Human kind still does things instinctively. Namely, things that are untaught and happen without conscious effort. They effect should be tangible and visibly recorded. Lets list them here. I will get started
Mothers releasing breast milk upon hearing their child cry
Newborns suckling soon after birth
Genetic attraction by siblings separated at birth
Stockholm syndrome
Sexual attraction and sexual activity would seem to be instinctive, even if in some individuals the instinct does not follow the expected path.
What does this mean? If you’re saying siblings separated at birth sense some commonality with their siblings then it doesn’t have to be a ‘genetic attraction’ whatever that means.
This explains it
Presumed is the key word here. Is there any strong evidence that this is an actual effect, or instinctive? Maybe it is, but some people are attracted by similarity, and genetics may play no role in the attraction, just in creating the similarity.
It’s misguided to suppose that instinct (genetic programming) is some limited or isolated component of human behavior that amounts to only a few trivial things that you can list. A human baby is not a blank slate that can be nurtured to behave in an arbitrary manner, any more than an animal born an aardvark can be trained to become a badger or a cat.
Humans evolved a flexible intelligence that allowed us to solve novel problems and to cooperate in complex societies, and thus to do a lot of other interesting things with our brains that are not directly related to survival. So, certainly, the cultural component of human behavior is far richer than that of an aardvark or a badger. But, ultimately, all of human behavior is determined by a combination of both instinct (genetic programming) and nurture/culture - and both components are large and highly significant in almost everything we do.
A lot of things happen at the molecular level that we do not consciously control. The breaking down of food, the action of enzymes, the generation of energy etc etc. We direct none of them and they happen automatically.
Hence my opening post mentioned activities that are tangible and visible. Maybe i should add that instinctive activities that we do that we did not instructed it to be done but was done by the body ceiving instructions from instinct or genes. Activities that are recordable too like milk production when babies cry and stockholm syndrome.
To expand on my comment above, see here:
As discussed in the article, we do not have the experimental controls to know for sure whether the universality of these traits means they are all evolved (instinctive) behaviors; some are probably not.
But - we certainly know that behavior evolves in animals, just as morphology evolves. And humans are animals. We also know that the timescale for major evolutionary change is millions of years (humans and chimps diverged about 5 million years ago). Human genetic programming (i.e. the determinant of instinct) has really not had time to change dramatically since human culture began a few tens of thousands of years ago. So, if you believe that only a tiny component of human behavior is now attributable to instinct, the burden is really upon you to demonstrate when and how you think humans ceased to function like all other animals; and to provide some other convincing account for the large number of cultural universals listed above.
I do understand this entire discussion to be about behavior.
However, your OP did not seem to be about whether behavior is conscious or unconscious. That’s an entirely separate (and equally fascinating) question. I understood it to be about the extent to which human behavior is instinctive - i.e. evolved, determined by our genetic programming - versus to what extent it is determined by nurture and culture.
Perhaps you could clarify.
I think you’re being very conservative there. Shouldn’t that number be 500+ thousand years ago from the carved oysters in Java? That, of course, pre-dates Homo Sapiens. More recently there are cave paintings in Israel over 100,000 years old, and Sibudu Cave goes back over 70,000 years.
Yes, you are right.
But really I was trying to address a more fundamental misconception in the OP’s question. We evolved flexible intelligence, combined with complex sociality, which spurred human culture to expand dramatically, way beyond the cultural sophistication of any other species. But it’s a long way from there (and highly implausible and unsupported by evidence) to suppose that for some reason we then evolved “blank slate brains” that lack fundamental instinctive behaviors and that are infinitely malleable.
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of human instincts. (However “Stockholm Syndrome” is not one of them; if it were, it would be experienced universally by all people.) Just off the top of my head:
Eating when hungry
Drinking when thirsty
Yawning
Sleeping
Shivering when cold
Ducking when a fast moving object approaches one’s face
Laughing when tickled
Smiling when feeling pleasure
Grimacing when in pain
Wrinkling the nose when confronted with a disgusting object
(and numerous other facial expressions associated with emotion)
Blushing
Diving reflex
Recoiling from touching a hot object
Moro reflex in infants, and startle reflex in adults
Turning the head to face a sudden noise
Also discussed in SDMB some years ago:
–Mark
People will often say things like “such-and-such behavior is not instinctive in humans; we just do it because we enjoy it”. This is an especially common comment about sex, for some reason. But that’s exactly how instinct works. Any time someone says “I do it because I enjoy it”, they’re describing an instinct.
Physiological reactions like “shivering when cold” don’t quite fit my notion of what “instinct” means. You might as well say that “secreting digestive juices when we eat” is instinctive. I think we need to clarify just what counts as “instinctive behavior”, whether in humans or in other animals.
Some animals, like horses, grow there hair long in the winter and shed that hair in the spring. Would anyone call that “instinctive” behavior? What about bears hibernating?
Horses generally seem to be “born” to be afraid of snakes, but they aren’t afraid of most birds. That seems like what I’d call “instinct”.