So, are we really just as helpless as the plants which have nothing to do but
to keep adapting and reacting to the environment? If the weather gets too hot,
the plants will wilt; it does not really matter whether a plant is able to see
what the other plants are doing because it is natural for the plant to wilt in
the mentioned situation. If the soil is well-fertilized, the plant will
be healthier; there is no need for the plant to have a brain to know that it
has to grow better because of the fertilizer, because growing better is the
natural reaction of plants to the fertilizer. Nonetheless, people and plants
are still way different, because people have the power and choice of reasoning
out.
Human beings react to the environment, and are products of
it, but only for some extent. It cannot be generalized that environment solely
dictates who we are and how we behave. Ideally, the causes of our behavior
must be rooted from deeper and better reasons. Even though a well-admired
relative of ours gets mad at any visitor coming inside the house, we may not
feel the same though the relative, as the model, got our attention, retention,
motoric reproduction, and reinforcement processes working. Thus, even if
our relative forces us to act similarly towards any visitor and rewards us for
doing so, we still may not adopt that kind of behavior. This is because
we have the power to reason consciously and unconsciously. If a person is
well-guided by good reasoning (at least in his/her own perception of good
reasoning), then learning through reflection becomes more powerful than
learning through the environment. Our intelligence gives us the ability to
adapt to whatever we are exposed to; and unlike the animals of the earth, we
have the power of reason to make moral choices based on our thought given to
the possible outcome (Awkins, 2011). Although there is some truth that
reasons might also be acquired from a model, it can also be said that there is
also truth in saying that individuals can also innovate their own reasons
without using any vicarious experience or observing some models.
