> Anyway, the point is this. Any trait of any organism
> is a manifestation of genetic characteristics in an
> environment. You can't do without either. Sexual
> behaviors are the resuly of the fact that wea re
> organism that reproduce sexually, but of course we do
> so only in an environmental -- and for humans that
> almost always meansa social --context. Therefore,
> sexual behaviors are the results of genes that create
> sexes and drives manifesting themselves in
> environments where the drivesa re shaped and directed
> in certain ways -- differently depending on the
> circumstances.
>
> You cannot say, it makes no sense to ask, Is a
> behavior 75% (or something) genetic? If that means,
> not environmental. Genes only manifest themselves in
> environments,a nd they manifest themselves differently
> in different environments. They impose rough limits on
> variation -- I could not grow to be 9 feet tall
> whatever I ate, but I could have been a lot sorter
> than I am if I had lacked proper nutrition. But that
> does not mean that there are many interesting traits,
> if any, that rigidly manifest themselves the same way
> in all circumstances. They are codes that allow ranges
> of behavior thatr vary with the circumstances.
I think anyone who has addressed this question seriously (from Richard Lewontin to Richard Dawkins) explicitly acknowledges that degree of heritibility is evironmentally contingent, and thus allows that there's some conceptual incoherence at play in nature/nurture debates. The difference is that the Lewontins think this renders the entire discourse nonsensical, while the Dawkinses believe that there are still at least partially coherent questions about heritibality to be asked and answered. Surely, when I claim that most of the variation in heights among persons in the US is the result of different genetic endowments, I'm saying something that deserves to be called an approximate truth.
-- Luke