Nature And/Or Nurture

Biology And/Or Culture

: Work In Progress

I have not commented so far on these most famous dualities, Nature And/Or Nurture and Biology And/Or Culture, in these posts; and this is mainly because, as they say, I am still 'working on it', trying to understand the views of those entrenched, almost Ostrich-like, on either side of these seemingly impregnable barriers. However, here are some brief comments to indicate the 'fruits' of my work in progress.

Perhaps the easiest way to introduce the reader to the contours of this debated terrain is by invoking the Original State of Adam and Eve. According to the Naturalists, Adam and Eve would have manifested differences in cognitive and affective abilities, dispositions, temperaments, talents, and sensitivities because of their different types of hormones, genes, and brain-structures. According to the Nurturalists, however, there would have been absolutely no (non-anatomical) differences between the two : Eve would have been equivalent to Adam in all (other) ways. Now, however, the 'sensitive/empathetic' descendants of Eve have become socialised into certain distinctive biased patterns of emotional and cognitive behaviour, these called 'feminine'; and the same holds for the 'cold/analytical' descendants of Adam whose modes are called 'masculine.'

Thus the debate rages over an impressive list of dichotomies : Men are said to be intrinsically predisposed towards placing the individual over the community (but just try saying that to Lenin and all the Communists!), women to setting a higher value on the family (but 30% of the current female population in the UK labels itself as 'single', no?); men to be having an ephemeral penchant for 'things' with women seeking durable bonds with 'persons'; and the list can be easily extended.

I shall not here carry you through a whirlwind tour of the contested disciplines of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience (fields in which I am not 'professionally' trained), except to state a somewhat 'dogmatic' summary of my 'investigations' so far.

We do not need to choose between Nature and Nurture which are, in any case, abstract concepts that we loosely play around with in these debates. It is highly possible that there are biological bases to the cognitive and the affective differences and dispositions between men and women, but these variances are routed, developed, and expressed through specific cultural channels. For example, because of the divergence in the number of (prenatal and postnatal) sex hormones and brain structures, women may be biologically 'hardwired' towards forming 'empathetic' relationships with other human beings more easily than men. That would be an empirical biological claim which must, however, not be confused with the cultural question of whether or not this capacity for 'empathy' is to be cultivated, developed, or repressed. In some cultural contexts, empathy may be highly valued as 'ennobling' while in others, it may be scorned upon as 'frivolous'; but the latter modes of evaluation emerge not from biology but from cultural beliefs and appraisals.

This, by the way, is not to deny in the least the paramount role that the cultural norms of what it is to be 'masculine' and 'feminine' play in our highly gendered existence. The man who would not buy a pink-coloured car, and the woman who would not wear a 'man's watch' are all playing out these gender-roles that they have internalised from their childhood. None of these observations, however, rule out the possibility of discovering through careful empirical methods that men and women have distinctive cognitive and emotional responses and skills that are biologically rooted.

Now let me respond to a possible objection from those with feminist sensitivities : Have I not left the door open towards some sort of 'genetic determinism'? Are you not saying that men are this way ('cold', 'violent', and 'calculating' or whatever), women are that way ('sensitive', 'gentle', and 'responsive' or whatever) and that this is all there is to it? What would I reply to a long-time wife-beater who put forward the claim, 'We men are just like that. It is in our genes to behave this way towards women.'

To this, I shall repeat the distinction that I made earlier, but now in a slightly different form : there is no one-to-one correspondence between biological abilities and cultural norms so that you cannot always derive moral principles from genetic reports. So even if it is established, on good biological grounds, that men have a greater 'tendency' or 'bias' towards violent behaviour than women, this does not in itself settle the next, and definitely more important, question : Is violent behaviour to be valued or encouraged? How we answer the latter will, as I said above, vary depending on the background cultural contexts and maxims; if you are in the First World War or in the Sicilian mafia, the answer will be yes, but if you are in a Buddhist monastery, it will be a resounding no.

Therefore, there are two distinct issues here, which must be kept carefully separated : one is the experimental question of whether or not there are any biological bases to the perceived gender differences, and the other is the moral issue of whether the existence of these differences is to be taken as a vindication of the stance of gender-discrimination. The first does not logically (or 'necessarily') lead to the latter; I myself accept the former but not the latter. That is, even if a biologist, cognitive psychologist, or a geneticist were to affirm the former in some scientific journal next week, I would happily accept it without reversing my moral conviction that there should be no discrimination against women in matters where gender is not relevant to the issue (which I take as a summary definition of 'gender-discrimination').