[lbo-talk] Don't Mess With Mom

[kjkhoo at softhome.net]

At 5:35 pm -0400 25/6/04, lweiger at umich.edu wrote:
>Quoting Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu>:
>
>>  The most common viewpoint in psych nowadays is the heredity and 
>>environmental
>>  factors interact to produce psychological traits and disorders.
>
>It's the only viewpoint anyone with any understanding of genes has ever held.
>But it doesn't follow that questions of the form "Is the variation Xs exhibit
>trait Y primarily attributable to genetic or environmental differences?" are
>never real (i.e. meaningful, interesting, and important).

But can they be meaningfully disentangled?

If gene expression is itself a function of environment, including the 
biochemical environment, and the biochemical environment apparently 
is, as seems to be increasingly discovered, a function of the wider 
environment, then other than a general statement that genes provide 
some bedrock of possibilities which are realised within environmental 
contexts, there seem to be few definitive instances currently where 
there's the ability to attribute specifically to genetic or 
environmental differences in the case of individuals. On a population 
basis, genetic specification, other than the fact of human-ness, 
would seem to be irrelevant. All human populations possess the same 
genetic bedrock of possibilities and non-possibilities as far as 
being human, as contrasted with being chimps or dogs -- other than in 
those instances which are truly irrelevant, but have been the basis 
of so much mayhem: those phenotypic traits of skin and eye colour, 
crinkiness/straightness of hair, slant of eye, associated with 
various populations.

kj khoo