Do Humans Have Instincts??

[Turtle]

As is often the case, our instinct is to react to the most recent stimulus. Which is to say, I get the impression that recent respondents have not read the entire thread.

Racoon defined instinct in post #6:

Originally Posted by Racoon

instinct: (n.) - an Inborn tendency to to act or respond in a particular way

My preferred online dictionary has a similar definition: instinct - definition of instinct by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.
1. An inborn pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a species and is often a response to specific environmental stimuli.

In post #24, Eclogite provided an authoritive source and a list of human instincts.

Originally Posted by Eclogite

This link seems relevant:
Robert Throop and Lloyd Gordon Ward: Mead Project 2.0

we find the generally recognised instincts in man to be as follows: Fear, anger, shyness, curiosity, affection, sexual love, jealousy and envy, rivalry, sociability, sympathy, modesty ( ?), play, imitation, constructiveness, secretiveness, and acquisitiveness.

These are then considered in a little more depth.

Seems to me that if we want to quibble, we ought to start with this list and its authors' reasoning.

[crrider94]

Originally Posted by Turtle

As is often the case, our instinct is to react to the most recent stimulus. Which is to say, I get the impression that recent respondents have not read the entire thread.

Racoon defined instinct in post #6:


My preferred online dictionary has a similar definition instinct - definition of instinct by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia
1. An inborn pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a species and is often a response to specific environmental stimuli.

In post #24, Eclogite provided an authoritive source and a list of human instincts.



Seems to me that if we want to quibble, we ought to start with this list and its authors' reasoning.

Oh please, my dear fellow, you can not go to the dictionary to find what the technical meaning of an instinct is. I always wanted to know the difference between road, avenue and street. I thought one was bigger but then i had a one way avenue in my neighborhood. but to move on, i went to the dictionary.. it told me for all three basically the exact. same. thing... that they were asphalt paved road ways for cars usually sided with tress and in some cities lined with side walks. you cannot go to the dictionary for a definition. and a fear and all the other nonsense you put on there.. they are reflexes. if i scared you, you will be afraid. fear, right? well you being scared is a result of me scaring you.. so it is a reflex and same goes for the rest of this nonsense that some idiot wrote on some webpage and made it sound believable with some synonyms for words that he found in his thesaurus.

[crrider94]

Originally Posted by sman

This reminds me of the way Archimedes honned in on the value of pi by calculating the perimeter of polygons of ever-increasing sides. In this view a circle and a square are both in the catagory polygon, only differing in number of sides.

But anyway...reflexes are not instincts. I'm allright with that too. I'm just not too sure the catagory "instincts" is completely empty. That the only thing that is innate is reflex, and everything else housed in our ungainly brains is imbibed from the environment. This is testable. Are you prepared for that?

I like the thought experiment of placing a human baby in the jungle to test for instincts. Not really fair though. Human babies are born very prematurely, because of the huge and rapidly expanding nerve ganglion on top of them, and they are born into a society of social creatures who take care of them. How about if we take a baby jungle animal, say a chimpanzee, and place it in the environment of the human baby - compleate with parents, toys, pureed peas.... How with the chimp differ from the human alongside it?

Well to start, my reason that i say that we have no instincts is because we are completely intelligent. Oraganisms have been getting more intelligent and losing physical ability since the beginning of life. but we, and even the Catholic church teaches it but forget them, they are idiots. say that we are intelligent and have free will. instincts would contradict this. i also think that a chimp has similar qualities. i think that the modern chimp is about 95% intelligent. but i do think that the chimp, once he was able to, would go try to overtake an animal that walked past him or a leaf so he could eat. not hunt or find food, that is taught, but whatever was near him. but i think a human, lets say was in a coma for 15 years and is 15 now and is realised into a jungle.. i say he dies, this is debatable and i bet will never be tested. ever becuase of all these human rights activists. psht.. who needs em?

[crrider94]

Originally Posted by Turtle

As is often the case, our instinct is to react to the most recent stimulus. Which is to say, I get the impression that recent respondents have not read the entire thread.

