The reasons for it weren’t the point. My point is - why laugh? Why does this response exist? It’s clear why your leg kicks out if the doctor taps your knee. I’m not sure that’s the case with laughter.
A very debilitating phobia, yes. But there are also instinctual fears, as discussed above, and I’ve never seen those “fixed.”
Babies smile pretty much right from the beginning, so no, I don’t think they do it only through imitation. And the “learn not to” bit is irrelevant. Any behavior will stop when the stimulus that initiates it is removed. Not all salmon spawn, and not all migratory birds migrate. This has already been discussed, though.
There’s no universal way of doing it? I’m aware there are different positions, but when you’re talking about heterosexual intercourse, there’s only one way: insert Tab A into Slot B. How you stand or sit while doing it isn’t the point. The point is “how do you know that’s the way to do it in the first place” (nobody gave ME lessons) and “where does the impulse to do it come from?”
Again, this is irrelevant to the question. And just because the child has something rubbed against that zone shouldn’t automatically imbue him with the knowledge of how to do it later on. I’m very confident this example is wrong anyway.
Some of the simpler facial expressions are definitely cross-cultural. Are you saying when you see someone’s face, you will have no idea if he’s angry or happy or sad?
People - you realize that when babies are born, they can barely see, right? I don’t think they hear particularly clearly either. The brain at birth does not function the way it does later on. Children can’t just copy everything by sight, nor would they necessarily understand the situation in which to copy all of the things various posters are suggesting they do ONLY because they see others doing it.
The point about language aquisition being an instinct is that language does not have to be taught and that the aquisition phase takes place largely before reasoning ability develops. In fact, children as young as 3 are relatively proficient speakers, yet cannot realize that another person does not know everything they know. If you show a 3 year old that you have moved a hidden toy to a new hidden location, he cannot grasp that someone not in the room does not also know that the toy has been moved.
As for birds, I do know that at least some songbirds will learn the song of whatever species they are exposed to. Are there songbirds that will sing only their species-specific song even if they are never exposed to it?
BTW, I’ve gotta side with Lenny on his definition. I see no reason why he can’t set the parameters of this debate as long as he doesn’t make them so ridiculous as to be meaningless. (The famous “what would 2+2 equal if it didnt equal 4” comes to mind). You might not agree with his definition, but it’s not too outlandish.
I don’t agree with the definition. Mainly because it is expressly set up to differentiate between humans and animals. It falls in the same category as that only humans would have emotions and feelings. The ‘mere’ animals just have reflexes and instincts.
No one believes that one anymore.
The problem is that Lenny’s definition (was designed to) prevents anyone coming up with ‘proof’. Now perhaps proof doesn’t exist, but then why create a question that you know can’t be answered, at least not within the parameters you will accept? Especally when there is another readily available definition?
Question: When a person “feels” someone looking at them, is that instinct? As far as I know, all people can “feel” when they’re being watched.
Well, imitation is definitely an instinct in humans and it fits Lenny’s definition of being a complex behaviour, shared by all humans and not learned. So I don’t think he was necessarily being too strict. And that’s the OP answered, unless anyone has any objections
My POV is that babies all have the ability to learn language, but I’m not sure if the ability to learn something should be called an instinct. The whole point of instincts is that they are unlearned behaviour.
You’re saying the babies have the neurological wiring to allow them to learn language, and they do (ie. Broca’s area in the brain is responsible for speech), but it’s not like babies are born knowing a language. The songbird example would be illustrative - but I haven’t been able to google anything.
The point about a toddler being able to speak and yet not have complex higher reasoning and problem solving (ie. the hidden toy problem above) is that brain development and learning occur over a time period of several years, not all at once.
And how babies learn language in the first place isn’t difficult to understand. Babies babble. Babies will do anything - touch everything, eat everything, make any sounds/movements. Then they receive positive and/or negative reinforcement from those around them. While babbling they string sounds together. First time they say “Ma Ma” what happens? They receive praise, cuddles, cooing, etc… Positive reinforcement. Gradually they build up a small vocabulary. Starting generally with nouns about objects around them (Ball! Mom! Dad!) and moving on (No!) to move complex vocabulary/grammar that is built on the things they’ve previously learned.
But I think we’re just talking past each other here. If we don’t agree on what constitutes an instinct, then I don’t think we can get very far.
No, I wouldn’t agree that this is an instinct - because I don’t agree that it occurs. Plenty of times I’ve “felt” someone watching me. But plenty of times I haven’t “felt” someone who was watching me.
This could be a person coming up behind you in a room - if they’re quiet and don’t give themselves away, they surprise you. If you happen to pick up on other stimuli - breathing, feet scuffing the floor, reflections in your computer monitor, etc. then you “feel” them behind you.
Or if you mean the “person watching you across a crowded room and meeting eye contact” scenario - well it’s all coincidence. There’s probably many times people have been watching you and you had no idea they were doing so. But other times when you periodically scan the room you catch their eye - they were looking at you, and you see that. But you didn’t “feel” them watching you - you just happened to notice someone watching you (this time). Of course you don’t remember all the times people were watching you without you being aware - because you weren’t aware.
I basically agree with this. The definition, after all, is not Lenny’s but is quoted directly from Merriam Webster.
My main beef is that Lenny, by insisting this is not a semantic issue, fails to acknowledge that other definitions are possible and that that might be a major factor in differences of opinion on the subject.
