This video on neuroplasticity is also relevant to those who believe that they can look at brain scans and determine 'innate' propensities or come up with biological explanations for gendered minds.
The most advanced philosophers embrace 'dialectics' rather than the notion that everything has an 'innate nature'. That means, how you interact with your environment, and what sort of environment you have to interact with, plays a large part in the kind of mind you develop.
Current neuroscience backs this up. Our minds are more dynamic than we may have previously imagined.
5 comments:
You're on right now! Yeah, it was, but you frame it as a rebuttal to people who "can look at brain scans and determine 'innate' propensities or come up with biological explanations for gendered minds." There's some pretty decent proof that people can actually do that. This guy doesn't mention gender at all, but it makes me wonder if a woman could try to think like a man, "grow" that part of her physical brain and end up having a more male mind.
This shamanistic thing you have developed is fascinating. I know nothing at all about Nietzche (did I even spell that correctly?) other than he liked the idea of a superman and he ended his life with a mental disorder.
Actually it was a female vicar with a mystical bent who brought me back to the church. She keeps telling me that there is no truth with a capital "T." You can see how far that's sunk in, but I try,and she's amazing.
I frame it as evidence for the defence, rather than as a rebuttal.
I have found my own brain to be highly plastic. I was brought up in an extremely right-wing militaristic culture and I have managed to remodel my brain not to conform to any of the feminine stereotypes.
Ah! That makes a lot of sense. I'm from a fairly right wing militiristic culture myself, but not to the extent of Colonial Africa. So you deny the existence of feminine characteristics as well as stereotypes? For you they are one and the same?
I think different people have different potentialities as well as different innate characteristics (or limits). I have found out what mine are though years of experimentation and observation. I am often surprised to find out how people respond to the intersections of culture and their characters. I have been very surprised over the ages.
In my case, I'm quite combative. It was like a switch got turned on inside me at a certain point and I can't turn it off. We could speculate and say it was a DNA switch which was triggered by extremely hostile circumstances.
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