Brain complexity: baby brains under study (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 24, 2018, 14:43 (2495 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID 21 January: A personality is 40% genetics, 40% family nurture, and 20% developed by the individual and his/her circumstances.

DAVID 24 January: The genetics will help guide a nonexistent personality to a personality during the time that follows birth. Blank personality slate at birth. Only sensory abilities and instincts at birth (suck and grasp)

If 40% of a personality (genetics) already exists at birth, it makes no sense to say that there is a 100% blank personality at birth. The fact that the instantly newborn has no chance to express its existing personality at the moment when it emerges from the womb, shouts “WAH!” and grasps and sucks does not mean that it has no personality.

dhw: You wrote that a newborn baby’s “self is a blank slate as it starts out in life”. If by this you only meant that a newborn baby is not aware of itself and is not capable of reasoning, analysing, conceptualizing, philosophizing etc. (different types of thinking), I doubt if many people would disagree. But if you meant that all newborn babies are born with identical non-personalities, the Piaget article offers no support, and I would disagree, as would my daughter-in-law. Here is one website for you:

DAVID: I never meant newborns were not different. Of course, every newborn comes with different potentialities, starting from a blank slate.

Why have you suddenly switched from personality to potential? What IS this blank slate of yours? 40% of the personality is already present according to you, so you cannot talk of the personality being a blank slate.

dhw: Children & Blank Slate Evolution - psychcentral.com
https://psychcentral.com/blog/children-blank-slate-evolution

QUOTE: "The “blank slate” view of human development was first documented in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and is generally credited to Locke and Rousseau. The idea is that a child is born completely free of any predisposition or vulnerabilities, and that everything the child would become was due to the effects of the environment. With advances in biotechnology, neuroscience, evolutionary theory, and psychology, this view has all but been completely discredited today.
Most people are now thought to have significant “pre-programming” from genes that have some influence on almost every want, trait, feeling, thought, and action."

DAVID: Our problem is your interpretation of blank slate differed from mine. We actually agree.

I don’t know what your interpretation is. You’ve only told us that the personality is a blank slate but 40% of the personality is already present.