Difference between human emotions and animal instinct

Questions about Objectivism
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Louie said:

I agree with this. Nothing like a “heuristic” qualifies remotely as a “instinct”. Instinct and automatic are not isomorphic.

That’s because ‘instinct’ is such a bad word that you’ll just waste time arguing over its meaning. What it seems to indicate is behavior not associated with cognition.

 

Kahneman and Tversky demonstrated that lots of what we normally call ‘thought’ really isn’t…hence, ‘heuristic’. So in terms of Ockham’s principle, perhaps it’s easiest to define behavoir as either thought-motivated or not, ostensibly making ‘heuristic’ and instinst equivalent.

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I have issues with it on the basis of cause and effect i.e., with regards to the question: if humans have a disease, is it necessary for them to evolve it out? No, they could develop a medicide (not the same as eating medicinal leaves which are part of “nature” and hence the “metaphysically given”) and then cure it. Adaptation isn’t the automatic course of action for human beings. As Ayn Rand said, “The difference between animals and humans is that animals change themselves for the environment, but humans change the environment for themselves”. This implies that using natural selection for solving your problems is an appeal to the metaphysically given. Again, there is nothing wrong with artificial selection which is what is proper and required for man. Now, “Changing yourselves for the environment” runs contrary to the conceptual nature of man

 

Right. How could I have forgotten - Ayn Rand, evolutionary biologist and philosopher.

 

The issue here is that you’re not actually understanding what evolution is. Evolution is not some physical construct. It’s not something that organisms “undergo”. It’s not something that humans choose to enact or not enact. Evolution is, fundamentally, a mathematical construct. Traits that lend themselves to the increased survival of an organism NECESSARILY will be passed on more BECAUSE organisms that survive longer, reproduce more. Traits that DECREASE one’s ability to survive NECESSARILY will not be passed on as often, because organisms with those traits will survive shorter periods, and reproduce less. So what do you suppose MUST happen as a result? Well, gradually the frequency of the negative trait diminishes, and the frequency of the positive trait increases. As I said - it is a mathematical construct.

 

It’s a very common misconception, and has been for over a century now, that humans are exempt from evolution because of our ability to think conceptually and use tools. That’s simply not true. There’s nothing that we can do, categorically, that another organism cannot do in order to deal with changing circumstances. Other organisms migrate, other organisms use tools and shelter (to an extent, depending on the organism), other organisms do as much as they can to adapt to their changing environment, just like humans do. But that doesn’t change the mathematical certainty that negative traits will necessarily reduce in frequency over time as a result of diminished lifespans and reproductive viability. The effect may be smaller in humans due to the existence of medical science, but it does still exist. 

 

I trust Ayn Rand’s ability to interpret and explain philosophy and literature. But she is not an evolutionary biologist, or a biologist in any sense. Just because she thinks that humans are not subject to the effects of the environment does not mean that she’s right.

 

 

 

I don’t know much about biology but isn’t the frontal lobe involved in “inhibiting” reflexes, not causing them?

 

:stuck_out_tongue: See! This is what happens when a biologist comments on neurology, entirely outside of his area of expertise! 

 

I looked into it more, and you are indeed correct. The frontal lobe inhibits primitive reflexes, which originate in the brain stem as automatic responses to stimuli. Which again leads us back to the definition of instinct - does an automatic response count as an instinct?

 

 

 

Instincts may improve the survival advantage of animals but it works against human survival: which requires a mind free from endless streams of “evil” thoughts and “compulsions”. Existence of human instinct (again, assuming you are all conscious of it) is the assertion that there are “metaphysical” components to human consciousness. Natural selection does not apply to humans because human deaths are not metaphysical facts. They didn’t have to happen. Development of the human genome is not a metaphysical fact. It didn’t have to develop in a certain way.

 

 

Natural selection certainly applies to human beings for the exact reasons I listed above. No organisms’ death is a “metaphysical fact”.  Deaths do not have to happen to any organism. Which is why organisms with traits that aid their survival, including humans, are more likely to survive longer and reproduce more, and therefore, from a purely mathematical standpoint, those traits have an increasing frequency within a population, including human populations.

