I’ve almost finished the book ‘Social Intelligence’ by Daniel Goleman. It took me a bleedin’ long time, actually. I’ve been hammering (shying?) away at it pretty much ever since I posted about the book Blink, on February 15th. For the record, it didn’t take that long because the book isn’t good, it is. I was just occupied with other things.
Social Intelligence is a quite meaty book about a great deal of neurological research into our social side. It discusses a plethora of different social interactions, starting from the emotional/ intellectual divide and then diving into child rearing, racism, health care and many other areas.
I’m sure it will come up frequently enough in the next couple of weeks in my posts.
What I want to talk about today is an interesting section where Goleman discusses the nature – nurture argument. For those people unfamiliar with it, the nature – nurture argument is basically about what has shaped us, our genes or our surroundings (eg. our parents). Some people believe that almost everything is pre-decided by our genes, while others argue that a person is largely free to be shaped by his upbringing.
In Social Intelligence Goleman says that it’s actually a third option, that hadn’t really been considered by the general public, namely that genes predict the path our lives will take, but our surroundings influence which genes will be active and which will be dormant.
When we interact with each other we secrete huge amounts of substances, from serotonin when we’re happy, to testosterone when we’re angry and cortisol when we’re stressed or afraid. Each of these has a huge impact on which genes are active and how our body develops. So our genes, therefore, influence our surroundings (by influencing us) and our surroundings in turn influence us. Arguing about which is more important and more significant is like arguing whether hardware or software is the most important part of a computer.
With this argument sorted out we can now move onto more important things, like how to use both sides of this argument to make life better for all of us.
Posts
The entire nature v nurture arguement has never set well with me. Namely becuase it largely ignores personal choice or worse relegates it to a predisposition that the individual cannot be blamed for. I am always reminded of the ever famous "wir wußten nicht." Does this author address my concern? How do you feel about having choice/free will diminished by such arguemnts?
ReplyDeleteI don’t think either side in the ‘nature – nurture’ argument discounts free will. I think both sides accept it implicitly and therefore don’t discuss it. It’s a bit like introducing the argument of the individuals drive for survival into an argument about a free market economy vs. centrally planned economy. It’s interesting but not exactly relevant.
ReplyDeleteI think it is relevant to this discussion. The very notion that we are shaped brings up questions of pre-determination, ie that we have a more limited Free Will than we would imagine. It is especially important when this idea becomes accepted and we start removing accountability from human behaviour. ie, when we become lenient on criminals bc "its not his fault, it was his upbringing" etc. That is my concern. Make sense?
ReplyDeleteAgain, I agree that it's an important argument, but I still don't think it's relevant to the nature nurture argument. This is a free will argument, which we're having two posts up.
ReplyDelete