Simply put, Locke believed that our knowledge is completely comprised of our experience with objects around us and how we reflect on those experiences. Hume, similarly, believed that human senses gave the humans the ability to perceive, and that perception is directly related to how a human's personality and moral judgement is formed. Hume also that the impressions made by the perceptions of the individual is what comprised the mind. He believed that all thoughts and ideas were once impressions. Furthermore, Hume argued that these thoughts were only subjective and could not be proven to be directly connected with "external reality" (Caldwell 578). William James took the approach that the human consciousness is based on a continuous stream of thought which allows for different "versions" of reality based on an individual's experience. James argued that there is no such thing as "absolute unity of reality.as fact is based on reality" (Caldwell 578). .
In Steven Pinker's paper "Why Nature and Nurture Won't Go Away", he takes the position that the "existence of environmental mitigations doesn't make the effects of the genes inconsequential" (11). The argument of the complete dependance of nurture can be quite harmful to children struggling with mental disorders such as depression; No matter how this child was brought up, the fact remains that their brain is producing less serotonin than a child without depression. Therefore, even if both children had the exact same parenting and education the child with depression would have a completely different experience than the child without depression. A culture oriented around nurture-based developmental theory undermines and essentially punishes those with a genetic handicap that is not visible. Another example in favor of the argument that complete dependance on nurture is harmful to society is that research shows that "psychopharmacological research suggests that dopamine is related to novelty seeking" (Jong 620).
