Part Four IV › Division III III › Section 431 431

Human Nature and Experience: General Considerations

Subject Outline

AThe relative contribution of opposing factors in human behaviour and conscious experience, the degree to which these factors interact to produce human behaviour and conscious experience
- 1Mankind as radically distinct from nature and mankind as homogeneous and continuous with the rest of nature
  - aBehavioral capacities and performances that humans have in common with other primates and higher mammals
  - bBehavioral capacities and performances held to be distinctive of humans; e.g., propositional language, cumulative transmission of culture
  - cThe explanation of allegedly distinctive human traits in accordance with the principle of phylogenetic continuity: the evolutionary development of mankind [see also 341 and 411]
- 2The relative weights of genetic and environmental factors: the nature-nurture controversy
  - aElements of genetic endowment; e.g., physiological and psychological characteristics, reflexes and instincts
  - bEnvironmental conditions; e.g., ecological factors, cultural conditioning, personal socialization experiences
- 3Cognitive, conative, and affective dimensions of behaviour and experience
  - aThe cognitive dimension: sensation and perception; memory and imagination; concept formation, ideation, and reasoning
  - bThe conative dimension: desires, needs, cravings, drives; motivation and purpose; the voluntary and the involuntary
  - cThe affective dimension: the emotions, the pleasant and the unpleasant; the sentiments
- 4The observed elements of behaviour and the inferred dispositional tendencies: actions and powers; habits, inclinations, and capacities
- 5Emergent problems in the study of human behaviour and experience: the data and hypotheses of parapsychology; the comparison of human and artificial, machine-created intelligence
BStages in the development of human behaviour
- 1General aspects of human development
- 2Prenatal growth and development
- 3Birth: effects of the birth experience on the person's subsequent history
- 4Infancy: the first 18 months
- 5Early childhood and childhood: one to 12 years
- 6Adolescence: puberty to adulthood
- 7Young adulthood and maturity