Instinct vs. Cultural Learning in Humans
So this thread stems from a debate from another thread.
Almost all other animals' behaviors are driven by instinct. Instinct here is defined as an innate behavior in response to stimuli that is essentially "pre-programmed" in the organism. So, a bird flies south for the winter, sea turtles move towards the beach to lay eggs, etc. etc. I will also lump certain forms of learned behavior into instinct as well. Yes, it is not innate, but it seems to be epigenetic in a way for some learned behavior in other animals, as they are "primed" to learn and cannot help but learn based on their programming. An example of this is a daughter chimp learns how to be a "good" mother from watching its mom. However, the daughter chimp does not have a choice to do anything but learn from her mother. It cannot say one day, "eh, I don't feel like being a mother". In a way, this is an instinct to learn specialized behaviors for survival. The animal cannot help but learn.
Humans, somewhere along the way from Australopithicus to Homo sapiens have developed a linguistic/conceptual based mind (with developments of the Broca's region, Wernicke's region, neocortex, amongst other brain regions and networks. This linguistic mind has changed the way human behavior functions from other animals. It gives humans the ability to create complex hierarchical thinking. We still have very basic instincts (e.g. eating to get rid of hunger, warmth, a drive towards pleasure, etc.) but most other behavior any more complex than these basic drives, is based on linguistic-cultural origin and not instinct.
My claim is that most of human behavior originates through linguistic-conceptual thought and not instinct. Even something as fundamental as child-rearing is not instinctual. If people want to have a child, it is a desire just like any other desire. That is to say, it originates with concepts (I, raise, baby, development, nurture, care for, etc.) and concepts are purely in the realm of linguistic-cultural. This contrasts with much of pop-psychology and "just so" stories that are used to explain behaviors. Beliefs like "we have an instinct to nurture and raise children" would be spurious in this view. Anyone can have a preference to not want to produce offspring, for example.
A) Does anyone agree with this assessment that most humans behavior cannot be traced to instinct but to linguistic-cultural learning? If you do believe that, when do you think the instinct "decoupled" from linguistic-based cognition?
B) If you believe instincts exist beneath the linguistic-cultural, what does this look like? How do you know it is an instinct and not just something that is what you simply desire based on your personality and linguistic-cultural enculturation?
Almost all other animals' behaviors are driven by instinct. Instinct here is defined as an innate behavior in response to stimuli that is essentially "pre-programmed" in the organism. So, a bird flies south for the winter, sea turtles move towards the beach to lay eggs, etc. etc. I will also lump certain forms of learned behavior into instinct as well. Yes, it is not innate, but it seems to be epigenetic in a way for some learned behavior in other animals, as they are "primed" to learn and cannot help but learn based on their programming. An example of this is a daughter chimp learns how to be a "good" mother from watching its mom. However, the daughter chimp does not have a choice to do anything but learn from her mother. It cannot say one day, "eh, I don't feel like being a mother". In a way, this is an instinct to learn specialized behaviors for survival. The animal cannot help but learn.
Humans, somewhere along the way from Australopithicus to Homo sapiens have developed a linguistic/conceptual based mind (with developments of the Broca's region, Wernicke's region, neocortex, amongst other brain regions and networks. This linguistic mind has changed the way human behavior functions from other animals. It gives humans the ability to create complex hierarchical thinking. We still have very basic instincts (e.g. eating to get rid of hunger, warmth, a drive towards pleasure, etc.) but most other behavior any more complex than these basic drives, is based on linguistic-cultural origin and not instinct.
My claim is that most of human behavior originates through linguistic-conceptual thought and not instinct. Even something as fundamental as child-rearing is not instinctual. If people want to have a child, it is a desire just like any other desire. That is to say, it originates with concepts (I, raise, baby, development, nurture, care for, etc.) and concepts are purely in the realm of linguistic-cultural. This contrasts with much of pop-psychology and "just so" stories that are used to explain behaviors. Beliefs like "we have an instinct to nurture and raise children" would be spurious in this view. Anyone can have a preference to not want to produce offspring, for example.
A) Does anyone agree with this assessment that most humans behavior cannot be traced to instinct but to linguistic-cultural learning? If you do believe that, when do you think the instinct "decoupled" from linguistic-based cognition?
B) If you believe instincts exist beneath the linguistic-cultural, what does this look like? How do you know it is an instinct and not just something that is what you simply desire based on your personality and linguistic-cultural enculturation?
Comments (62)
As for animals or insects, I have no idea how they communicate but for sure they are learning and forming new habits also all the time. Bed bugs seem to be exceptionally good at this.
I would think this is the opposite of instinct. This is learned behavior, and not the kind where we just can't "help" but learn, but ones where the culture/family/community transmits information and instruction. Thus, there is choice involved insofar as the culture is dictating what is to be learned.
