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Do humans have instincts? What is instinct?

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This so-called "instinct" to withdraw your hand from the fire when you burn it is not an instinct, it is a reflex: the spinal cord responds, not the brain. I guess I'd suggest that before people start making claims about instincts, that you should find out what we are talking about. Examples of instincts are the annual migratory patterns of birds and fish, the bowing down of wolf pups, cats eating grass to correct dietary problems, honeybee dance, the cuckoo's song. Breathing, heartbeat, eye-blink and digestion are reflexes.

re·flex (rflks)

n.

1)An involuntary physiological response to a stimulus.

2)An unlearned or instinctive response to a stimulus.

in·stinct (nstngkt)

n.

1)An inborn pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a species and is often a response to specific environmental stimuli.

2)A powerful motivation or impulse.

I consider a reflex to be a type of instinct. Guess it all comes down to definitions.

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You're all confusing instincs with reflexes. I suggest checking your definitions.

Reflex:
  • An involuntary response to a stimulus involving nerves not under control of the brain
  • automatic: without volition or conscious control

Examples: Sneezing, salivation, Tendon reflex, and more.

Instinct:
  • the determination of conduct by inherited tendency. An instinct is an inherited tendency to general forms of response to given situations; the specific response is almost always a combination of inherited tendency with acquired modifications.
  • Instinct is the inherent disposition of a living organism toward a particular behavior.

Examples can more frequently be observed in the behavior of animals (most in the less intelligent species), which perform various activities (sometimes complex) that are not based upon prior experience, such as reproduction, and feeding among insects. Other examples include animal fighting, animal courtship behavior, internal escape functions, and building of nests.

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Then I am a bit confused here. What do you mean "the spinal cord responds, not the brain?" Wouldn't the grass-eating cat also be acting on a reflex?
No; spinal cord responses are extremely fast, unlike cat grass-eating. The "point" of a reflex is to eliminate the extra time needed for the signal to be transmitted to the brain and processed, then appropriate action to be taken.

[ed: addition]

Oh, I see, there's a factual unclarity thing here. The fact is that when you slice your finger with a knife, the signal travels from the signal to the spinal cord (so far so good), and the spinal cord itself send a response signal to the appropriate muscle, to jerk the hand out of the way. Then about the that the response signal reaches the relevant muscle, the signal also gets to the brain and you feel the pain. If you had to wait for full cognitive processing of the initial injury-info, that would add some seconds to moving your hand, and supposing this is an ongoing assult on your body (like with fire), you could be looking at serious damage.

Edited by DavidOdden
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The whole distinction still seems unnecessary (from a philosophical standpoint) and a bit arbitrary.

Even if humans do have instincts, I don't think it'd jeopardizes the necessity for epistemology or the need for man to use his rationality to survive. Excepting the scientific interest, is there necessarily any philosophical significance to "humans have instincts?"

And if the distinction between instincts and reflexes is not to be an arbitrary one, what scientific backing is there to say that suckling is a reflex (done before brain processing?) Wouldn't an infant suckle, qua reflex, every time a teat was put in his mouth (even if he was already stuffed?)

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The whole distinction still seems unnecessary (from a philosophical standpoint) and a bit arbitrary.

Even if humans do have instincts, I don't think it'd jeopardizes the necessity for epistemology or the need for man to use his rationality to survive. Excepting the scientific interest, is there necessarily any philosophical significance to "humans have instincts?"

Yes there is. My view on this subject is somewhat unconventional, not just from an Objectivist point of view, but also from a scientific point of view. But I've given this subject a lot of thought and I'm going to present my opinion and the facts that made me reach those conclusions.

First of all, I want to emphasize that I completely agree with what you said about the necessity of reason to survive. Not just when instincts are missing, but also when instincts are present.

Ayn Rand referred to instincts as automatic knowledge, or actions that help the animal survive (unfortunately I don't have the exact quote, it's from the Virtue of selfishness). She wrote that because animals have automatic knowledge of what is good/bad for them (but humans don't), an animal, as oppose to human beings, does not need reason (actually, biologically even if it did need it, it still can't have it, but I'm looking at this from a philosophic point of view now). Since human beings don't have that automatic form of knowledge (instincts), they need to discover and learn everything on their own, by using reason.

There is one problem and one mistake in that statement. The problem is in the definition of instincts.