A bit moot, however, since Lenny seems to have given up trying to defend his viewpoint.
I agree with what you say after this about talking past each other, but again: babies babble even if they don’t receive a response. If they don’t receive a response for a long enough period of time, they will stop. But that takes time. Assuming they’re not disabled, they WILL go through these stages regardless of feedback.
Yikes! How babies learn language is profoundly difficult to understand, and the topic has been probed by esteemed thinkers such as Kant, Wittgenstein, and modern-day neurobiologists. If language acquisition only requires the conditions you stated, then why don’t cats and gorillas learn spoken language? Why is there a critical age beyond which a human cannot learn language fluently? While I agree that the conditions you stated are part of language acquisition, it doesn’t explain how babies’ brains seem to learn language instinctively.
Agreed. One certainly has to expect every aspect of one’s OP to be challenged on this board, and it is intersting and instructive to debate what an instict actually is and isn’t.
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to make language acquisition seem simpler than it is. There is much we don’t understand about it.
My point is that human brains are wired to be able to learn language, and we also have other physical traits that make language possible (ie. vocal cords, hyoid bone, etc.).
Much of human brain development occurs after birth - young children’s brains are still developing. And the neural pathways often won’t develop unless properly stimulated. Young children exposed to language(s) can pick them up easily. If you learn more than one language, it makes it easier to learn other languages as an adult. Conversely, if you don’t learn many languages as a child, some of those neural pathways don’t develop, and then you won’t be able to utilize them later in life.
I think where we disagree is your statement that “babies’ brains seem to learn language instinctively.” Again, I think this is because we define “instinct” differently. I don’t think that the ability to learn language is an instinct.
A spawning salmon has the ability to swim. But instinctively it is able to return to the stream of its birth, without having the cognitive ability to “remember” that location (as a human would).
The earlier songbird example would be more germane to this discussion of language. All songbirds may be born with the ability to sing. If baby songbirds, raised in the absence of birds of their species, automatically begin to sing the same tune that their species characteristically sings, I would call this an instinct. However, if the baby bird imitates other birds and sings different songs, or if it sings other tunes that it makes up itself, that would not be an instinct. Even though the bird is born with the ability to learn to sing, I wouldn’t call it an instinct unless it instinctively knows its species-specific song.
Similarly, I don’t see how the ability to learn a language is an instinct, since I thought the key criteria of an instinct is something that is unlearned.
An area where I thought a case might be made for the instinctiveness of language is some people who mentioned the underlying similarities of different languages. But how would you define this? What are these similarities? What similarities are needed - across how many languages - to qualify as an instinct? Like the general definition of an instinct, this seems rather arbitrary. All languages have a vocabulary of nouns and verbs, but the sounds used to express language can very widely (as many sounds as humans are capable of vocalizing, and not all languages use all of them). Grammar and sentence structure varies widely. But IANA Linguist. Tell me more - what language characteristics are common in all languages?
I searched around and found [url=]this on-line essay that discusses Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct, a popular book on the subject, that from what I can tell has overall good reviews.
One excerpt I found that pertains to my question earlier:
On the other hand, later the author of the essay states that Pinker’s ideas about Phonological Insensitivity give weight to the pro-instinct argument:
On the freeway last night, I noticed something that reminded me of this debate.
Most, but not all, drivers tend to clump up their vehicles. A few people are happier with open road on all sides, and will endeavor to get around the clumps, but the majority of drivers seem to automatically form themselves into loose packs.
While driving is an acquired skill, the clumping behavior is not learned. Nobody tells you to stick close to other cars. There are no negative consequences for failing to do so (unless you’re the sort of driver who needs to set your own pace, and then the only negative consequence is emotional). Driving a vehicle and maintaining a position relative to other vehicles is an extremely complex behavior.
So why do we (most of us, anyway) do it? Safety in numbers, perhaps? Seems like that’s a pretty clear instinct, whereas ducking one’s head at a loud noise can be called a reflex.
Imagine a terrible plague that wipes out 999 people in a thousand. The remaining survivors will, for the most part, tend to gather together, right? They won’t bother rationally thinking about it — “if we get fifty people here, we can divide the labor among agriculture, defense, and so on, and live better than we would alone.” No, for irrational but well-founded survival reasons, they will tend to clump themselves up into communities, because we’re wired as social animals. Some of us are loners and will become hermits, but most of us will live in groups, and we’ll do it without making a conscious decision to do so.
Animals are capable of remarkable feats of memory. I really doubt that salmon have no cognitive ability to remember location – what do you propose they are using, if not memory?
Regarding birdsong, consider that birds learn specific song variations of their local area. They have both an innate ability to sing, and a local song culture. Have a look at Section 6: Memes in non-human animals. I’m curious, therefore, whether you would classify birdsong as instinct or not.
While the demonstration that non-humans possess cognitive abilities does not prove that humans possess instincts, it does blur the lines between the two concepts. The burden of proof is on the OP to define exactly how instincts are expressed. If the presence of cognitive ability means a behavior is not instinct, then many animals may not have instincts either.
I recall reading in a psychology textbook in high school that although humans have few real instincts they do have some
I think it said smiling is an example because you do not have to be tought how to do it, people all over the world do it, and it also said that blind infants will also smile and obviously they could not learn it by watching other people doing it and imitating the act.
