QUOTE (Jordan @ Jan 18 2005, 08:01 PM)
It seems to me that this is going nowhere. Both sides are rulilng out the othersides important points.
1) We can't use our personal experience since this is loaded with error and generalizations etc...
2) We can't grow people in test tubes and then place them in closed systems.
What can you use?
There's no separating nature and nurture (ie nobody as all one and none of the other-- like no square has length but no width or vice versa). That doesn't mean you can't talk about them.
Some experiments are designed to screen for one or the other, classically twin studies where you have kids separated at birth with the same genes, but different adoptive families. Or, the other way around, adopted kids in the same family but who are unrelated.
There are also other ways to draw conclusions without doing either thing. Systematic experiments; correlational studies; anything where you use a cross section of people. A person's own thought and memory is extremely biased. Almost anything is more reliable than that.
This post has been edited by Laura: 18 January 2005 - 08:44 PM