On Chimeras

This essay is a critical response to Neville Cobbe's article “Cross‐Species Chimeras: Exploring a Possible Christian Perspective.” New technologies, particularly biotechnologies, raise major concerns in society. In the absence of good ethical thinking on these issues, bad ethical thinking becomes regnant. Two common types of bad ethical thinking are (1) confusing whatever disturbs people with genuine ethical issues and (2) confusing religious issues with ethical ones. Cobbe's article commits the former type of error with regard to the possibility of a mouse created with human brain neurons. I analyze and discuss that error and also raise questions about Cobbe's attempt to analyze the creation of chimeras from a Christian perspective.     

Nature versus nurture: The simple contrast

We respond to the commentary of Franklin, Wright, and Davies (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,102, 239-245 [2009]) by returning to the simple contrast between nature and nurture. We find no evidence from the toddler data that makes us revise our ideas that color categories are learned and never innate.     

Nature and nurture in own-race face processing

A standard visual preference task was used to examine 3-month-olds' looking times at own-race versus other-race faces as a function of environmental exposure to faces from the two categories. Participants were Caucasian infants living in a Caucasian environment, African infants living in an African environment, and African infants living in a predominantly Caucasian environment. The results indicate that preference for own-race faces is present as early as 3 months of age, but that this preference results from exposure to the prototypical facial environment.     

The nature (and nurture) of personality disorders

Personality disorders have a long history in the literature but a short scientific history. The point prevalence of personality disorders is 10%, but the lifetime prevalence is probably 30–40%. Genetic factors contribute to around 40–50% of the variation in the development of personality disorders. The effect of shared environment is very small or non‐existent. Some researchers have tried to promote gene‐environment interaction. However, in reality, the studies investigated gene‐situation interaction, as the “environment” may in reality be partly of a genetic nature. Thus, we are dealing with an unknown part of gene‐gene interaction. Gene‐experience (not gene‐environment) correlations are the rule in human life. Personality disorders co‐occur (are comorbid) with symptom disorders (Axis I) and correlate with common personality dimensions. Possibly, the concept of personality disorder could merge with dysfunctional personality types. But it is likely that the concept will survive on its own.     

Nature and nurture: Williams syndrome across cultures

This study is concerned with ways in which children with Williams syndrome (WS), a rare neurodevelopmental disorder arising from a hemizygous deletion in chromosome band 7q11.23 including the gene for elastin (ELN) and approximately 20 surrounding genes, are affected by social mores of vastly differing cultures: the United States and Japan. WS presents a compelling model for the investigation because its genetic phenotype is well defined and results in an uneven cognitive profile as well as a social phenotype typical of the syndrome including overt over-friendliness toward strangers. While a number of research groups have been studying the cognitive strengths and weaknesses of individuals with WS in various countries, there have not been studies to date that explore the social phenotype in WS across different cultures. This study examines the ways in which social behavior in WS, stemming from specific genetic underpinnings, might be mediated by cultural expectations. We conducted a cross-cultural study using an instrument that measures aspects of sociability commonly found among people with WS. Quantitative analyses revealed a significant effect of diagnostic category in that in both countries, children with WS were rated as significantly higher in global sociability and more likely to approach strangers than were their normal counterparts. There was also an effect of culture, in that regardless of category, WS and normal children in Japan were rated lower than their counterparts in the US. We suggest that the excessively social phenotype of children with Williams syndrome, although markedly present across cultures, appears to vary in its intensity by culture. This is an intriguing illustration of interactions between nature and nurture.     

The continuing legacy of nature versus nurture in biolinguistics

Theories of language evolution that separate biological and cultural contributions perpetuate a false dichotomy between nature and nurture. The explanatory power of future theories will depend on acknowledging the reality of gene–culture interaction and how it makes language possible.     