 

 

 

I’d like to repeat a point that you did not address earlier: human attraction. Instinctually, humans are attracted to the opposite sex. There are some humans that are different in this respect, but most humans are attracted to the opposite sex. This befits the definition of an instinct that I laid out earlier: 

  1. Universality - the trait in question can be found in all members of the species

  2. Tendency - the action or set of actions is a tendency that can be overridden by conscious thought or present in a different form in different members of the species

  3. Not learned - evidence currently points to sexual attraction being genetic, not a conscious choice.

 

This is an example of an “instinct” in my mind, and the mind of the professor that I mentioned earlier. It’s beneficial for the species overall to pursue a specific course of action - the pursuit of the opposite gender - and so traits that cause humans to inherently tend towards the opposite sex have been bred for. We can consciously choose to not pursue a member of the opposite sex, but it’s fairly clear that our sexual orientation is not a learned behavior. This is a very, very, abundantly clear example of an “instinct”.

 

Reproduction itself is an example of an “instinct.” If it were simply that we chose to reproduce as part of our value system, we’d see much greater variance in the choice to reproduce than we do - as it is, most humans want to reproduce, pretty much starting from the age that they’re capable of doing so. The fact that some don’t - just as the fact that some people are not attracted to the opposite gender - is actually proof that it is an instinct: there’s a clear MINORITY in both examples, which makes it fulfill the criterion for being an instinct by making it a “tendency” and not a “reflex”: it can be overridden. 

23

As Ayn Rand said, “The difference between animals and humans is that animals change themselves for the environment, but humans change the environment for themselves”.

That quote isn’t even about instincts or evolutionary biology anyway. I can’t find where Rand said that either. That’s a difference, yes, but I don’t think anyone denied that humans have profound cognitive ability to alter the environment.

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I believe the quote is: “It is only animals that have to adapt themselves to their physical background and to the biological functions of their bodies. Man adapts his physical background and the use of his biological faculties to himself-to his own needs and values.” from VOR: Of Living Death.

 

An example I’ve heard many times on instinct, is a police officer instinctively pulling his gun. In this sense though, it is a learned or automated response. In martial arts, the techniques are practiced over and over to automate them as well as improve. When a situation arises that calls for something, you see an event and react to it simultaneously without being aware of an conscious initiation of the action.

 

Reflexive action covers both the suckling and  the light hammer tap to the knee.

 

I prefer this, as instinct usually raises more issues when it is used, while learned behavior versus natural processes, such as reflex, usually hones in more quickly.

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Reproduction itself is an example of an “instinct.”

You mean to say you saw an attractive woman and and some primal part of your brain went: “I must do this. For the human race”.

 

 

Can’t seem to find that same exact quote, only this:

Man’s unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself. If a drought strikes them, animals perish—man builds irrigation canals; if a flood strikes them, animals perish—man builds dams; if a carnivorous pack attacks them animals perish—man writes the Constitution of the United States. But one does not obtain food, safety or freedom—by instinct.

I was only using the quote to make my point. The quote is true and the implications follow.

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That quote isn’t even about instincts or evolutionary biology anyway. I can’t find where Rand said that either. That’s a difference, yes, but I don’t think anyone denied that humans have profound cognitive ability to alter the environment.

Rand is wrong. All animals alter their environment.The best example, of course are beavers.

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Rand is wrong. All animals alter their environment.The best example, of course are beavers.

Bee make hives, termites make nests, birds build nests, but none of them use a full sense of concept. Many more don’t alter a thing on purpose (you won’t find an iguana making things) The only point that matters is that at best, non-conceptual creatures have limited ability, and still only alter the environment incidentally, yet not really as an end beyond needing some cover. There are borderline cases, like chimpanzees or dolphins. That doesn’t rule out natural selection though, especially since natural selection is a mathematical construct of how all living things evolve. Doesn’t matter how smart you are, something like being born with malformed fingers makes you less likely to survive, it just so happens reason helps to make you considerably more likely to survive. How reason and language even appears is part of natural selection.