The definition includes a drive for something, and the actions needed to get it, Suggesting that the entire procedure of hunting that an animal goes through is automatic ("the killer instinct"), and does not require learning or reason.

From watching National Geographic movies about animals and learning some things about the brain, I saw that the actions an animal takes when trying to achieve something are not automatic at all: they learn it, either from their parents or/and from experience. Learning from experience includes judging whether a certain action was good or bad in achieving their goal, it includes gathering information about the behavior of other animals that they hunt, etc. If you leave a baby lion on it's own, it will grow up to be as helpless as a human baby.

The brain develops in two ways: genetic plan, and the stimuli from the environment.

Some things the brain does not leave for coincidence, but builds automatically, like the connections between the sense organs and their location and stracture in the cortex, like the structure in our brain that is responsible for regulating tiredness, heartbeats, hunger etc, the structure that is responsible for coordination of movements, and more. And some things the brain allows the environment to shape: the kind of shapes that the brain will be capable of conceiving depend on the shapes the animal/human was exposed to when growing up. If a cow grows up in an isolated room with no corners or lines, when grown up it won't be able to perceive lines at all (or movement, or all other stuff, not to mention that it would not be able to identify "grass" from "ass", or anything else by using sight).

This is why I think that the term "instincts" is very misleading. And I think that in fact the only thing that an instinct is is a drive for action, but it doesn't include an auto-pilot for performing what is needed to achieve that desire. I think that it's possible that some things happen automatically to help the animal hunt, for example, once the animal learns to identify it's prey as "food", then the thought and sight of the prey causes the brain to cause the kidneys to secrete adrenaline, which helps the animal hunt. So it might improve their performance, but the actions themselves need to be learned.

To apply this to animals' sex drive: the need for sex is triggered involuntarily in the animal, and the connection between sex and the shape/sound/smell of the opposite sex is also hard-wired. The animals senses that it wants it. Next step is that the animals needs to plan how to get it. In this stage the animals uses it's knowledge and judgement (They might do things to separate a female from the herd etc), and in the stage of sex, reflexes are involved (the required movements, the sensations etc' are hard-wired).

so to go back to the statement by Ayn Rand, the mistakes would be that:

  • Animals don't need to learn and discover things on their own
  • animals have an automatic knowledge of what is good or bad for them

I think only a biologist is "authorized" to make such declarations, and that an outside observer who did not conduct an extensive research about the nature of animals might make innocent mistakes. When you see something works it's easy to say "it is performed automatically", however, it isn't necessarily so: you must watch the animal grow closely to know for sure what are the conditions needed for it to perform it's actions.

Now, if we talk about instincts as "drives for something" and not as a package deal of drive+behavior necessary to get that desire, then humans beings certainly do have instincts: We have a sex drive, a drive to eat, and I believe a drive to look after one's babies (and maybe more).

The instincts determine our basic nature (metaphysics), that which we have no control over, and reason is what we need to use to survive and achieve our goals, and we also use reason to determine our goals.

Human beings have a lot of "room" in their brain to form new concepts, and store knowledge that IS NOT initially programmed into it. The basic mechanisms stay the same (sensation of enjoyment motivates for an action, and negative sensation motivates against it), but our brain allows us to hold a lot more knowledge and complex concepts than animals' brain. I think it could be thought of as a pyramid, when each stone in a higher level is a more abstract concept, and the lower ones are concretes. Well our Pyramid is much higher and branch-ier. That allows us to have a tremendous variety of ideas and desires, and to use abstract thought. But I think animals understand concepts as well, such as "food" "good for me" "bad for me" "my name = myself", and more, but it depends on the animal. Very simple animals have nothing but reflexes.

There is a lot more to be said about human beings' nature and how it is different than animals, and about how does "free will" fit into all of this, but I'll do it in some other post.

Edited by ifatart
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Now, if we talk about instincts as "drives for something" and not as a package deal of drive+behavior necessary to get that desire, then humans beings certainly do have instincts: We have a sex drive, a drive to eat, and I believe a drive to look after one's babies (and maybe more).

I agree that there is a package deal here, drive + behavior. But we have a perfectly good name for drives that is distinct from instict and that is, well, drive. Why then not let drives be defined as "powerful cognitive motivators" and instinct defined as "innate automatic pattern of behavior"?

