Are feelings, skills, and ideas learned or are we born with them?

-- Courtney (courtneybergey@hotmail.com), February 08, 2005

Answers

Like everything we do, there are both innate and learned factors in all of these.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), February 09, 2005.

Hi Courtney, I agree with Christoper that both heredity and environment (including learning experiences) influence our feelings, skills, and ideas. What we need to do next is find out just how these feelings skills, and ideas develop. For example, it is interesting to observe which human activites are similar in all cultures and occur at about the same age in individuals of the same gender (or in some cases occuring in both genders). We would still not be able to rule out all cultural influences or training effects, but it at least gives of a hint at what might be part of "human nature". I hope this helps. Paul

-- Paul Kleinginna (prk@frontiernet.net), March 06, 2005.