Mark Ast1
The present paper examines the relative behavioral effects of genes and environment and offers a new theory which serves to dissolve their supposed opposition. Paradoxically, both genes and environment may be said to completely determine (different aspects of) human behavior. This new theory introduces a distinction between intensive and extensive magnitudes of determination, varying independently. For example, the rose and the weed are determined to be such, not by reference to some vague and indefinite "mixture" or "interaction" between genes and environment; but each is determined to be what it is (either rose or weed) by genes alone, and at the same time each is determined to be how much or how fully what it is by its environment alone. A nourishing environment will never transform what is genetically a weed into a rosebush, and a deprived environment will never turn a rose bush into a weed—though the rosebush may be so malnourished as to die--or fail to flower and therefore appear weed-like. This distinction is employed to explain the basis of environmental and genetic determination as complete and yet mutually consistent. The complete articulation of this theory includes a new definition of freedom and determination according to which that which is "genetic" may be free of determination in more than the metaphorical sense. The theory is demonstrated to be consistent with, though in important particulars distinct from: Kant's distinction between: (1) empirical determination vs (2) transcendent(al) freedom; and Spinoza's definition of freedom according to which: (1) a certain form of causal determination (genetic or otherwise) is identified with freedom, (2) all things are thoroughgoingly determined, and yet (a) freedom is determination in conformity to the "nature" of the thing determined, (b) that action is free which is in accord with the "nature" of the thing determined, and (c) the free mind is the mind which determines external things and experiences rather than being determined by them to think or to act the way it does (the "active intellect").
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1Hillside Hospital - Center for Neuropsychiatric Outcome and Rehabilitation Research