Quoting Rich
And this would be instinctual for sure.
Observe all of the actions that your body is doing all the time "automatically" such as the processes of eating, breathing, reacting,
and thinking. They can't and shouldn't be ignored simply because they are "automatic".
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not at all. The learning process is exactly the same.
But I already recognized there are some basic drives that are indeed baked into the equations. Autonomic nervous systems like heartbeat and breathing, I wouldn't even describe as instinct, but I guess you can lump it in, it wouldn't change much to the argument. The main point is that where almost all behaviors of animals are instinctual, they are not so in humans- even ones we folk-psychologize (e.g. like nurturing instinct).
Quoting Rich
Not exactly. I also recognized that animals learn too- but much of their learning is also innate in that they cannot but "help" but learn. There is no decision, or alternatives. The learning itself is specialized (i.e. one particular specialized behavior) and the learning cannot be helped. Humans on the other hand can learn a wide-variety of subjects and can choose what, where, and how to learn. It is not fixed. The content is wide and varied due to ability for conceptual transmission via language.
These aren't just some basic, uninteresting drives. They are behavior that make up the vast amount of our existence.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You have no evidence of this? How did you arrive at this. Was it actual observations or biases formed during the educational process. Maybe biases are instinctual?
So all human desires are merely linguistic social concepts?
You seem to have a very deep seated need to argue that this is the case. ;)
Just because a bird flies south for the winter doesn't mean that it doesn't 'think' it is doing that of its own accord. Just because a human thinks it has free will doesn't mean it does.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Is the process of learning in humans any different?? Do humans deliberately learn?? They may be able to deliberately choose what to learn, but the process of learning is mostly intuitive/instinctual in humans as well as animals.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Is this any different from humans learning how to be good parents?? Is there any evidence to suggest that this is the only place that chimps learn how to be good parents?? That they have no thought process themselves?? And do you have any evidence that chimp mothers are genetically incapable of abandoning their offspring??
Quoting schopenhauer1
Are there any behaviors that humans learn that aren't either specialized for survival or derived from behaviors that are?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Is this the product of instinct or something else?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Are desires not instinctual?? are concepts necessary for desires to exist?? Would a person that was raised in an environment without an existing language be unable to desire?? In my opinion, it seems more likely that desires are all instinctual and we use concepts to be able to communicate them to other people and ourselves, and the adaptation to a language is in itself instinctual.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The only way I could think of to prove that SOME desires are separate from culture would be to perform an experiment on humans to test what would happen if you raised someone in an environment without language or culture, and that would be deeply unethical.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Couldn't it be instinctual for the culture to transmit that information??
Quoting schopenhauer1
You believe in free will don't you?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes our ability to learn is improved by our ability to use language, couldn't that be viewed as an instinctual evolutionary advantage? Can you really call the human thought process anything but instinctual???
Quoting schopenhauer1
Good opening post.
I'm not sure about "decoupling" (what's this?). Instincts are such that they are innate. That we have now complex ideas doesn't mean that instincts aren't operative anymore or at some point, free from our decision-making capability. In fact, instinctive behaviors are fascinating. Pre-linguistic humans had the instinct of 'force' and how to use it. Remember that cave men would break animal bones by pounding -- they knew how to get the meat inside. How did they know that weight plus application of force equaled deconstruction. (And think about how early ideas of turning plants into powder to make something else out of them -- making a paste, a dough, collecting yeast from the air). You've seen birds take a nut and fly high and drop the nut to break its shell. That's instinct.
Quoting schopenhauer1
baby exposed to human speech.. It WILL learn the language it is exposed to whether it likes it or not. It might have preferred to learn Parisian French, but if it is exposed to Brooklyn Yiddish, that is what it will learn. We are compelled by instinct or we are primed, or it just happens automatically to learn language. The way our brain works is determined by genes. Instinct.
Babies seem to be born with very, very basic ideas about the way the world works. A prime demonstration of this is showing a baby a balloon filled with ordinary air. Let go of the ball and the baby smiles. Present the baby with a ballon filled with helium (or better, hydrogen gas about ready to explode spontaneously), let go, and the balloon rises to the ceiling. The baby is shocked. SHOCKED! It is surprised because the rising balloon violates it's basic expectation of the way the world works.
You are under-rating instinct in humans, and you may be under-rating learning, or reasoning, in other animals. For instance, consider a hungry crow presented with a snack that is floating on the surface of water have way down a narrow tube. It can't reach the snack with it's beak. It picks up pieces of gravel and drops them into the tube until the water level lifts the snack within reach. Instinct? Probably not. Birds' survival depends on a lot of instinct and some learning.
