I would have thought that the factual answer to the question “Do humans have instincts?” would have been “Yes, of course! All animals have instincts.” But, it turns out this is a Great Debate. Who knew?
Off to Great Debates.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
I think the OP was assuming a “complex behavior pattern” perhaps like the migratory patterns of some animals. That would rule out things like the suckling instinct or the grasping instinct. Language, of course, would still qualify.
You’re mistaken about reflexes Lenny. Reflexes are pre-cognitive, meaning that the reaction is handled, at least partially, before the stimulus signal gets to the brain. When you put your hand on the stove, you need to move it fast before there’s and permanent damage. There isn’t time for the pain stimulus to reach the brain, the stimulus to be processed, a decision to move the hand to be made, and then for the brain to send a message to the hand to move. The movement is handled by nerve cells in the spinal column in order to decrease the distance the impulses have to travel. The stimulus is of course also sent to your brain, so that once the whole thing is over you can think “ooh, that was hot.”
Reflexes are extremely fast (tenths to hundredths of a second) and are handled by specialized cells. Suckling and rooting are not reflexes.
Many times salmon do not return home to spawn. In recent years there have been many spawning failures in certain rivers, creating concern for the future of some salmon species.
The returning-home-to-spawn “instinct” could easily just be caused by two or three “reflexes” that must be triggered at the right time. Disrupt one reflex and the fish don’t find their way home. Hence, Lenny, your example is not an instinct.
Nest-building in trees? Just a series of reflexes. Not ALL birds build nests in trees. Some don’t build nests at all.
There is no such thing as instinct. Animals follow reflexes that sometimes lead to the appearance of instincts, but it is we humans who imagine some magical inner knowledge when we see animals behave. We see an animal with a series of reflex reactions, but we imagine a complex story (“oh, look, it knows how to build a nest” – no, it has reflexes for pulling at grassy objects).
Instinct is an illusion created the imagination of the observer.
The appearance of complex behavior is built on individual reflexes. So, your teacher has an active imagination and is wrong.
What is there other than “instinct”?
Choice? Free will? It can be argued that these are merely illusions which are actually more like “instinct” at heart.
I’ll reiterate that the answer to the question depends on the definition of instinct employed.
Googling around, and checking some of the more technical references, produces quite a variety of of definitions for “instinct.”
The more restrictive definitions, such as the one quoted by Lenny stress the following characteristics of instinct:
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innate and genetic, that is, it is not learned
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stereotyped and essentially invariant
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complex
A problem with this kind of definition is what level of complexity is necessary to decide whether or not something is instinctual. As we have seen in this thread, humans do display a large number of behaviors, especially as infants, that are innate and rather stereotyped (though these can be overridden with learning and training). However, these reactions are relatively simple compared to the elaborate behavior patterns displayed by some animals, such as courtship displays. Some animal behaviorists refer to such simple displays as “reflexes,” even though they are more complex that a true reflex, which as Dumbguy points out refers to an automatic reaction that takes place below the level of the brain (such as the patellar or “knee-jerk” reflex.)
I think language acquistion comes close to fulfilling this definition, as it’s certainly complex. However, it is not stereotypical, at least not in the way that some birds are able to produce their species songs perfectly without any learning involved. For this to be true of humans, we would have to be able to speak some specific human language - such as English - without learning.
As I said previously, if one uses the most restrictive definition of “instinct” (innate, stereotypical, and complex) then I would agree that humans do not show instinctual behavior. However, then neither do most of the more intelligent mammals, where learning has largely taken over the role of so-called “instinct” in birds, reptiles, and other animals.
Lenny’s problem here is that doesn’t seem to recognize that his disagreement with his friends, and with the other participants on this thread, is not so much a disagreement about what kinds of behavior occur in humans, but with how instinct is defined.
I think you are having some definitional problems as well. If we defined instinct to be “a series of reflex reactions that result in a complex behavior,” then even by your criterion instinct would exist.
What do you mean by “reflex?” If you mean a simple stimulus-reaction pattern mediated below the level of the brain, then the complex innate behaviors commonly referred to as “instinct” are far more than a combination of “reflexes.” If you are referring to more complex behaviors than this, then where do you draw the line between a “reflex” and an “instinct” made up of a series of reflexes?
I agree. I was playing Devils’ advocate…but Lenny did not respond. Perhaps Lenny can tell us what the difference is between a reflex and an instinct. Lenny says:
“I want to see an instinct that is not a reaction/reflex. Something that is pre-programmed, and has nothing to do with reason - i.e. something that eventually gets ‘reasoned out’ with intellectual maturity.”
