to genetically determined factors, nor am I claiming that we
arrive in this world with our brains in the condition of a blank slate or tabula
rasa, but rather that the whole concept of an unnatural dichotomy twixt
nature and nurture is a total misconception. Try as I may I cannot provide one -
even ONE - example of ANY single current or historical event that is planned and
enacted by an individual, that is NOT wholly antecedally determined by the
totally unified and combined concatenational causal influences of both
genealogical nature, and that of familial and societal nurture within the communalism
of the particular human group.

Later I shall attempt to provide circumstantial evidence that the human
genetical program not only encodes physical information pertaining to the colour of
our eyes, our hair, our sex, our racial characteristics etc. but also
includes data which deterministically predisposes us as to whether or not we will
respond to certain neurological cognitive stimuli or reject it, or consign it to
neurologic limbo of the *pending* category.

Before dealing with my contention that the human DNA provides a unique
potential for certain neurological behavioural modalities in response to various
experiential circumstances, I offer this simple illustration, which I believe
confirms the fact of a genetically antecedally determined physical potentiality
for certain bodily development, which is associated with, and is to a large
extent dependent upon the natural deterministically shaped life experience of the
human concerned.

When I was a boy I lived in a poor neighbourhood. In the same street was a
man and wife with eight children. Five of them were boys. Due to the poverty of
the children and the lack of any education of the parents, the children were
all malnourished and stunted in growth. As they grew they remained small in
comparison with all the other kids in the street. They continued this way into
teenhood and early adulthood – EXCEPT for one.

Known locally as *titch,* Sammy was the smallest of the bunch, but when he
reached the age of seventeen and a half he joined the army. I myself was in the
army at the time and was posted to Egypt. When after a long period, I returned
to my Liverpool home I met Sammy, who was also on leave, in the street. To my
utter amazement he was bigger than I was. When I remarked upon it, he said
that the army dietician attached to the battalion had recommended a certain food
regime, and he had begun to put on his extra height almost immediately. When
he later spoke to his parents, they too made the necessary simple alterations
to the family eating habits and all of the kids then started to gain height -
EXCEPT for two of them who never gained in height at all, both of whom had by
then left home at a young age. One the eldest boy lived alone in a flat
cooking himself the same sort of meals that he had grown up eating, and the other,
an older girl who married and continued to visit upon her new husband the
mother’s originally nutrient deficient dietary disaster.

For me this illustrated the link between the deterministically provided
potential furnished by nature upon those causal objects concerned to attain a
genetically and antecedally ascertained certain height, IF they were realised and
experientially nurtured with the required protein and vitamins to realise this
intrinsic, genetically determined potential.

If nature alter or juggle the genetical sequence of the DNA a little bit it
can turn a hare-brained hare into a Homo sapiens with brain volume of at least
1400 cc - a little additional tweak and it can turn a Homo sapiens into a
homosexual. It is a matter of DNA sequence-order - genes come in various patterns.
Nature nutritionally switches the same genes on and off in different patterns
depending upon the addition or absence of certain substances that can be
metabolised by the organism to give energy and build tissue whereby the stunted
kid is metamorphosed into a strapping, six foot soldier.

Genetical switching is executed by *promoters* - small rung-areas of the
elongated, spiralling ladder of deoxyribonucleic acid, Humans have hundreds of
these *facilitators* which chemically enable the required genes into the
procedures which lead to the production of the particular nitrogenous organic
compounds that are essential constituents of living cells. After a suitable period,
when the necessary organic changes have had time to work, a promoter will close
down the gene once more.

*Thus, the same genes making the same proteins create two different beings
because each reads from a different biological score. ‘A chimp has a different
head from a human being… because it grows the jaws for longer and the cranium
for a shorter time than does the human being,’ observes Ridley. ‘The
difference is all timing.’*
Ridley, Matt. Nature Via Nurture. 2004. Harper Perennial.

Thus eliminative determinism is not simply a project of simply substituting
one esoteric intangible or spirituous entity with another mysterious tangible
or physical entity. There is nothing mysterious about the human body - YOU ARE
ONE! - You can shake hands with another body if you wish - kiss another - or
push one you do not like off a cliff.

So, if we eliminative determinists insist that all humans come into this
world with many similar evolutionary inherited predispositions and abilities, and
some distinctive, individual and unique ones, which come from our evolutionary
past - what are they and where are they located?

That is an easy one to answer - just go and look in a mirror. The meaty
sapient composite that stares back at you is the embodiment of all that is you. The
reflection in the mirror is a composite of all the deterministic genetical
enablers that protect and promote your bodily and neurophysical change, repair
and modification. It houses the ever-changing vital organs of the bodily system
that keeps your re-oxygenated blood flowing in order that your bodily tissue
is kept alive. Beneath the skull, enwrapped in the bloodied serpentine coils
of the patterned and co-ordinated meatiness of your brain lies the
deterministically assembled neurons, which exist in re-accessible and re-configurable
combinations of genetically inherited predispositional behaviour templates,
evolved by the process of natural selection to respond to the other ideating objects
[other humans] they encounter in certain antecedally engendered modes.