Dogs that are in laboratory situations where they get rewarded for xyz behavior and can observer the other dogs doing the same thing, will stop cooperating if they do not receive a reward and other dogs do. Primates in a similar situation will stop cooperating if the quality of their rewards are deficient--like getting a piece of lettuce instead a slice of apple. Either there is an instinct for fairness, or the lab animals are capable of seeing futility. What's the point of cooperating if I am not going to get a reward?
Most animals have to learn certain things; there is variability among animals--not all worker bees are equally good at their tasks). Squirrels that aren't good at finding their buried food once it gets cold tend to starve.
Parents don't have to be taught to respond with great favor when the see their child emerge into the world. The process is helped by neurotransmitters (like oxytocin), which is emitted at just the right time -- apparently instinctively.
I don't think dogs are born to summon assistance from people, but they do. Perhaps it has something to do with their instinctive gaze-following behavior. Dogs are one of the few animals that follow the human gaze. Dogs learn that if they want something that is inaccessible (the ball under the couch), they can get a person to fetch it for them by directing the persons' gaze to the ball under the couch. Dogs engage in unrelenting staring to alert us to their wishes. Once you stop reading and look at them, they will indicate (physically, of course) whether their food is overdue or that they want to go outside (to shit/piss/bark/wander aimlessly around).
Sex is mostly instinctive. Did you have to read a book to learn how to jack off? I hope not. Two dim teenagers can figure out how to have sex the first time without previous coaching. (Prior coaching is hard to avoid these days.) There is no grand design to a good share of the world's many billions of pregnancies. Arousal ----> insertion ----> ejaculation ----> sperm meets egg ----> conception ----> VOILA another baby on the way. It doesn't take any long-range planning (not a bad idea, it just isn't required).
Yeah, but would you call that instinct? I think it is more reflexes and automatic behaviors. Instinct to me is a bit more complex fixed behavior, but not complex learning.
Quoting Rich
I guess my evidence is that animals don't just reject learning something. Animals can't say, "hey, I'm going to sit this learning stuff out". Preferences are fixed.
Even if there is no free will, humans still have many options and preferences we can select from.
Quoting MonfortS26
I'm talking from the parents/community perspective. It's not an instinct to teach. It is a cultural preference that is deemed necessary for proper enculturation of the child for survival. It is instinctive to pickup and learn a primary language, I will agree with that.
I don't have evidence that chimps can abandon offspring, but if it does, I'm not sure if it is a choice as much as the pre-programming not working as it should.
Human behavior isn't necessarily specialized for survival. After we learn to do things like walk on our two legs, and learn primary language, the learning process is very generalized and malleable. There are no fixed learning specializations. They are culturally driven preferences the community decides to expose the child to.
I think picking up language is an instinct yes. But this is where it ends. The Brocas and Wernickes regions makes it a specialization in humans.
This is the heart of the difference between the two views. I don't think specific desires (e.g. "I want to raise a child) are pre-linguistic. Rather, if there is no language, there are no desires outside very basic drives for warmth, not being hungry, and a preference for pleasure.
I agree. That is why this is still largely speculative and up for philosophical debate.
But my argument is that cultural preferences cannot arise pre-language. The drive for specific preferences comes after a personality is constructed via environmental interaction with cultural learning..
Not in animals which have fixed instincts.
I think that learning a language and concept formation is instinctual but our preferences and desires after this are not riding on some pre-linguistic instinctual desires. I think pop-cultural evolutionary psychology wants to reduce cultural learning to some more primary instinct, and is overmining the concept.
It's all memory of a specific sort derived from exactly the same evolutionary activity.
Quoting schopenhauer1
There is plenty of evidence to the contrary. One only has to read about the affairs of circuses.
My guess is that in many respects, other life forms are for more evolved than humans, but we only get glimpses of it now and then.
What is the narrative for how instincts (fixed behaviors) diminished in favor of largely cultural learning. This must have been a challenging transformation that took place over millions of years.
Quoting Caldwell
That is part of the complicated narrative of how humans got from innate behaviors and fixed specialized learning to more complex learning. Perhaps you have an interesting theory regarding this change over time.
Yes, I agree that language is an instinct for humans. We can start learning it within the first two years. But as I said to another poster, "Human behavior isn't necessarily specialized for survival. After we learn to do things like walk on our two legs, and learn primary language, the learning process is very generalized and malleable. There are no fixed learning specializations. They are culturally driven preferences the community decides to expose the child to."
