The Nature / Nurture Case

Cyril J. Law, Jr. - MA, Philosophy. Lecturer, School of Christian Studies, USJ. Coordinator, Tridentine Liturgy Community, Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong

The controversy regarding the roles played by nature and nurture had never been a source of intrigue to me at all, not at least until after I watched a video bearing the same title. I often avoided such speculation at all cost, because I have a strong feeling that one ought not to be too analytical about the elements in play in life, otherwise one would eventually run into the risk of circuitous, never ending self pity and ultimately trying to justify every personal fault or to demean one’s genuine noble character by ascribing them all to either genetics or environment.
There were these studies made on separated twins implying that all the similarities they both happen to bear are pre-given and fashioned in such a way that little or minimal personal conscious decisions have much to do with it. On the other hand, a schoolteacher interviewed in the video gave a remarkable statement – “Love makes everything grows,” i.e., she speaks in advocacy of the predominance of postnatal environment over built-in, predestined influence.
Yet it is very assuring for me to learn about the objective scientific stance regarding the “mutual co-determinacy” of nature and nurture. Both are equally indispensable, whereas the debate over which one has the priority remains hot. I am now prone to adopt an open stance towards the study of how nurture gives us the chance to “love” and “make everything grow.” The scientific data, those that support the theory that infants and humans in early childhood are highly absorbent and are at their zenith of learning, convince me to pay a somewhat bias favoritism to understanding more how socio-environmental factors contribute to the development of human person and society as a whole. For it still appears to me to be a rather absurd notion to assert that the manner in which we behave is, to an exclusive extent, dictated by our bellies or level of digestion, or brain wave movement or that sort.
Let us take language as a case in point. Considered as a symbolic facility and the means of verbal-written communication among human beings, it is efficacious only to the extent that it carries mutually understandable content-meaning set down by human conventions within a given societal context (i.e. by nurture in a sense). The sounds produced have to be artificially made “significant” and arranged in a “pattern” meaningful to the speaker and audience alike to accomplish its purpose. A language, therefore, is conventional insofar as it depends on societal agreement.
The fact that humans are found talking, as an innate ability natural to man, among fellow human beings, is indicative of the presence of a social function operative in the use of language. People naturally talk to people, and language is the medium employed, so language is natural in the sense that it is the natural means of communication people use as much as a man uses his legs to walk.
The natural aspect of language is accidental while the conventional aspect is essential; and both co-exist in a relationship as accident relates to substance.
In short, amidst the seemingly open-ended argument over innate and postnatal influences, it is for sure that we all now live in a “malleable” reality wherein our conscious decisions matter a great deal. These deliberations though are nonetheless built upon the foundation of the very objective furniture that comes with our birth (i.e. by nature) – that our intellect inches after truth, and that our will, will only find rest in the good.

©MDTimes/ University of Saint Joseph (formerly Macau Inter-University Institute, IIUM)