My belief is that we are born into this world either WITH or WITHOUT certain
systemic neural capacities, and that there are some who are congenitally
incapable of resisting and throwing-off or overcoming the effects of the
transcendentalist indoctrination they are exposed to with their mother’s milk in early
life. The result is that certain centres of the neurological reticule are
utterly and permanently damaged in the handling of questions of ontological
understanding.

My remarks and observations were neither based upon the outlandish idea that
people are born into the world with ready-made preconceived ideas or beliefs,
nor with neurophysical equivalent of phrenological belief bumps. My assertion
is not that *human nature* exists as some sort of spirituous abstractional
sprite – I DO NOT believe that it exists at all – what I believe exists are
natural humans who are born into this world pre-programmed to respond
pre-deterministically to certain stimuli and that this behaviour is an extremely
sophisticated version of what we refer to in the animal world as *instinct.*

My point is that each person born into the world arrives from the womb
with a genetically engendered complex of predispositional emotional and
intellectual attributes that determine a person’s characteristic actions and
reactions which predisposes them to think and act in certain ways if they are
subjected or exposed or deprived to/of certain situations and ideas. I am not
claiming, as I made clear at the outset that a persons attitudes and behaviours are
not influenced by the effects of the social and natural environment, or that our
experience of the world does not change or effect these predispositional
states, but merely that we are more inclined, disposed or susceptible to yielding
readily to or resisting certain situations.

A lesbian women might decide to resist the sexual advances of a man for
example. A gay man might feel uncomfortable behaviourally if he perceives
signs of sexual interest being shown towards him by a woman friend etc. Genetical
coding does not have teleological purposes, no more than the letters of the
English alphabet exist in modalities of *meaningfulness* – it is the humans for
whom the genetical codes are blueprints that consider themselves to have
*purpose,* and the purposeful, meaning, knowing humans who use the letters of the
alphabet to communicate who exist in modes of neurological *meaning or
knowing* – though *purpose, meaning* and *knowing* are just abstractions which do not
exist – and as for the genes and the ink letters, they are just insensate
lumps of chemical too.

I see these human predetermined preferences as almost wholly genetical in
nature – the equivalent if you like of animals’ instincts

OK. First of all some obvious ones. Do you agree that all mentally
disabled people are born into this world with a genetically damaged *neural
hardware* engendered neural capacities which are often seriously damaged? is now, one
would have thought, Nowadays anyone who chose to argue that the behavioural
features of Down’s Syndrome could be put down to fosterage or prenatal uterine
damage, as they have been in the past

Going back to my old discussions years ago with Jon concerning Chomsky
and his notions regarding *innate language* – whilst I did not agree at the time
that babies are born with an instinctual understanding of the rudiments of
syntax and grammar, I would be a fool if I did not concede that human young do
have an awe-inspiring ability to absorb the rhythms and structure of language
and to build vocabularies at a very early age. This I conclude must be a
genetical predisposition and that we are all born with a natural ability to use
language. and that After raising eight children there is no doubt that babies
appear to have distinct preferences and characters from birth well before they
are exposed to the vicissitudes of siblings configuration or other such sudden
or unexpected changes or shifts often encountered in one’s life, activities, or
surroundings.

*We know a lot about genes. Genes are being found that have strong
associations with human traits. We do not necessarily know exactly how a gene does what
it does, nor what the full effects are, but we are able to use a vast database
to show convincingly that genes affect and effect human behaviour.*
Lloyd, Nikolas. The Great Blank Slate Debate

That we that apprehend have to share the world with such fellow human beings,
and suffer the disruption, evil, wars and general unhappiness that is part
and parcel of what happens in connection with, or as a concomitant of such
neurological damage, is the non-Jesuitical cross that atheists have to bear.

I have mentioned many times before that when I employ useful shortcuts like
religion, or *The medical establishment* and suchlike it is in order that I
can avoid typing out the necessary circumlocution such as *religious people who
are members of an established church* or *the majority of doctors who can be
said to represent to majority opinion on medical matters,* etc. I still believe
that the acquiescence of the non-monstrous religious folk adds
deterministically to the overall evil even though they take no actual physical part in the
murder and mayhem. AS similar situation happened in Nazi Germany where a large
part of the population.

Lastly, Gill Norman in a review of Matt Ridley’s lecture given as part of the
first Newcastle Science Festival, International Centre for Life, 14 April
2003. draws our attention to the trials carried out by Susan Mineka and
colleagues, which provides a neat illustration of Seligman’s preparedness theory
whereby a predisposition to a particular behaviour is mediated by a particular
experience…

*In Mineka’s elegant study, a captive-bred monkey with no fear of snakes in
shown a videotape of a wild monkey showing terror in response to a snake. The
captive-bred animal developed an extreme fear of snakes following the viewing -
a clear example of vicarious conditioning. The important element of the
study, however, is the control condition, in which the captive-bred monkey sees a
videotape of the same monkey showing the same fearful reactions to a flower.
This fails to induce a fear of flowers in the subject monkey, demonstrating that
there must be both nature (tendency to fear snakes) and nurture (experience
of other animals showing fear) for conditioning to occur.*

regards,

Jud Evans.
Personal Website: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…

Posted on Thursday, August 10th, 2006 at 1:15 am
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