The great neurologist, A.R. Luria, pretends to extended Pavlov’s idea of “reflexes” to explain the function of the cerebral cortex and the frontal lobes (see his book “Higher Cortical Functions in Man”, 1962, if you dare). But aside from the most basic reflexes, such as the leg jerk when a knee is tapped in the right spot, Luria shows that a “reflex” does not adequately explain the function of cortical and frontal lobes of the brain, whether animal or human.
Lenny assumes that he knows what “reasoning” is. He assumes that animals do not have any ability to reason or mature intellectually. Furthermore, he automatically categorizes any animal behavior as instinct, and assumes all human behavior is modulated by reason. Then he says animals are instinctual and humans are reasonable. Circular reasoning (which is probably an instinct).
There must be a word in the English language for one of two conditions:
- an uneducated person who promotes a simplistic, and even childish, opinion about a topic which is complex and requires years of study to comprehend;
- or the frustration of those who have enough learning to know that it is impossible to explain to the opinionated how their ideas are simplistic, even childish, and that they should just go back to doing what they understand.
What about primitive instincts such as the need to procreate or defending one’s territory? These are still extremely strong.
No, I’m afraid they are not. At this point I don’t think you’re willing to listen to reason and evidence.
That’s why we’re in Great Debates now. 
I think the op has expressed a position which is now being widely challenged and he instinctively doesn’t want to back down (and thus appear weak before the group), hence all the semantics and low-key hostility.
How ironic.
I agree that eating shouldn’t be considered an instinct because it is due to an internal stimuli.
What about blinking when there is a loud noise near you? That seems to fit your teacher’s definition. Its as complex as many reactions that animals have that are definitely classified as instinct.
Crying definitely fits the definition your teacher gave. There is no reason for it.
Laughing and smiling most definitely fits the definition.
This thread amazes me. Everyone is trying to pass blame to Lenny, while they are doing the same things he is. He even set up the definitions he was going by (from a book no less), and people still said “no”. The problem lies in that people are taking their pre-conceived definitions for the terms into the thread.
Now, on to instinct and reflex. Not to long ago I read a book (don’t rmemeber the name) that gave the same “definition” that Lenny did. Basically, insticts are complex actions that are not learned: Nest building, migration, web spinning, mating rituals. These would fall into the OP’s definition of instinct. To test these, you can take a member of that species from birth and it will still wish to do these things. Members of these species do these things almost exactly the same.
Now, many have asked to name things that mammals do that would be considered instinct. This is tougher, as mammals are generally more intellegent, and much of their behavior is “learned”. A puppy, taken away from it’s mother can be raised and end up acting very un-dog like. Many baby mammals cannot survive unless they are taught survival means from their parents. In the more primitive species or mammals you can start seeing instinct: Naked mole rats and their hives, squirrels and their food hoarding.
Reflex tends to be more cause and effect. Touch something hot, jerk hand away. Baby has something pushed against face, tries to suckle.
Certainly there is a gray area where the two meet, but that is the point of this board, to discuss this.
RickJay, all of you points WERE wrong. They are not universal for the species. Show me a study that shows that 100% of all healthy and normal humans do these things and I will accept it.
John Mace, I wouldn’t consider the DESIRE to learn language as instinct, nor would the ability to learn is qualify. A desire is just that. Were it an instinct, we would all speak the same language (since instincts are for the most part universal for the species). The desire is simply a biological motivational force (much like hunger or pain or love) and our ability to learn it is based on our capacity to do such a thing.
In the end, I think, the biggest thing that shoots down human instinct is our great diversity. If we truly are one species, we show to wide a variety of habits and actions for there to be many/any universal instincts. We are even capable of overriding reflexes!
Not at all. Lenny’s definition was ‘a largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason.’ Numerous posters have pointed out that the suckling instinct, speech, laughter, crying etc all fit this definition perfectly.
Numeorus other posters have pointed out that this definition is specifically set up to preclude humans, since humans are the only species that can unequiovcally be said to use reason to overcome inbuilt responses, at least in adulthood.
Then several posters pointed out that b thie definition Lenny gave, it appears that no mammal has instincts. I even asked Lenny twice to give an example of a mammalian reflex. The question was intended to clarify why he belived movement of a fish towards a spawning location was instinctive, while movement of a child toward a niple wasn’t. Lenny refused to even acknowledge much less answer the question.
