What is a man?

Editor’s note: Among many of the most pressing ethical issues of our day is deep confusion over what it means to be human. From questions over abortion and racism to technology and sexuality, human anthropology lies at the heart of contemporary cultural debate. In light of the ongoing sexual crisis seen throughout our society, certain realities that once seemed common sense to most are being challenged in what is a failed quest to define our own existence and live independent of God’s created order.

As part of the ongoing research efforts at the ERLC, the following article, as well as the corresponding piece, “What is a woman?”, offer a detailed look at these central questions in light of theological anthropology and philosophy. Each article is followed by a response from the corresponding scholar in hopes to further robust dialogue on these important questions of “what is a man” and “what is a woman” rooted in truths that cut to the heart of the important ethical questions being posed today.

The only problem here is that the studies were based upon preset determinations. When a child is born, the mental capacity is basically survival. Determination of hunger, exhaustion, temperature and pain are the only things a newborn has knowledge of. After that, everything is learned. So the environment with time is what makes a man or woman. And here is no consistency to that so that is where the definition stops. Thus only a newborn can be defined as a group. Adults through their prior information and delivery of it cannot be defined, only generalized. And all that is an inference and not a conclusion. Wonder how much this little wasted effort cost someone?

wy69

Neurobiology / Spring 2017:
“Two minds. The cognitive differences between men and women”
Stanford Medicine Magazine
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different/

“.. Adjusted for total brain size (men’s are bigger), a woman’s hippocampus, critical to learning and memorization, is larger than a man’s and works differently. Conversely, a man’s amygdala, associated with the experiencing of emotions and the recollection of such experiences, is bigger than a woman’s. It, too, works differently, as Cahill’s research has demonstrated.”

“...But why are men’s and women’s brains different? One big reason is that, for much of their lifetimes, women and men have different fuel additives running through their tanks: the sex-steroid hormones...”

“...Which is not to say every man’s or woman’s brain looks the same. Our multitudinous genetic variations interact with some of our genes’ differential responsiveness to estrogens versus androgens. This complicated pinball game affects goings-on in at least some of the brain’s neural circuits and in whatever little piece of behavior each of these neural circuits manages.”

“...We think gender-specific behavior is a composite of all these modules, which, added up, give you your overall degree of maleness and femaleness,” says Shah.”

“Trying to assign exact percentages to the relative contributions of “culture” versus “biology” to the behavior of free-living human individuals in a complex social environment is tough at best. Halpern offers a succinct assessment: “The role of culture is not zero. The role of biology is not zero.”

Thank you for the post and the information.

I looked at the ERLC from Stanford you gave me and I find it incomplete. Aristotle may have been astute for his time, but what he was working with was learned knowledge, not pristine definition by observation of behavior and a limited ability to determine it based upon the limitations of the test cases. He generalized, not proved his point.

In a study done at Northwestern University Medicine it reads:

Although the male brain is 10 percent larger than the female brain, it does not impact intelligence. Despite the size difference, men’s and women’s brains are more alike than they are different. One area in which they do differ is the inferior-parietal lobule, which tends to be larger in men. This part of the brain is linked with mathematical problems, estimating time and judging speed. Another area that was previously debated was the hippocampus, which is associated with memory, but recent studies have found no differences in the hippocampus between genders.

And even though we are still talking about learned behavior which cannot determine the definition of a man, The NW study also states:

“There is evidence that women have more grey matter in their brains. Grey matter contains cell bodies that help our bodies process information in the brain and is located with regions of the brain that are involved with muscle control and sensory perception.”

If you remove the uncontrolled amount of information which can be wrong or not entered, and keep the definition pure without outside processing, which is the only way to define something that has differences as this thread is trying to do rather trying define the pure man, then you basically have a human that cannot live on its own and requires assistance. But it still can be a man if it lives long enough, again, by someone’s best guess that can’t be right.

wy69

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