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Ayn Rand wasn’t wrong. She was talking about adaptations, i.e., how animals cope with change. She was talking about whether adaptations were necessary for an animal’s survival. And the fact is that it is necessary for all animals other than humans. All other animals (including your beaver) have to depend on some kind of ecological niche. Humans don’t have to depend on any ecological niche. Their evolution did not involve an adaptation to any ecological niche (their evolution, presumably, had to do with transcending any particular ecological niche or any prebuilt set of actions to specific environments/circumstances).

 

Consider a thought experiment: suppose all trees on earth suddenly disappeared. Where would all your beavers go to collect wood to build those dams? They can no longer build dams. Their perceptual level of awareness meant that they could only work with “the immediately given, directly perceivable concretes of its background”. Because of this, they have a “limited” (in a certain sense) degree of response to circumstances. Now, consider humans: since they don’t have any specific ecological niche to live in, there is no classic example to ascribe to them. Let’s just say that humans predicted that the Earth was going to be consumed by the sun some time in the future: their response isn’t to run away and cower, whimpering “we aren’t equipped to deal with this”. They move and inhabit another planet.

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Let’s just define (to give it an Objectivist touch) an ecological niche of an organism as “the immediately given, directly perceivable concretes of its background”. The more suited an animal is to an ecological niche, the more vulnerable it is to any possibility of change (of course, humans don’t have to worry about that, at least, from an evolutionary viewpoint, since natural selection does not apply to them).
 

That doesn’t rule out natural selection though, especially since natural selection is a mathematical construct of how all living things evolve.

No, natural selection only refers to specific adaptations to specific environments (which does not cover all forms of evolution. An easy example would be sexual selection). Human beings did not evolve to deal with any specific environment and hence, their evolution did not involve natural selection (or “instincts”). Of course, there was still evolutionary pressure on them but only in the more general interest of survival. Also reason and language aren’t any concretes of the environment humans needed to adapt to and hence aren’t part of natural selection. But they still served an evolutionary pressure (which is not natural selection) in the interest of human survival: let’s just call that evolutionary pressure “human selection”, just to distinguish it from natural selection. Note that this evolutionary pressure was unique in evolutionary history and has never occured prior or since and cannot be explained in terms of other types of evolutionary pressures.

 

Doesn’t matter how smart you are, something like being born with malformed fingers makes you less likely to survive, it just so happens reason helps to make you considerably more likely to survive

“Doesn’t matter how smart you are”: it’s not a question of degree (you would then have to be talking in terms of animal cognition). “More likely to survive”: it’s not a matter of likelihood of survival. Humans are equipped with everything to ensure survival for (contextual) certainty. The choice to be stupid (an “anti-conceptual mentality”, the assertion that human reason isn’t fully equipped to deal with reality, which is more along the speed of “likelihood” of survival and the degree of smartness increasing degree of survival) is an entirely different matter.

 

And to think all this would result from accepting “instincts” and “instincts don’t contradict reason” as starting premises. Maybe accepting “instincts” would necessarily lead a person to talk about “chances of survival”, since that seems to be its only defence. Talk of “chances of survival” is essentially talk of impotence of reason.

30

Sorry for the triple post. But it seems I am wrong about sexual selection being apart from natural selection. According to wikipedia (link), natural selection seems to be ecological selection plus sexual selection, both of which are apart from the “human selection” I am talking about.

 

Presence of biological forces other than natural selection (and “instincts”) seem intrinsically tied to the evolution of conceptual mentality in humans.

31

 

No, natural selection only refers to specific adaptations to specific environments (which does not cover all forms of evolution. An easy example would be sexual selection). Human beings did not evolve to deal with any specific environment and hence, their evolution did not involve natural selection (or “instincts”). Of course, there was still evolutionary pressure on them but only in the more general interest of survival. Also reason and language aren’t any concretes of the environment humans needed to adapt to and hence aren’t part of natural selection. But they still served an evolutionary pressure (which is not natural selection) in the interest of human survival: let’s just call that evolutionary pressure “human selection”, just to distinguish it from natural selection. Note that this evolutionary pressure was unique in evolutionary history and has never occured prior or since and cannot be explained in terms of other types of evolutionary pressures.

