"== Notes from old message == 

 (just some old stuff that might be possible to recycle) 

 GENOTYPE, PHENOTYPE, AND NORMS OF REACTION 

 by David Mertz, No Copyrot 

 My previous comment: 

 :""... and will lead, soner or later, if not to _the_ causes of English-speaking, then at the very least to some biological markers which correlate with English-speaking."" (nuff said?) 

 A response: 

 :Not really. Help a stupid interactionist understand the logic of your argument. You're not claiming that my point is merely a tautology, are you? The sentence might be empirically problematic, coz we cannot be absolutely sure that there are any biological causes or correlates with English-speaking. I don't think he same could be said of homosex (and you'd disagree naturally ). 

 Well... it's like this:  English-speaking is *entirely* environmental. 
 Beyond a few people with dreadful genetic deformities (causing brain 
 damage, or whatever), *anyone* can learn English.  Same goes for any 
 language, obviously.  English is even a particularly good example of a 
 language that won't even have any accidental widespread correlations 
 with anything genetic.  It might be for Finnish or Khoi-San that the 
 relatively isolated groups which speak them also have some 
 genetic characteristic which is non-causally correlated with speaking 
 that language.  But there are native English speakers (to say nothing 
 of non-native) from India, and Hong Kong, and Europe, and Native 
 Americans, and Africans/African-Americans.  There are just so many 
 different groups (in terms of breeding communities) which maybe had 
 been isolated for a thousand years, but in the last couple hundred 
 have started speaking English, that there certainly isn't any even 
 accidental correlation between *anything* genetic and English- 
 speaking. 

 In a general way, I tend to be an ""interactionist"" as well.  But it 
 must be recognized that *some* things are entirely genetic, or 
 entirely environmental.  I *suspect* sexual orientation isn't either 
 of these, but if it turns out to be entirely environmental, then your 
 language is no good. 

 I think it's like this: 

   Entirely Environmental    Interactional      Entirely Genetic 
       -       
     Language                 Height              Blood type 
     Religion                 Weight              Eye color 
     etc.                     Skin color          etc. 
                              Sexuality (??) 
                              ""IQ"" 

 I DO NOT think of these columns as a continuum, however.  I think 
 they're just three seperate things.  The reason is that people usually 
 make a mistake of thinking the ""genetic-ness"" of something determines 
 the range of phenotypic possibilities.  It does, of course, in a 
 sense... but not at all in the way most people think.  The usual 
 conception is something like this (using sexuality as a hypothetical, 
 and that old canard about ""domineering mother"" as the environmental 
 part [mind you, this is a joke for me, it's just so stupid that it's 
 funny to use]). 

   #- POPULAR CONCEPTION OF GENOTYPE/PHENOTYPE INTERACTION: -# 

    Kinsey Scale: 
   <6543210> 
       ^ (Genotype A) ^                                 ^ (Genotype B) ^ 
       |              |                                 |              | 
    Domin <-> Passive                          Domin <-> Passive 
     mom             mom                               mom             mom 

 You see what I mean.  The conception is that each genotype gives a 
 certain range possible phenotypic expression.  In the popular 
 conception, something which is ""more genetic"" gives a narrower range, 
 while something which is ""less genetic (more environmental)"" gives a 
 wider range of phenotypic possibilities. 

 A more general, and more accurate picture would look like the below. 
 The example I give is an extreme one to highlight the difference with 
 the popular model... but the idea is that ANY curves are possible for 
 some trait across some range of genotypes.  In fact, almost any curves 
 CAN be found for various things (like height of corns in different 
 altitudes, or whatnot): 

   #- MORE ACCURATE ""NORM OF REACTION"" OF GENOTYPE/PHENOTYPE -# 

        ^ 
        |                                                   ____A___A 
   K    6 B                                                A 
   I    |  \_B__                                   ___A___/     Geno