What clearly distinguishes animals from humans is the element of free will. When a drive presents itself in the consciousness of an animal, it is not equipped with the inner will to resist that drive. In other words, the animal _automatically_ satisfies its stongest drive, which leads to automatic behavior. Humans on the other hand is free to choose to resist a drive, which leads to non-automatic and hence non-instinctive behavior.

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I actually didn't finish my answer to hunterrose's question:

The whole distinction still seems unnecessary (from a philosophical standpoint) and a bit arbitrary.

Even if humans do have instincts, I don't think it'd jeopardizes the necessity for epistemology or the need for man to use his rationality to survive. Excepting the scientific interest, is there necessarily any philosophical significance to "humans have instincts?"

Yes, there is a philosophical significance for that. There is a need to know whether a certain tendency, desire, behavior is the result of the metaphysical nature of man of a result of their philosophy.

For example, if one day it will be discovered that homosexuality is dictated by genes, then that will disqualify it from being a subject in man's philosophy or psychology.

I also want to add a short explanation to how genes play a role in shaping our body and regulating it's functions (anyone who has more to add is welcome...):

Genes are segments of DNA that exist in every cell in our body. The DNA is a mold that allows the cell to produce proteins and Polly-peptides. Our body contains several types of materians: sugars, fats, acids, proteins, ions, and other stuff. The regulation of our body's activity and the shape of our body is determined primarily by proteins. Proteins serve as enzymes (which regulate the rate of metabolism and other processes), they serve as neurotransmitters (such as Acetyl choline), they are involved in all processes in our body.

The DNA also holds "markers" that "instruct" the cell which genes it should translate and which to ignore.

Biological clock is accomplished by a protein that has a cycle of creation and destruction that lasts 24 hours, and this allows our body to "count" time, and to use this information in regulating relevant processes.

In short our body relies on those little compounds quite a lot.

I will also try to answer (or give my view of it) another very interesting question:

So we have a predisposition to want children? Unless you connect "desire to have children" to an inclination driven by purely the physical pleasure/pain mechanism, I can't see how wanting children, a desire that is highly conceptual at root, could exist in humans before they have the ability to conceptualize.

It'll be easier to answer if we look at animals. As most of you probably know, some animals' sex drive is triggered by pheromones, which are chemicals exerts by the opposite sex.

Felipe's question would apply here as well (even if we argue that identifying a female is not a demonstration of conceptual ability in animals): How can it be that a certain chemical triggers a certain behavior that involves the opposite sex, when it is not certain at all in the time that the animal is still an infant that it would eventually grow to recognize the shape of it's own species, or that it would even have a functional vision. The answer is: it relies on the probability that reality would supply those crucial stimuli to make the nervous system develop in a certain way. The perception of shapes is an automatic process in the brain of an infant: they have no choice about learning at that stage. So if everything goes well with the environment, those different regions of the brain are designed to connect eventually.

Edited by ifatart
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... So if everything goes well with the environment, those different regions of the brain are designed to connect eventually.

Just to make my point more clear about "different regions of the brain designed to connect"... :

During the process of puberty an animal, certain genes become active and start shaping certain regions of the brain in a certain way (create circuits in the brain between brain cells). Those circuits are known to be responsible for sexual behavior (muscle movements, response to courtship/courtship, which is also a series of certain movements etc'). The "information" about how sex should be performed (in terms of a sequence of muscle movements) is built automatically in animals' brain during puberty.

However, the interesting thing is, that in order to perform that series of actions, a certain, very special stimuli must be introduced.

And the stimuli is not something simple like a color, but something much more complex: it is a certain creature with specific features: that creature might come in different colors, and slightly different shapes, and be spotted in a different distance, but still, somehow the brain is able to integrate all those things into an identification of that specific being: a female, of the opposite sex.

So we have one part of the brain that contains information about sequence of muscle movements, and another part of the brain that is able to identify a certain creature.

And even though it is not certain that one of those parts will develop (since the second part is not completely automatic: basically our brain creates inner-representations of shapes that the animals is introduced to, but does not create knowledge of shapes and objects not introduced to the animal), still those two parts of the brain will become connected, and one will trigger the other.

This just blows my mind.

