Bulletinmybrain said:
My cat can reason. Dogs can reason. (Such as, you can train them to say.. Not jump on people.. Same way you can train people to live to a standard. (Again though, dogs and cats are not as advanced as us)
How about we agree to disagree? You will not change my view that animals are capable of thought and aren't autonomous.. (Be it how little thought it is, I am going to say they are capable for the most part)
Uh, no.
Cats and dogs do not think on the levels of humans. Sentience is only found in animals that have a direct understanding of their own selves in relation to their environment and comprehend logical deduction. There's only one animal in nature that has that kind of sentience - humans. Proven FACT, since our brains, nervous systems and cognative abilities are expansive in comparison. Plus, cats and dogs don't produce one-eight our brainpower. They possess very few memory skills, except for repetition response which is sensomotor programming. "Fetch, boy," or "roll over, boy," is largely programming based on instinctual correspondence, and not the same as memory retention as found in primates. Recognizing owners or people they know is largely the same thing.
"I think animals can chose." Not like humans, they can't, because they have no logic formation and information processing that's required for sentience. Hence, if they perform homosexual acts (such as the penguins), it's largely biological and has nothing to do with "choice."
maximilian said:
Call me a party pooper, but what scientific evidence is there for a gay gene or of homosexuality at all? Surely "nature" is a highly dubious was of phrasing "unexplained but I hope it's science". You can't use the non-sequiter that "it feels natural so it's science/biology". It feels natural to me to run at the sight of nazi skinheads with knives and chains, but this extends biologically to my having a working limbic system. What has imprinted that in my limbic system was nurture/experience that has leaked into memory. You cannot navigate around the fact that same sex couples cannot biologically recreate, which, via Darwinism/evolution renders homosexuals as either anomaly or a weaker type of human.
So, my answer: 95% nurture and the rest is quota for the unknown.
Of course, a homosexual will comment stating "I've been gay since birth", but the truth is, if you knew anything about basic/classical psychology, we gain memory capacity at the age of three, and some of the most formative and important experiences of our lives (the way we are shaped) shape us between birth and 3.
Similarly, you would be surprised to find that a great number of homosexuals have experienced what could be discribed as a sexual/power/social altercation with some significance in their life. Now, that's a generalisation, and I'm not resting my opinion on it, but it must be concidered in your own testimony or experience. Also, I don't believe you can formulate a recipe for homosexuality on a "nurture" front. Each human is a complex working and the sexual balance within us can quickly become uneven with little significant event.
Lastly, if you disagree with me don't try and accuse me of homophobia. I'm simply pointing out the obvious.
I don't think you are homophobic. However, cognative development that occurs in humans does not include objective thinking and logic formation. As it is introduced in childhood, we begin to evolve our mental understanding, leading to a period of operational learning. Part of that learning is how to cope with natural biological urges and how to interact with objects and other people. Homosexuality is derived in that period of formation.
As I said, half of it is attributed to nurture. We are shaped by our environment. But our biological urges are not specifically shaped by psychological development. It happens the other way around, actually. We're shaped by the stimuli and bodily changes we encounter in life. So half of it is attributed to nature - we respond to our bodies urges.
You can say that chosing to SUBMIT to your homosexual urges is a choice that you have to make. That is true - we are under no obligation to normally listen to what our bodies tell us. In the case of sexuality, it's not as imperative as it once was. It doesn't stop the fact that our bodies still produce these urges.
But genetics does not work in the way you mentioned it - genes that have no primary function at the time can still be passed on. We don't just shed genes that aren't productive. We carry genes that may cause cancer in children down the line, and may not show up in 1/4 of our children. A whole slew of combination of genes - both dominant and recessive - can produce hundreds of permutations that become evident only when the individual is born and lives their lives. That's just the simple description - genetics is not the mere game of "the fittest pass on all their genes and the weak ones never do." The fittest can carry genes that are considered "weak" that never cause it to have a problem at that particular point in time. Scientific fact.
Jinjiro said:
My view is that Nature and Nurture are essentially one and the same, the procedure of 'Nurture' becoming a psychological cooking-pot for our reactive brains.
You are right that they are not exclusive to each other, and both do play a large part in our development. But nature always has the upper hand on nuture, since we are hardwired in certain ways from birth, and that shapes how others treat us, how we feel and react, and how we must take care of ourselves. There is biological evidence that people are stimulated from their own sexual urges to prefer one gender over the other. How we cope with it will stem from a nurture side of things.
EDIT
woodwalker said:
As a Psychology major (And I want to go to grad school) I would have to say that homosexuality is not "natural," but a result of some bad wiring in the brain.
Psychology majors need to read the official position of psychology by most of the world's leading psychology associations (such as the APA) - homosexuality is not a disease and not a disorder. So saying it's not "natural" is a personal opinion, and not one of the profession/science.
