Nature and nurture

From the perspective of mechanistic philosophy, human behavior like John's is a result of genetics and environment; individuals have no control over their behavior (Lerner, 2002). Mechanists believe that the best strategy for influencing human behavior is to understand efficient and material causes that influence human behavior, as follows:

• Efficient causes are the "nurture" of human behavior or the environmental factors that make an individual behave a certain way.
• Material causes are the "nature" of human development or the biological factors that make an individual behave a certain way (Goldhaber, 2000).

Mechanists take a scientific approach to studying human development, believing that gaining enough knowledge of the human-machine allows them to predict (Lerner, 2002) and control (Skinner, 1955) human behavior.