Anyway, hope I made clearer what I meant by "two parts": One is automatically built and stores information of sequence of movements (muscle operation), and the second is the part that is able to identify an object, and is not (at least entirely) automatically built.

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I think that the term "instincts" is very misleading.
Agreed. I think the key thing to make clear in discussing "instinct" is whether it is to refer to things that are
  1. uncontrollable (can't be volitionally prevented from being enacted in certain circumstances)
  2. if they are controllable, whether the fact that they are in the "metaphysical nature of man" means that they are inherently moral actions.

If what is referred to as an instinct is uncontrollable, then it'd potentially be a knock against volition - and there'd be motivation (legitimate or not) to say that man has no instincts.

If what is referred to as an instinct constitutes a moral action because it is "natural" - then there'd be motivation (legitimate or not) to say that man has no instincts that could potentially create contradictory moral standards.

For my part, I think "instinct" neither refers to the uncontrollable nor is it (qua natural) a basis for a moral standard.

Yes, there is a philosophical significance for that. There is a need to know whether a certain tendency, desire, behavior is the result of the metaphysical nature of man of a result of their philosophy.

For example, if one day it will be discovered that homosexuality is dictated by genes, then that will disqualify it from being a subject in man's philosophy or psychology.

Good example. However, I don't know that, even if a given tendency were a part of the "metaphysical nature of man", that it would necessarily lead to philosophical conclusions.

To take the example of sexuality (homo or hetero), if it were proven that homosexuality was in the nature of some men, that, in and of itself, doesn't say why those men ought to act on their natural inclinations (given that we are volitional beings) or justify said inclinations as moral. And likewise if it were shown that all men were "naturally" heterosexual.

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ifat,

Just as lions comed hard-wired to look after their cubs, so do humans. A human mother's brain fills with andrenaline whenever she thinks her baby is in danger. And it fills with dopamine whenever the baby is safe and responding to the mother's affection in a positive way.

A lot of this has to do with evolutionary psychology, which while it can't prove anything, to be sure, what it does do is places empirical points on a graph, and draws the straightest line through those points. I still think this is extrememly helpful, and save the ability to read peoples' thoughts, is the best we can do.

Moving on...

Much of the confusion surrounding this topic lies with the inability thus far to distinguish between drives and instincts.

Humans do not have instincts, for and instinct is an unerring ACTION.

Drives, on the other hand, are EMOTIONAL STATES of the brain. That is, if a human, any human, is put in a certain environment, let's say up on a stage in front of 50,000 people, they will all feel the same emotional state (in various degrees, of course). However, different people will act differently. Some will run and hide. Others will tell a joke, and so on.

There are sexual drives as well, in which the response is different between males and females. Hey fellas, ever see and attractive woman at the store? Do you think about how she's attractive, then feel a strong emotion? No way. It happens instantly. The fact that your brain is flooded with different chemicals was not a choice. However, your decision on what to do about it is yours. Some guys will talk to her, others will giggle (wait, i'm pretty sure all guys would giggle in this situation), some guys will walk away if they're married, have a girlfriend, scared etc.

As another example, social acceptance is a drive all humans come hard-wired with. Even thought we can spend many years training ourselves not to let the opinions of others affect us, a small part of us still shuts down when rejected in a social environment, be it a job, a party invite, or a date. This is probably why people who act against this drive and choose to live regardless of the opinions of others are oftened admired. Even if we don't agree with them, we still can admire the character it takes to have the mettle to do something without positive feedback from their environment.

(Mod's note: Minor editing in the addressing of the post. Poster has been notified by PM. - softwareNerd)

Edited by softwareNerd
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Drives, on the other hand, are EMOTIONAL STATES of the brain. That is, if a human, any human, is put in a certain environment, let's say up on a stage in front of 50,000 people, they will all feel the same emotional state (in various degrees, of course).

This is a completely erroneous idea of how emotions work. Drives are not emotions, they are physical sensations. Some of them are not always readily distinguishable, in fact: many people (I am one of them) have great difficulty telling whether they are hungry, tired, or thirsty, because the physical sensation of one can feel very similar to another.

Emotional responses (that is, automatized knowledge) can also produce physical sensations, but the emotional reaction is not identical with the physical sensation.