 

Do you have citations for any of this? Or anything you’re saying, at this point?

 

You’re not discussing philosophy anymore. You’ve mixed up your philosophy with science, and now you’re making a mess of the both of them. The consensus in the biology community is that humans do undergo evolution and are affected by natural selection. The fact that your philosophy disagrees doesn’t really mean anything. Nature and reality don’t bow to the whims of what you want to believe, as Rand would inform you.

 

 

“More likely to survive”: it’s not a matter of likelihood of survival. Humans are equipped with everything to ensure survival for (contextual) certainty.

 

You’ve fundamentally misunderstood the point being made here.

 

Humans have genes, DNA, et cetera. You’ve agree to this. I’ve pointed this out repeatedly: evolution is a mathematical construct. If a trait makes you more likely to survive - which traits are wont to do, as well as the inverse, even in humans - it will tend to be passed on, whereas a trait that makes you less likely to survive will tend to not be passed on. This is not something that is affected by the existence of reason. Reasons helps us survive, yes, but if you have two perfectly reasonable people, and one of them has negative traits that the other does not, the one with fewer negative traits is more likely to survive. This is how evolution works, simplistically.

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Also reason and language aren’t any concretes of the environment humans needed to adapt to and hence aren’t part of natural selection.

 

If you didn’t have reason, you’re already acknowledging that you’d be less likely to survive. How reason came about can be attributed and explained in part by natural selection. The rest is misconstruing Rand.

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The consensus in the biology community is that humans do undergo evolution and are affected by natural selection.

Probably

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Do you have citations for any of this? Or anything you’re saying, at this point?

 

You’re not discussing philosophy anymore. You’ve mixed up your philosophy with science, and now you’re making a mess of the both of them. The consensus in the biology community is that humans do undergo evolution and are affected by natural selection. The fact that your philosophy disagrees doesn’t really mean anything. Nature and reality don’t bow to the whims of what you want to believe, as Rand would inform you.

 

 

You’ve fundamentally misunderstood the point being made here.

 

Humans have genes, DNA, et cetera. You’ve agree to this. I’ve pointed this out repeatedly: evolution is a mathematical construct. If a trait makes you more likely to survive - which traits are wont to do, as well as the inverse, even in humans - it will tend to be passed on, whereas a trait that makes you less likely to survive will tend to not be passed on. This is not something that is affected by the existence of reason. Reasons helps us survive, yes, but if you have two perfectly reasonable people, and one of them has negative traits that the other does not, the one with fewer negative traits is more likely to survive. This is how evolution works, simplistically.

you wrote:" if you have two perfectly reasonable people, and one of them has negative traits that the other does not, the one with fewer negative traits is more likely to survive. This is how evolution works, simplistically."

 

Uhhh, not really. ‘Traits’ that assure a greater possiblity of survival are not negative or positive in any objective sense. Rather, they are adaptive to alterations in the environment.

 

The classic example given by Darwin is that, with respect to bird predators, white moths survive at a greater frequency when they adhere to clean white walls, while mutated black moths have better chances when soot and grime from factories turn walls black..

 

Humans adapt with respect to color, too. Given less access to hospitals and post-natal care by virtue of racial prejudice, African American babies die with a greater frequency than whites.

 

Of course, the same can be said of prison. Because of the huge disparity by % of young black males who are incarcerated–thereby denied the opportuunity to procreate– the application of justice and socioeconomic environment favor certain groups over others.

 

Of course, the key issue here is to consider human-created institutions as ‘environmental’. At the very least…grudgingly so, as epigenetics has really taken off…

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Bee make hives, termites make nests, birds build nests, but none of them use a full sense of concept. Many more don’t alter a thing on purpose (you won’t find an iguana making things) The only point that matters is that at best, non-conceptual creatures have limited ability, and still only alter the environment incidentally, yet not really as an end beyond needing some cover. There are borderline cases, like chimpanzees or dolphins. That doesn’t rule out natural selection though, especially since natural selection is a mathematical construct of how all living things evolve. Doesn’t matter how smart you are, something like being born with malformed fingers makes you less likely to survive, it just so happens reason helps to make you considerably more likely to survive. How reason and language even appears is part of natural selection.

