Human Nature vs. Culture: Learning and Development
Human Nature and Culture: The Role of Learning
The confrontation between nature and culture has sometimes been presented as the disjunction between learning and inheritance. Subjective culture is that knowledge acquired through learning. The nature of the process would be genetically programmed, so it is acquired during embryonic development. The debate about the relationship between the natural aspects of human beings is almost as old as reflection on humanity itself. What is human behavior?
Many animals exhibit certain behaviors that are genetically determined. Therefore, they lack the capacity to voluntarily control most of their conduct. Although it does not define their actions, many animals are born prepared to act concretely in the ecological niche in which they live. Instinctive behaviors limit the possibilities of response. It is the ability to learn that allows the construction of culture.
Culture is based on the following processes:
- Education: Acquired when a new behavior is learned as a function of the consequences derived from it.
- Imitation of another subject: This type of learning requires a significant degree of brain development.
- Assimilation of information communicated orally by an issuer: This is exclusively human.
Applications of the Distinction Between Nature and Culture
Two types of facts: natural and cultural. From an objective concept of culture, there are several ways to understand its relationship with nature:
- Opposition between nature and culture: Establishing culture as the impassable boundary of separation between human beings and the rest of the animals. Especially those who consider that culture can be seen in the ability to use abstract symbols.
- Culture can be seen as an element integrated into nature.
- Culture is a product of the natural evolutionary process, a product that is constituted as something completely distinct from that which has arisen.
The humanization process can be seen as a way of relating nature and culture. The human being is a bio-cultural individual.
Death
Problems arising from death:
- Death is always a final reminder that life is limited and does not last forever. It is something that comes to us all equally and always arrives; there is no escape from it, although we may dream about it.
- Death can never be predicted except in extreme cases such as suicide or murder. Therefore, death is a source of anguish. Death teaches universal lessons.
- Death is a personal act; anyone can die. Death teaches us that the things that are actually important occur in solitude, and no one is prepared to face this loneliness.
- Death is a source of fundamental questions. Death is announced as an afterlife, a question of the most important, which opens the world of hope and belief.
Important Philosophers on Death
- Plato: Believed that to philosophize is the same as learning to die. He believed the soul was immortal and the seat of knowledge.
- The Stoics: Live each day as if it were the last. Meditation is an invitation to reach the maximum.
- Montaigne: Meditation on death occurs when we have gotten to know some of its traits.
- Heidegger: Consciousness of death.
- Unamuno: Tragic thought; every human being wants immortality.
Problem:
- Epicurus believed only in material reality.
Religion (The Sacred and the Religious)
Common Features:
- Recognition of a realm that transcends human life.
- The field we discussed earlier is sacred, but it affects us.
- The sacred has two fundamental traits:
- Fear for its power
- Fascination; mystery inspires admiration
- The sacred is expressed as symbols.
Religion is a cultural fact always present in history; behind it lies the problem of death. Freud argued that it is only an illusion.