Racoon defined instinct in post #6:


My preferred online dictionary has a similar definition:wwwDOTthefreedictionaryDOTcom/instinct instinct - definition of instinct by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia
1. An inborn pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a species and is often a response to specific environmental stimuli.

In post #24, Eclogite provided an authoritive source and a list of human instincts.



Seems to me that if we want to quibble, we ought to start with this list and its authors' reasoning.

These cannot be. not every human has these. symphathy is not one first off, that is taught. the levels of sympathy vary greatly because it is taught. rivalry, i can name 3 people, that i know personally, that have no disorders and could nevre be anything competative becuase they wouldnt have any motivation to win. rivalry, taught. sympathy, taught. fear, reflex. affection, taught. sexual love, impulse/reflex. constructiveness, taught. sociability, taught.. some people would rather be alone. play, taught/reflex. shyness, i don't know, i think this is more of a feeling than a behavior... jealousy/envy, taught/reflex.. but again, i think these are feelings besides play, sexual love, and fear, they are feelings to but they can be acted on more than any of these. i think that sociability would be the most likely to be an instinct.

[sman]

These is a very intelligent proposal, but our intelligence is very limited, and very targeted, and must be checked against the real world. "How can I test this?" is the question to ask ourselves - about any contention we might have.

For example:
The world is a flat disc surrounded by a firmament which the sun traverses once daily. I mean, it seems that way to me! And this should be the last word on the matter, accept only that it is testable.

We can measure shadows at different lattitudes on the same day to deduce, like Eratosthenes did, that the earth must be at lease concave, if not spherical.
We can make metuculous notes on the positions of other celestial bodies and choose the most parsimonious model that accords with the data, which is that the earth and other planets revolve arount a much larger sun against a background of stars. Something like what Copernicus did.
We can drive or sail in one direction until we fall off the edge of the world...or something else happens. Something like what Magellen did.
Of corse, in the modern world, we actually have hi-resolution photographs of the earth taken from space with wich we can observe directly the shape of our world and its position in the immediate cosmos.

The centuries-old Nature/Nurture debate has, in our time, reached a level of sophistication that we have the equivilant of photographs from space as a guide to human nature. The human genome (among others) has been entirely sequenced. Different alleles of certain genes correlate with specific behavior. Regardless of environment. Even the most extreme anti-innateness proponents today concede to a wide variety of innate structures, namely the machinery to do the learning.

Another way to test for innateness in humans is to compare identical twins who have been separated at birth. Some very good data has come out of twin studies.

Another way is to compare isolated human cultures and list the commonalities.
Human Universals
This is a list of this sort compiled by Donald E. Brown and supplemented by other anthropologists over the years. The sheer enormity of human universals pretty much zeros the chances that they are all accidents of culture.

I could go on, but this really is standard science today and I don't have to defend it. Rather, is is up to those with contentions that, if true, would founder major scientific edifices, like evolutionary psychology, who must produce the evidence. Evidence, not just rhetoric.

A debate like this can feel like a battle. We instinctively construe it this way, and automatically assign victor and vanquished. This instinct was adaptive for social primates on an east African tree savanna. But it is not adaptive here. Being wrong is not losing. We often find ourselves in the (intuitively)uncomfortable situation of admitting that the world is not comforming to our expectations, but there is much to be gained from this. It's actually a unique opportunity, to find out about how we are wrong, compared to the banality of finding out that we were right all along.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by crrider94

Oh please, my dear fellow, you can not go to the dictionary to find what the technical meaning of an instinct is. I always wanted to know the difference between road, avenue and street. I thought one was bigger but then i had a one way avenue in my neighborhood. but to move on, i went to the dictionary.. it told me for all three basically the exact. same. thing... that they were asphalt paved road ways for cars usually sided with tress and in some cities lined with side walks. you cannot go to the dictionary for a definition. and a fear and all the other nonsense you put on there.. they are reflexes. if i scared you, you will be afraid. fear, right? well you being scared is a result of me scaring you.. so it is a reflex and same goes for the rest of this nonsense that some idiot wrote on some webpage and made it sound believable with some synonyms for words that he found in his thesaurus.