If you define ‘conceptualization’ as the type of brain activity particular to humans then your statement is a tautology. Rather, IMHO, the issue is to abandon first-principle. normative posuring for the sake of understanding how other animals and plants adapt.

 

In other words, to paraphrase Nagel, what’s it lkie to be an iguana? My bet is that, in the very least, an empirical iguana-ology would perforce demonstrate how iguanas adapt to an altered environment. For example, as humans encroach, do they change their diet to mice and kittens?

 

My experience in India, btw, revealed that villages adopt and raise pet cobras (invaribly named 'Krishna!) to deal with rhodents. And, of course we have wolves, which are nothing but undomesticated doggies.

 

Re your thought experiment and homo sapiens: ‘Ecology’ as a science questions precisely what you assert. Without trees, our populations have always dropped. This is also basic Archaeology 101.

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Uhhh, not really. ‘Traits’ that assure a greater possiblity of survival are not negative or positive in any objective sense. Rather, they are adaptive to alterations in the environment.

 

Indeed. Which is what I meant by “negative” or “positive”. Perhaps I should have been more clear - when I say a trait is “negative”, it means that it’s not well adapted to the organism’s current environment or situation. It doesn’t, in whatever situation, help the organism survive. Assume the inverse for a “positive” trait.

 

 

 

Of course, the key issue here is to consider human-created institutions as ‘environmental’. At the very least…grudgingly so, as epigenetics has really taken off…

 

I think you’re making a very important point here that human_murda may be missing. Just because our environment and situation is fundamentally different from other animals, does not mean that we do not adapt to it. If certain traits turn out, over a prolonged course of time, to be more well suited to the environment we’ve created for ourselves, those traits will become dominant in the long term. This is evolution, and this is natural selection.

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Probably

 

Good job dealing with the several points made in my, and others’ post. Yet again, you have proven your prowess at discussing points and making legitimate counterarguments. Truly, I am in awe at your rhetoric and scientific cunning.

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Indeed. Which is what I meant by “negative” or “positive”. Perhaps I should have been more clear - when I say a trait is “negative”, it means that it’s not well adapted to the organism’s current environment or situation. It doesn’t, in whatever situation, help the organism survive. Assume the inverse for a “positive” trait.

 

 

I think you’re making a very important point here that human_murda may be missing. Just because our environment and situation is fundamentally different from other animals, does not mean that we do not adapt to it. If certain traits turn out, over a prolonged course of time, to be more well suited to the environment we’ve created for ourselves, those traits will become dominant in the long term. This is evolution, and this is natural selection.

I really don’t think we’re ‘fundamentally’ different than other animals, taken as a discreet class. Are not humans and great apes ‘more alike’ than,say, fish?

 

In any case, Kingdom charts (animal, plant, spore) down to species are rather precise as to what the differences are. To be ‘fundamental’ , then, is to beg the biological question with a first-principle, normatively philosophical response.

 

In this sense, i would say that the mental burden of the biblical Genesis remains an issue…and perhaps affected Rand, as well.

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I really don’t think we’re ‘fundamentally’ different than other animals, taken as a discreet class. Are not humans and great apes ‘more alike’ than,say, fish?

 

I would agree, though I know many who would not. However, I was not speaking of us as an organism, but more our environment. The environmental pressures exerted on us are in many ways different from other animals (though, perhaps even then not in a “fundamental” way). In any case, thank you for making this point.

40

I really don’t think we’re ‘fundamentally’ different than other animals, taken as a discreet class. Are not humans and great apes ‘more alike’ than,say, fish?

 

The term ‘fundamental’ has a specific meaning: that from which everything (or the greatest number of things) in a given context arises. Humans are definitely fundamentally different than other animals because we have a conceptual faculty and other animals do not. This conceptual faculty is absolutely fundamental to human beings.

 

 

To be ‘fundamental’ , then, is to beg the biological question with a first-principle, normatively philosophical response.

 

What?