As for sex drive including some kind of puberty-induced hardwired recognition and physical knowledge, to the best of my knowledge this is also complete bunk. If we were hardwired by genetics to perform sex with specific individuals in a specific fashion there would be no such thing as fetishes or the kama sutra. People need to learn how to have sex just like they have to learn how to do everything else. I recall a child psychologist explaining that babies even have to learn how to fall asleep.

A human mother's brain fills with andrenaline whenever she thinks her baby is in danger. And it fills with dopamine whenever the baby is safe and responding to the mother's affection in a positive way.

This also happens to women when it looks like the movers are going to drop their furniture. Are you saying that love of furniture is also chemically hardwired into women? Or is it more likely that this is a completely general risk/response mechanism and most women happen to love their children?

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True, drives are not emotional responses, but they are controlled by emotional responses. This does not mean that emotional states are the final arbiter in how we react, but if we arent aware of them, they will control us.

I in no way implied that the physical act of sex is hard-wired in our brains. But the the way our brains fill with chemicals to signify "I'm ready for mating" is hard-wired. And when put into a situation where the appropriate external stimuli are applied, are brains will respond 100 percent of the time.

As for the baby thing, just because we can respond similarly to other events doesn't make my example any less relevant. If our brain we see something and our first perception is DANGER then the chemicals in our brain will respond automatically and unerring. More clearly, we don't see a danger and think, "Hmm, that looks dangerous, and I should do something about it, but first, i'm going to CHOOSE to flood my brain with chemicals in order to put myself in a state of heightened awareness."

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As for sex drive including some kind of puberty-induced hardwired recognition and physical knowledge, to the best of my knowledge this is also complete bunk. If we were hardwired by genetics to perform sex with specific individuals in a specific fashion there would be no such thing as fetishes or the kama sutra. People need to learn how to have sex just like they have to learn how to do everything else. I recall a child psychologist explaining that babies even have to learn how to fall asleep.

I never said that the knowledge of having sex includes the specific individual. I said it includes the series of muscle contractions required for sex, and that in animals the drive is triggered by an animal of the same species of the opposite sex. Human beings have control over how exactly to perform sex, but the sensations the body produces and the required motions to keep that sensation going are hard wired.

A man can decide to stop this act at any time, but the nature of the act comes from man's biological nature.

As for learning how to fall asleep... There might be a need to learn how to relax when one is not very tired yet still wants to fall asleep. But even if one does not manage to sleep, eventually their brain will just go into "sleeping" mode automatically (unless you forcefully try to keep them awake). This is the sensation of sleepy-ness that you (probably) experience when you are sleep deficit. Falling asleep will happen automatically by your brain when it needs it.

This also happens to women when it looks like the movers are going to drop their furniture. Are you saying that love of furniture is also chemically hardwired into women? Or is it more likely that this is a completely general risk/response mechanism and most women happen to love their children?

First of all, I was talking about animals in my last 2 posts. And if you deny that animals take care of their cubs because of instincts then the second option you have is that they choose to take care of their cubs, by using reason and volition. Unless you have another explanation for why animals take care of their cubs?

Then, I said that *I think* that humans have the same thing. I also said that more needs to be learned about the brain before there will be an answer for this question. The way these studies are performed on animals are by creating mutant creatures that don't express certain genes and examine how that influences their behavior. This cannot be done with humans, so I'm not sure when those answers will become available.

As for the difference between furniture and sex (or having children) as a desired value: What makes sex into a value in the first place? The fact it brings pleasure. Why does it bring pleasure? Because our brain and body is set up that way. Sex would not have contributed to an individual's survival in any way (if it would not be pleasurable), so there is no point in saying that you use reason to figure out that sex is a value. If reason was all you had, and the rest of your brain was malfunctioning, you would think that sex is the most irrational thing, since it contributes nothing to an individual's survival. It is only the pleasure that it brings that makes it into a value, and the pleasure is built in us.

Of course not all the things individuals derive pleasure from are metaphysical.

An individual's philosophy determines what they would hold as values. The result of this might be valuing a furniture, for example. Moreover, an individual's philosophy might even repress their instincts (see anorexia, masochism, etc').

Sex is easy to identify as a value that is metaphysical so to speak. Having children and taking care of them is not so easy to classify as such, since it involves emotional pleasure, and not just a physical sensation, and it involves ability for conceptual thinking.

This is exactly Felipe's question.