I stand corrected.

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by crrider94

i think that sociability would be the most likely to be an instinct.

Why?

Sex seems like the most easily recognizable example of instinct, imo. I don't see any way to define sex as a reflex. Can you elaborate on this crrider?

FWIW, in science, it is very important to define your terms so that everyone is sure they are talking about the same things. Dictionary definitions are thus useful in such a discussion. If we are all discussing whether humans have instincts or not and we are all using a different definition for instinct, then it's a pointless discussion and can lead to confusion and/or hostility. I've seen it happen many times.

So, crrider, if you are using a definition different than the one posted by Turtle, then please tell us what your definition is. Otherwise, I don't see why you are objecting to agreement on a standard definition.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by crrider94

Oh please, my dear fellow, you can not go to the dictionary to find what the technical meaning of an instinct is.

As I noted in post #89, crrider, you’re using the words “reflex” and “instinct” in a way that disagrees with every common and technical meaning of them with which I’m acquainted. You appear to have assigned you own, personal meaning to these words, and in so doing, nearly exactly exchanged their conventional meanings. You appear to be either uninformed or poorly informed, or confused.

Hypography’s site rules require that, when you make claims, including claims about the meaning of words, that you back them up with links or references to some source ) other than you own writing). Please don’t attempt to support you claim this way, other than by arguing. If you don’t you posting privileges may be suspended.

Originally Posted by crrider94

I always wanted to know the difference between road, avenue and street. I thought one was bigger but then i had a one way avenue in my neighborhood. but to move on, i went to the dictionary.. it told me for all three basically the exact. same. thing...

I recommend you try better dictionaries.

These definitions and word origins summaries are from dictionary.reference.com, a popular online dictionary amalgamator:

• Road:
  A long, narrow stretch with a smoothed or paved surface, made for traveling by motor vehicle, carriage, etc., between two or more points.
  From “ride” from Old English “ridan” from Latin “raeda” = 4-wheeled carriage
• Avenue:
  a wide street or main thoroughfare;
  A means of access or attainment.
  From French “venir” = “to come” from Latin “vicinus” = “neighboring”
• Street:
  A public thoroughfare, usually paved, in a village, town, or city, including the sidewalk or sidewalks;
  Such a thoroughfare together with adjacent buildings, lots, etc.:
  From Latin “stratum” = “cover”, as in a layer of pavement.

In short, interpreting and paraphrasing, roads connect cities, avenues connect neighborhoods within cities, and streets are within neighborhoods.

Although somewhat synonymous in common use, each word has its own history and present day meaning.

[Boerseun]

Originally Posted by crrider94

Well to start, my reason that i say that we have no instincts is because we are completely intelligent.

Now that's a bit of a leap.

Our brainstem is surrounded by the R-complex, which we share with the reptiles. That's the oldest part of our brain. This ancient part regulates such humdrum stuff as heartbeat and breathing, as well as anger, sex and rage. Very reptilian.
Overlying the R-complex, is the lymbic system, which is more recent, which we share with the mammals. This is where "higher" functions like caring for our offspring lies.
And right on top of this lot lies the cerebral cortex, which makes humans human. This is where advanced human-like behaviour like organization and planning lies. Critical thinking, analysis, and the "intelligence" we refer to, lies here, and would be impossible without the cerebral cortex.

Although the cerebral cortex might constitute more than two thirds of the brain mass, it by no means makes humans "completely intelligent", like you claim in your above post. Everyday happenings like "road rage" and "crimes of passion" points to the R-complex taking over, albeit temporarily, in an entirely instinctive fashion.

[lemit]

I've been looking at the title of this thread and being reminded, in language I've been asked to avoid here, that the question here is the equivalent of asking if the Pope is Catholic or if bears shit in the woods.

I guess my answer is that where I grew up, people shat in the woods. That instinct was very strong. In fact, my grandfather was so opposed to indoor plumbing that when he visited urban relatives, more than one unfortunate incident resulted when the man went to the detached garage on his way to work the next day.

--lemit

p.s. Is the bear really Catholic?