No one said ‘no’ despite Lenny’s defintion. Lots of people gave examples that fit the defintion to a T, yet Lenny dismissed them for no reason. Lots of people pointed out that by using the defintiion Lenny gave the question was self-referential WRT adult humans.
Lots of people pointed out that by that defintion, and if we ignore juvenile feeding behaviour, it seems that mammals have no instinct.
So, sghoul, I’ll ask you the same question. Can you name one mammalian instinct?
If there are no mammlain instincts according to the definiton in use, to me that is strong evidence that the definiton itself is flawed.
I recently took a course (History of Technology) where one class was a discussion about whether humans have instincts or not. The professor didn’t directly take a “side” in the debate, but I remember that he shot down all of the pro-instinct points, and was fairly neutral towards the lack-of-instincts side. Not that this means anything - the prof could have been wrong, or just didn’t adequately attack the other side’s points.
I tend to agree with the narrower definition of an instinct. Larger behaviours that are not learned, and do not fall within the category of a reflex.
Stipulating that, I’m not sure if humans have instincts or not. Human behaviour is so variable across different cultures around the world, that I’m not sure if any behaviour is instinctual and appears in all humans.
Suckling/rooting might be an instinct, but I’d have to see a cite from a neurological source. It seems much more like an instinct - babies will suckle almost anything held up to their mouth.
Same goes for many other infant reflexes - hand grasping, etc…
Face recognition in infants might seem to be an instinct, but if infants always receive positive feedback from looking at their parents’ faces (cooing, cuddling, etc…) then this might better go in the category of a learned behaviour.
As for language acquision, I’m not sure how an ability to learn languages would be described as an instinct. I’ve heard that Chomsky argues for the existence of an innate “deep grammar” that allows us to learn languages - but I’m not familiar with the details of this theory so I can’t really comment. But it seems like there’s tremendous variation in the types of grammar systems that different languages use, so I don’t know how this is one species-wide instinct.
On the topic of how you define an instinct pre-defining who has them, it works both ways doesn’t it?
If you already think that humans don’t have instincts, you’d like to go with the narrower definition of complex unlearned behaviours that aren’t a reflex.
If you think that humans have instincts, then you’d go with the broader definition.
For instance:
Instead, could this perhaps be “strong evidence” that mammals don’t have any instincts?
I’m really not sure myself. I could go either way on the matter, and I think the answer mostly depends on what definition you’re using.
I went into this earlier. Our languages are simply too complex and too variable (so many possibilities for improvisation and original sentences) that it’s simply impossible that everything we know is learned.
Bottom line? There’s less variety than you might think. There are some things that are not done in any language, and there are some tendencies in huge numbers of them.
A bunch of behaviors engaged in by all healthy humans have already been mentioned. Sex, laughter, crying, various facial responses and expressions, phobias, and a number of other things have already been proposed. Do you have an argument against them?
Marley Said: “A bunch of behaviors engaged in by all healthy humans have already been mentioned. Sex, laughter, crying, various facial responses and expressions, phobias, and a number of other things have already been proposed. Do you have an argument against them?”
Laughter and crying could been see as reflexes, as they are not complex. They are also not universal, as different people cry or laugh for different reasons, and under different conditions. They are also generally a response to a stimuli, and not a very complex response.
Phobias are also not universal, and are generally considered unhealthy and something to be “fixed”.
Facial Expresions are also (in my limited experience) not universal. And, as we are creatures of our environment, it is very possible that we pick them up as we live. Were a baby to be put in an environment when people never smiled, it is possible that the baby wouldn’t, or would learn not to.
Sex could also be the same way. We have a natural desire for sex, but we have no universal way of doing it, nor do we automatically know how. And, if a child were placed in an environment when he never heard or saw sex, and never had anything rub against his erogonous zone, how do we know that he would automatically think “I need to stick this in a vagina”?
Therein lies the problem. Since humans absorb everything around them, it is very difficult to say what is automatic and what was simply learned through observance.
heh…all this stuff about learning versus instinct and you missed the most obvious one. Imitation. All humans do it. Every single one. Not all (many?) animals do it. It’s complex behaviour and begins at a very early age.
Agreed. Birds do it.
Learning must be instinctual in humans. If it were not an instinct, then how would babies learn anything? You cannot teach a baby how to learn if the baby lacks an inherent capacity to learn (i.e. instinct).