But the fact is that this task (of connecting between a drive and a much more complex concept) exists:

The physical sensation makes sex a strong motivation for action in animals, but the whole process of choosing a female (or male), figuring out how to get her, involve much more complex thinking. This just shows you that you cannot conclude that a certain desire can come only from philosophy, when you have examples that complex thinking mediates the fulfilment of some very primitive drives, which are drives generated automatically. Just because it seems too complex to exist, doesn't mean it isn't true.

How then, am I going to prove that a desire to have children has an essential different source than valuing a furniture? That one is built in us and the other is not (even though both are conceptual)? By exploring the brain. But until a proof is available, you should not dismiss this option.

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How then, am I going to prove that a desire to have children has an essential different source than valuing a furniture? That one is built in us and the other is not (even though both are conceptual)? By exploring the brain. But until a proof is available, you should not dismiss this option.

I can dismiss the option because every case of supposed human instinct has a counter-example. Every single one. We're not arguing whether animals have instincts, and the fact that animals do have instincts (which may be debatable but at least you can point to examples) has no definite bearing on whether humans do. So why is anyone talking about animals that have instincts to do thus-and-so? If you want to demonstrate that humans have instincts, point to instances. Don't talk about brain chemistry, because anything that you like will cause the same effects. Point out someone doing something they could never have learned how to do.

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I can dismiss the option because every case of supposed human instinct has a counter-example. Every single one. We're not arguing whether animals have instincts, and the fact that animals do have instincts (which may be debatable but at least you can point to examples) has no definite bearing on whether humans do. So why is anyone talking about animals that have instincts to do thus-and-so? If you want to demonstrate that humans have instincts, point to instances. Don't talk about brain chemistry, because anything that you like will cause the same effects. Point out someone doing something they could never have learned how to do.

You misunderstand my position completely. Here is what I think (if you want it in more details+examples you can read my posts):

  1. Animals that are complex (like mammals) don't have automatic knowledge of actions required to get the things they need for their survival.
    They have drives that motivate them to achieve something, but they need to discover how to get it on their own: Either by learning from their parents, or by experience, and judgement.
    Example: animal hungry, wants food, but needs to figure out the way to hunt on it's own. I saw a real life example of this: a friend of mine gave a little kitten a can of yogurt. The can was too high for the kitten. It had to figure out how to get to the yummy stuff. Eventually it put it's paw into it, and then licked it, and so forth. It could also have flipped over the can like some cats do. Now, I'm pretty sure that cats are not born with hard-wired instructions on how to identify a can of yogurt and to use their body to get it. They had to figure it out.
  2. Instead animals have drives - desires for certain things like sex, food, sleep, survival of offsprings, survival of themselves. Those desires are age-dependent, and appear in the animal at different stages of life. Those drives are associated with some stimuli, which might be conceptual in essence. I do not know how this thing is accomplished on the brain level, but the fact is it is: animals don't attempt to couple with trees.
  3. There is a very good reason to believe that humans also share those mechanisms because we share biological mechanisms with animals.
  4. Those drives can be controlled, suppressed and over-ridden by humans since we have volition that animals don't.
  5. Most of our desires are a result of our philosophy, but some desires are a result of our biological nature. The proof that a separation exists can be found in brain research, and not in philosophy.

So to sum it up: you said that "I can dismiss the option because every case of supposed human instinct has a counter-example". The problem with that is that you take instincts to be an automatic behavior (like hunting), and of course there is a counter example for that. It is not "automatic" at all: it is learned. That's why I said that the drives is what is hard-wired, and not the entire behavior.

How can you prove that a woman's desire to protect her child comes solely from her philosophy and not from her biological nature? You can't. Even if you find a woman who is not interested in having children, she would not be a counter example since humans can repress their drives very well.

What reason, then, do I have to think that this drive exists nonetheless? the facts that animals have it, and evolution (an animal without a drive for protecting it's offsprings would extinct).

Edited by ifatart
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Besides, if you can neither prove nor disprove the existence of such drives then why assume they are there at all? And I don't think that the fact they (seem to) exist in other animals proves they exist in humans. There's simply not enough evidence sustaining your claim for it to be taken seriously at this point, and thusly it's kind of arbitrary in my opinion.

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Besides, if you can neither prove nor disprove the existence of such drives then why assume they are there at all?

