We are products of nature via nurture

The argument

We are born with far more genetic potential than will ever become manifest. Our environment activates certain genes, ultimately determining which ones will affect us. (The study of this is called epigenetics.) The same genome will produce very different people depending on which of their genes are activated throughout their life. Nature is the clay through which nurture molds us into people. An example of this can be seen in determining who develops depression. There are some genes that make one more likely to develop it. However, those genes need something – like a life stressor – to be activated and cause depression. Otherwise, the genes will never be activated, and there will be no depression. However, people who don’t have those depression-prone genes and experience a life stressor are less likely to develop depression. Our genes determine our potentialities, but our environment determines which of those are made manifest. We can better understand how humanity as a whole, as well as individual people, are products of nature via nurture by looking to a scientist named Lamarck. He supported the theory of nature via nurture by arguing that people’s environments change their bodies. (i.e. genes) He understood that gene expression was not predestined, but rather entirely dependent upon environmental influences. While our genes determine how we’ll react to things, it is the things we have to react to that create who we are at any given point in life.

Context

People are a summation of their habits, temperaments, and experiences. However, where do these things that determine our personality and behaviors come from? Psychology has long been debating whether they stem from our genes or our environment. Settling the debate will expand our currently limited understanding of human development.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Both nature and nurture shape who are. However, nature is no more important than nurture. We have experiences from the time we have genes. They’re equally important, inextricably linked parts of what makes us who we are. Epigenetics is not the only determiner of who we are. Although our environment plays a role in our environment, our genes are often our real destiny. No amount of environmental perfection will prevent someone with a genetic mutation from developing the subsequent illness. Furthermore, we have some experiences that shape us that are completely separate from our genes – like which school we go to. Despite being linked, nature and nurture are distinct. Larmarck challenged Darwin in stating that we can pass on our epigenome – which is our environmentally-altered genome. Scientists currently debate this but lean towards agreeing it’s true. However, this does not support the nature via nurture argument because once an epigenome is passed on to a child, it’s just their genome. It’s not determined by their environment like it was for their parents.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] "Nature via nurture" is not the same claim as inseparability. If the environment selects among genetic potentials, the two remain distinguishable as the set of potentials and the thing that selects among them — which is precisely the separation this position denies. [Rejecting P2] The depression example undercuts the conclusion it is offered for. The argument itself says that people without the predisposing variants are less likely to become depressed after the same stressor; that is a genetic contribution identifiable independently of environment, which is a difference between the two, not a fusion of them. [Rejecting P3] The appeal to Lamarck misstates the history. His inheritance of acquired characteristics was proposed before genes were known and was superseded rather than vindicated, and the epigenetic findings sometimes read back into it do not show gene expression to be "entirely dependent upon environmental influences." The counter-argument adds the further point that a mark passed to a child arrives as part of that child's inherited starting state.