I guess I just don’t see this as particularly controversial. Unresolved, perhaps, but I don’t see people having much heated emotion about this question. And the thread was already there in GQ.
I agree. This is a total non-issue. I have a reasonable degree of interest in the topic but I still don’t see it as particilarly controversial.
There’s no doubt humans have some universal behaviours. We are universally diurnal for example. Yes, there are some individuals who are insomniac or who choose to operate at night, but most individuals function best if they sleep when it gets dark. But that doesn’t meet the usual standard of ‘instinct’. It just a mode of behaviour. You could call it an instinct if you wished, but I can’t see that it would add much to our understanding of the subject generally.
The only real controversy in this area IMO arises from animal rights believers and creationists. And in both cases they use blend instinct with anthropomorphism to generate the controversy. Creationists tend to say “Look at the spider, random chance couldn’t have led to that activity”. Animal rights activists tend to say "Look at the animal perfom activity X, that is evidence of intelligence/emotion/self awraness/critical thought etc. And in both intances they usually use instinctive behaviour because it can appear so complex and intelligent.
If we add laughing or diurnal activity to our list of instincts then I don’t see that it sheds much light on that those areas of controversy.
Diurnal activity might shed some light on one point raised in this specific discussion however. Most people are diurnal, and very few people bother to rationalise it. Even when people could become nocturnal they usually simply say they are happier to operate inthe daytime. So is we consider that sort of thing to be an instinct then it appears humans don’t need to or try to rationalise our instincts.
What usual standard of instinct are you using? It certainly meets the standard set forth by the dictionary definition I offered above.
Being a creature of instinct may or may not help animal rights (certainly we have an instinctive desire to crave the mouthfeel of fat, and that’s something most easily gained from animal flesh). It seems to me as though the existence of human instincts would undermine, not support, creationism. More importantly, though, we ought not consider how a scientific judgment impacts our pet political causes before making the judgment.
If you can explain what you’re calling the difference between mode of behavior and instinct, I think that’d help.
Daniel
I’m coming from neither. You are correct that my interest in instinct is tangential to the discussion I mentioned that I am having IRL (more accurately a recurring theme in occassional conversations I have IRL). I guess the needle does point somewhat in the direction of “animal rights” but I certainly am not an activist, nor is it “rights” I’m interested in.
One of my interlocuters is the pastor of a church. Years ago I had occassion to go on a long trip with him and others, each of us taking turns driving. Once, on his turn, he hit an animal - perhaps a cat. His nonchalance was startling. “Oh, I hit a cat… yawn.” This incident is oft referred to in our discussion.
It’s understandable if someone takes the stance “At least it wasn’t a person,” as if to say it would be worse if it was a person. Of course it would be. But it’s not the equivalent of running over a stone. The pastor (a one time farmer), takes the stance that only humans have received the breath of God so animals are merely property. If a farmer on a whim shoots one of his cows, it is the moral equivalent of his shooting/damaging his tractor.
At this point you may be reaching for the “animal rights activist” label. The rights of the cow is not the interesting point to me. To the pastor there is a categorical gulf between human and animal. He essentially rejects the idea that humans are animals. That is the point I’m arguing against. It is to this end I am seeking to shore up the view that humans are one kind of animal.
So that’s my background - back to the focus on instinct: The pastor would say that other animals act on instinct but maintains that humans do not. It’s not only those with a religious basis who would agree with him. But doesn’t such a stance stem from the same conceit, that humans are in some way not animals? It is with this “controversy” in mind that I first sought clarity on the definition of instinct (the other thread) then opinions (expert or otherwise) on how instinct plays out in humans (this thread).
It looks like I am stumbling over the word “instinct” in that it has a colloquial and a technical definition. Add to this the fact that humans do have a much higher intellect and a much more refined linguistic ability - this one-two punch being more than a match for any instinctive impulse. This would make teasing out human instincts more difficult. A spider has little power to choose over web-building, similarly the beaver with dam-building. So spider and beaver behaviour is more predictable than human behaviour.
But Blake mentioned in the other thread that beaver behaviour likely stemmed from the evolution of a “feeling comfortable nesting close to water.” From this I speculate that perhaps some aspects of human behaviour stem from an innate “comfort” - that comfort arising from a similar mechanism to that of the beaver, which I may have inappropriately labelled “instinct.” Imagine if we granted a beaver the intellectual and linguistic capacity of a human. Might not that beaver decide against dam-building - but might not that beaver feel uncomfortable at some gut level with that decision?
Consider a happy-go-lucky bachelor. Nice apartment, can do what he wants, lots of disposable income, has lots of friends, frequently gets luckly at the bar. What rational chain of thought could lead this guy to say, “You know, I should get married and have kids”? It is arguably irrational to give up all those comforts and advantages. What “drives” people to behave this way? Clearly, if asked, the soon to be ex-bachelor would list all of the reasons why he’s embarking on marriage - but isn’t core reason, deep down below the intellectual reasons, the drive to reproduce?
Yeah, that is an easy-to-pick-apart oversimplistic scenario intended only to illustrate the idea - and perhaps I’m incorrectly conflating “drive” with “instinct” (a distinction I don’t fully understand). But to what extent does a base, inherited, “comfort/drive/instinct/??” influence the choices of an individual to behave a certain way - or rather to achieve a certain goal? Could it be similar to what “drives” the spider, the beaver, the penguin?
And what about such phenomenon playing out in society? Ants build “societies” in a predictable manner. Under human societies might there not lie a “comfortable” way to arrange ourselves, this arrangement made less predictable by the more powerful influences of intelligence and language?