Anticipatory Governance: Bioethical Expertise for Human/Animal Chimeras

The pedigree chart is a cornerstone technology for producing bodies and value in livestock pure breeding. It organizes a cluster of processes, technologies, and discourses gathered under the rubric ‘pedigree practices’. Angus breeders commonly use artificial insemination to import performance ‘genetics’ into their herds, using the ‘expected progeny differences’ predicted by massive pedigree databases that now also contain phenotype data reported by cattle growers. Discourses of biological inheritance, good breeding, and pedigrees arose in the eighteenth century, concomitant with a fascination with races, species, and other biological kinds. A case study from Angus cattle breeding illustrates pedigree practices and the bodies made through them, showing how information and computing technologies, assisted reproductive technologies, and discourses of good breeding, purity, health, and disease leveraged a single bull and the two genetic diseases he carried into the pedigrees of up to 10% of the Angus herd. Technologies now widely used in human reproductive medicine were developed for use in livestock animals, especially cattle, extending a long relationship between cows and humans. While the development of these pedigree practices represents increased control over animal reproduction and bodies, it has also been instrumental in rendering all animal bodies, including human bodies, not only more technically but also more rhetorically available for reproductive interventions. These interventions may amplify anxieties about health, species, breed, and kin while also providing opportunities for contesting the boundaries of these nature–cultural categories.     

The nature and nurture of expertise: a fourth dimension

One formative idea behind the workshop on expertise in Berkeley in August of 2010 was to develop a viable “trading zone” of ideas, which is defined as a location “in which communities with a deep problem of communication manage to communicate” (Collins et al. 2010, p. 8). In the current case, the goal is to have a trading zone between philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists who communicate their ideas on expertise such that productive interdisciplinary collaboration results. In this paper, I review Harry Collins' three-dimensional model of expertise and provide a very brief and non-inclusive overview of a psychological response. In addition, I propose an addendum to the model by adding a fourth—natural talent—dimension.     

Cross‐Species Chimeras: Exploring a Possible Christian Perspective

Various entities that combine material from humans and other animals at either the cellular or subcellular level have attracted growing public interest. I explore the controversy by considering both the scientific rationale behind creating various entities that have prompted the greatest public concern and possible ethical implications. I note a number of potentially relevant biblical passages and reflect on the imago Dei and considerations of telos in order to prompt wider discussion regarding how Christians might respond to such emerging bioethical issues.     

Spirituality versus Individualism: Why we should nurture relational consciousness

This paper proposes an approach to spiritual education which transcends the religious-secular boundary by conceiving of spirituality as a natural human predisposition labelled 'relational consciousness'. Evidence drawn from recent research demonstrates that this predisposition is universally identifiable in young children and expresses itself in many forms apart from the religious. Nevertheless it is this which allows the possibility of religious belief. As a result of the cultural construction of an extreme individualism which is particularly evident in the Western world, there has been a 'forgetting' of relational consciousness/spirituality resulting in damaging effects to the texture of human community. Some major sources of individualism are identified as having particularly serious effects on relational consciousness. These are reflected upon in the light of empirical research on children as well as contemporary philosophical and political critiques. Spiritual education is seen as a major means of resistance to the damaging effects of possessive individualism.     

Beyond nature/nurture: Buddhism and biology on interdependence

Buddhist temples are emblematic of many Asian countries in their tourism promotions, but little is known about how monks, laypeople, guides, and local or foreign tourists experience these religious heritage sites. In late developed and developing Asian countries these Buddhist sites fulfil complex social and symbolic roles involving differing functions and expectations. But how these temples can fulfil these complex demands and avoid becoming similar to a museum or a theme park is unclear. Using qualitative analysis this research examined temple users experiences of the architecture, artefacts, gardens, rituals, and users at the Bulguk Temple precinct in Korea and identified several dimensions of the sense of place that temple users experience. A resulting sense of place matrix includes believer, novice, leisure, and heritage experiences that users access depending on their grasp of the core knowledge and the symbolic materialities in the temple precinct. This provides a starting point for the skilful management of Buddhist sites facing mounting pressures from increasing visitor numbers particularly from heritage and leisure tourists. An indigenous approach to the diversity of Buddhist veneration settings and their users is recommended. Practical implications and further research are suggested.     

A case of a misplaced conjunction: Nature or nurture?

Some facts are explored about the roles that genes and environments together play in affecting a person's development. The conclusion that our genetic heritage contributes to the complex accounting of variation in our behavior is not pessimistic and does not bode evil for social and educational policy.