Clearly you do not understand the meaning of the word “instinct.” If a behavior or behavior pattern is the product of observation and abstract or conceptual reasoning it is not an instinct.
Also (not that it makes any difference to any of the points at issue) many animals have senses, including sight, that is more acute than ours.
I’m not aware of non-human animals actively taking steps to end their own lives. Some animals will risk (and inadvertently lose) their lives in defense of their offsring, but this is not the same thing as simple suicide.
I have, however, seen animals give up the fight and allow themselves to be killed. For example, a documentary I saw earlier this year showed a pod of orcas working together to catch a seal that was sitting on a small chunk of ice in open water. They formed a row and swam rapidly toward the ice chunk, submerging at the last second. The resulting wave washed the seal off of the ice chunk, but he quickly scrambled back on board. The orcas kept at it, washing him into the water again and again. The ice chunk also broke apart, getting smaller and more unstable. There was no way he could swim toward the shore or anywhere else; all he could do was keep climbing back onto the ice each time he was washed off. Eventually the seal seemed to realize how utterly fucked he was, and when one of the orcas reached up and gently grabbed his tail to pull him into the water, he surrendered without any struggle whatsoever. See learned helplessness.
Found it, here’s the clip.
The greater prevalence of active suicide in humans is consistent with our reduced reliance on instinct (compared to other animals).
No, not necessarily. Again, the drive to preserve one’s own life is an instinct. The observations and abstractions are not, of course, but those are just tools to gain information, which is then used to make those instinct-driven decisions.
Did you read the rest of what I wrote? That humans also have the self-preservation instinct is undeniable. I’m just saying we’re aided by our greater understanding. This is readily observable by differences in human and animal behavior where humans have the advantage of having greater understanding of dangers in general over most animals and in particular human-technology-based dangers. Again, like I said, note animals’ reactions to guns vs. humans. Note naïve domesticated Dogs’ fearlessness of cars, which are actually very dangerous.
Indeed, the survival instinct is carried out where it is clearly irrational. It’s kind of how we can enslave and imprison and oppress people. People can be put in awful situations in gulags and work camps, where being alive is often worse than dying (depending on what situation we’re talking about), but most will not try to kill themselves. Of course, a much larger percentage do, and the masters in those situations often prevent and penalize that too, but mostly it’s not attempted where it is in fact very very doable. Who couldn’t at the very least slit their own throat? Of course, that’s probably the most unpleasant way to do it, but it’s still there. No, most people historically can’t bring themselves to go through with it.
There’s no denying that this is an instinct that is shared by humans.
No it isn’t. Try looking up the word “instinct” in a dictionary. Educate yourself, instead of repeating nonsense.
Yes I did, and it was as full of baseless assertions and blatantly fallacious reasoning as the bit I quoted.
No it isn’t. I, for one, deny it, as would anyone else who knows what the word “instinct” means and has even a rudimentary understanding of the relevant biology. I explained in my post #2 why it is that people and other animals usually act in such a way as to enhance their chances of survival.
People are afraid of pain, which is (more or less) instinctual, and, even in bad situations, often have hope that things will get better. There are also common religious beliefs and social pressures that tend to dissuade people from suicide. Nevertheless, many people do commit suicide - and not only when they are in objectively horrible circumstances, sometimes when they are just depressed - something which animals pretty much never do.
Repeating a falsehood does not make it true, or even any more convincing to anybody who has their wits about them.
wikipedia quote again: “Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behavior.”
You know, that is really not very exact? Couldn’t you also say, “what living organisms do without, apparently, learning how”?
To me, that isn’t a statement of understanding or knowing. It’s simply a statement of observation: living organisms do things that do not appear to be learned. We decided to name that “instinct.” Doesn’t explain much to me.
There’s anecdotal evidence of dolphins doing this occasionally. Of course, this necessarily involves some anthropomorphic assumptions about what the dolphin is thinking.
hhmm, I’m supposed be out of this discussion, but this suicide thing made me remember a few animal shows, ok 2 different ones. One was about penguin that was brought to the US as a pet that became lonely and stopped eating (not suicide, but surely goes that direction). I honestly don’t remember enough details of the other, but the situation was similar in that it was isolated and apparently missed a mate that it had taken up with. Certain animals form stronger mating bonds than others… I won’t go further than that though. There are many cases where animals die sooner in captivity as well.
Hell of a graf, hell of a closer. Would love to talk about the ancient history, leading to your post, about “harmony.”
Along your thought lines, biology violates decent, God-fearing, Homer Simpson home rules of thermodynamics.
Don’t read too much into my choice of the word “disharmony”. “Disturbance” would have been a better choice on my part. “Harmony” carries lots of emotional baggage about ought and ought not. About rightness and wrongness and properness. *None *of which I meant to import into the discussion.
Not exactly.
A thunderstorm is a phenomenon which organizes heat energy in a local area for a few hours, apparently in violation of entropy. But it’s only local and only temporary. Soon enough, the thing falls apart and entropy reasserts itself. No physical laws are violated.
Nobody would assert a thunderstorm is “alive” in the biological sense. But they do go through stages of growth & decline. And the existence of one can promote the conditions for others to form nearby. And they can mutually reinforce one another.
AIUI, all biology is schematically similar to this. It can temporarily and locally drive conditions “uphill” against entropy. But entropy eventually reasserts itself across the same local and temporary scale.
It’s all totally kosher physics. It just takes a bit more insight than “D’oh! Cuz … Second Law … huh huh huh.”
No it doesn’t. It really, really, really, really doesn’t.
I thought of this thread last night, when I read a line from B. Traven:
“Alll civilization is only a thin layer of varnish on the human animal”.
(Searching google, I found a similar expressin attributed to C P Snow, but Traven, writing in 1934, probably said it earlier.)