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Genetic Behavior and Free will pt 2 Bio 280 Dis

Submitted by cbbailey on Wed, 02/27/2019 - 22:22

Another reason that many of these genetic basis  are influences rather than flat out determining our behavior is from the existence and persistence of competing behaviors in a population. One example of this can be found through the existence of self sacrifice in populations. Both self sacrifice to help protect the genes of the population as well as self preservation to protect and pass on one's own genes exist in the same population.  Another example of this can be found in the T shirt experiment. While this test might be a found a valid genetic behavior that leads to us choosing our mate, it is only one factor in a huge number of other variables that we use in determining if somebody is attractive or not. These factors don’t always necessarily go together so while the smell in the test might lead some people to choose one person as a mate, a different factor may influence them in the opposite way leading to a situation were our behavior is being influenced in two, or potentially more, different ways. In conclusion while our behaviors are greatly influenced by our genetics, I do not think this really affects the situation if we have free will or not. Our genetic behaviors seem to be affected by what our environment is or was and many could result in behaviors that contradict the genetic basis, and even if environment did not play a factor our genetics seems to only influence decisions not decide them for us and can result many different choices.

 

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