My opinion is not mysticism. Here is the difference:

A mystic considers something to be true even it there is no evidence at all that it is.

A scientist considers something to be possibly true, if some evidence exists to suggest that it is. The theory only becomes fact when it is tested against reality.

And I don't think that the fact they (seem to) exist in other animals proves they exist in humans. There's simply not enough evidence sustaining your claim for it to be taken seriously at this point, and thusly it's kind of arbitrary in my opinion.

I agree that there is no proof. And I said it a few times. Just because it exists in animals doesn't prove that it exists in human beings. But it strongly suggest that it might, since we share biological mechanisms.

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But it strongly suggest that it might, since we share biological mechanisms.
No, it weakly suggests it, and the suggestion has been refuted by the vastly stronger evidence that human cognition is radically different from that of animals, that humans do not have automatic knowledge, and that humans are volitional.
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No, it weakly suggests it, and the suggestion has been refuted by the vastly stronger evidence that human cognition is radically different from that of animals, that humans do not have automatic knowledge, and that humans are volitional.

Everything you said suggests that you never bothered to read my posts or grasp my position.

I actually said that humans have volition (point 4), I was talking about the fact that human cognition is vastly different from that of animals:

our brain allows us to hold a lot more knowledge and complex concepts than animals' brain.
and I stated the kind of knowledge that I consider automatic.

By saying that having no automatic knowledge is a proof that humans have no insticts you are using another definition of "instincts" than what I am using: and by that you're ignoring my first post about "insticts" being a misleading concept:

This is why I think that the term "instincts" is very misleading. And I think that in fact the only thing that an instinct is is a drive for action, but it doesn't include an auto-pilot for performing what is needed to achieve that desire.

And instead you use the term instincts in a way that I already said I diagree with, to refute something I never proclaimed: see point 1:

Animals that are complex (like mammals) don't have automatic knowledge of actions required to get the things they need for their survival.

They have drives that motivate them to achieve something, but they need to discover how to get it on their own

Please reply to my posts only after you read what I actually say, and provide quotes to present my position instead of guessing what it is on your own.

No hard feelings, I just dislike waisting my time discussing strawmen.

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I suppose we can keep adding our own definitions to the word "instinct" until we can get one that will "stick" on human beings, but what's the point?

When Ayn Rand disputed that humans have instincts, she did so under a specific definition. If one disputes that definition, one should provide reasons why that definition is wrong. Ifatart's reasoning for disagreement with Rand's defintion is because of behavior in animals, and because she doesn't think Rand was qualified to make observations and draw conclusions about animals and instincts (because only biologists are qualified to do that). From this, one might assume that Ifatart is a biologist, because she's given it a lot of thought to this, and she's made observations and drawn conclusions about animals and instincts which she uses as evidence as to why humans may have instincts (according to her definition). Because her observations and conclusions differ from Rand's, she apparently rejects Rand's definition.

However, it's not agreed upon that she has actually disqualified Rand's definition. And if we keep adding definitions to the word "instinct" without disqualifying previous definitions, we can end up with sentences like, "Humans don't have instincts, but they do have instincts."

Ifatart, if in my feeble attempt at a summary of this dispute I have misrepresented your position, please feel free to clarify. Also, if I have basically gotten this summary correct, can you verify in what way you are equally or more qualified than Rand to make such observations and draw such conclusions about animal behavior and instincts as it applies to humans? Are you in fact a biologist who has done extensive studies on the matter?

Edited by RationalBiker
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Everything you said suggests that you never bothered to read my posts or grasp my position.
What you say right here suggests that you didn't read your own post or my reply. Animal behavior does not even weakly suggest that humans have instincts, so your claim that animal behavior strongly suggests anything about humans is plain false. Since you've named the facts that refute any supposed weak suggestion along those lines, I'm flabbergasted that you would say that animal behavior provides any evidence relevant to humans whatsoever. It is thus ironic that I would have to emphasize how the fact of human volition dispenses with any suggestings about humans having instincts. (Not to up the ante, but you should reconsider the claim "our brain allows us to hold a lot more knowledge and complex concepts than animals' brain". That is a serious misrepresentation of reality, because animals cannot hold any concepts whatsoever. I simply cannot understand why ytou would bother to bring animals into the picture, because they are entirely irrelevant.
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