Quoting Bitter Crank
Granted, I'll give you the expectation for things not to fly can be considered an instinct. That still may be learning, just limited experience. Associative learning is the way most animals learn, as far as I know.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I agree. However, the percentage of learning in other animals is much lower compared to instinctual behaviors. A bird may learn its chirps from other birds, but it can't help but chirp it seems. It can't help but build its nest. It can't help but feed its young. It can't help but to do certain behaviors based on stimulus to environment and almost always the same behaviors.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I'll grant certain associative learning. Dogs are especially bred to have associative learning help shape their behavior. That is how its species developed along with man- the already present tendencies of a social pack animal combined with the ability to use associative learning more effectively until it was completely domesticated. No doubt associative learning can take place and perhaps even lead to a sort of recognition of fairness. Does this mean we have an instinct for fairness? Perhaps.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Okay, variable rates of survival abilities.. However, those abilities are largely instinctual (finding the acorn, building the hive, etc.).
Quoting Bitter Crank
That is basically instinct shaped by domestication.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I have granted that sexual gratification and the desire for pleasure in general is instinctive.
Was this response for me or BC?
If that response is regularly repeated, it becomes habit.
When I was robbed at gunpoint I doubt that 1% of my response was "learned". Sure, some of it, such as cooperating with the robber and not trying to be a hero, was things I had been taught. But if I could remember every detail of every second of the experience I doubt that there would be much that I had been taught by others.
I have not been robbed at gunpoint any other time, and I likely never again will. Therefore, my unlearned responses to being robbed at gunpoint will never become habit.
Sometimes you hear a coach saying that a player has "good football instincts". Other times you will hear coaches and athletes saying something like, "In this situation your instinct is to do this. But you really need to do that". Clearly, an instinct is not necessarily beneficial or detrimental. It depends on the situation.
I doubt that any response is purely unlearned or purely learned.
As far as I know we don't have the ability to control every variable and isolate any mental response that is in no way learned, no matter if we are studying humans or non-humans. Therefore, to attribute anything purely to "nature" or "nurture" is probably being either ignorant or intellectually dishonest.
I do not know if it is due to ignorance or dishonesty, but one that a lot of people really love to completely attribute to "nature" is sexual attitudes and actions. I see from the opposite pole: things like arousal are involuntary biological responses, but probably 99% of "sex" is cultural.
Yeah but you knew certain responses like "danger" because you know what a gun can do. That is a cultural response. You've learned through media, stories, movies, etc. what can happen with the gun. A gun waved at a chimp, probably won't have any if at all. The chimp would simply have to associate it with a dangerous incident previously- not from cultural transmission. Of course, one can argue that chimps teach each other different calls for their various dangerous situations, but this may be more a 1-1 ratio of stimulus response. They cannot help but respond to an enemy. It is still more inbuilt than a the vast landscape of possibilities in the human thought process.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
I think you may be right here, but maybe you can elaborate.
I would submit that the language instinct is at the heart of your "linguistic-cultural" behavior. Besides language, general cultural features such as hierarchy-formation, domination of individuals and groups over other individuals and groups, story-telling (composing narratives out of experience), eating together, music (nothing specific, just the employment of music and rhythmic motion (dance) in some form, religious behaviors (again, nothing specific), and so on all demonstrate instinct.
At the most biological level, humans share with the rest of the animal kingdom a regular pattern of sleep and wakefulness, mating, breast feeding, foraging for food, nest making, defensive hostility (to protect the group), etc.
If you add the basic biological stuff to rhythmic movement and melodious sound making, language use, story telling, eating behaviors, dominance behaviors, religious behaviors, you have named a significant share of human behavior.
That still leaves room in human behavior for novel, spontaneous, never-seen-before-on-TV behaviors and patterns and learned behaviors.
The reason that human behaviors and cultures are consistent across the board (in general form, not in fine detail)--the reason why we are more similar than we are different--is instinct. It's our instincts that give basic form to human behavior.
The latest findings indicate that we have been our species, homo sapiens, for 300,000 years. (Remains found in India, Israel, and Morocco from 200,000 to 300,000 years old all have very modern teeth.) It's safe to say that we didn't make it over 300,000 years, and longer from our previous species to homo sapiens WITHOUT instinctual guidance.
If you look at tool making, there were very long stretches where the same tools were being made. There didn't seem to be a lot of day-in day-out learning leading to improved tools. It was the same thing over and over--until at some point that stopped and tools started to vary, become more specialized, be made out of different materials, and so on. That development seems to bring us closer to the "modern era" which began maybe 40,000 years ago.
I base my approach on evolution. We didn't just evolve as humans with no connection to pre-human animals. Humans evolved from earlier animals. The features of our behavior have ancient roots, just as the biology of our bodies have ancient roots. Even giving a large role for evolution leaves plenty of room for learning and novel, spontaneous behavior. If modern humans were found from Morocco to India 300,000 years ago, we were clearly a curious species--we kept going to the top of the next hill to see what lay beyond.
So it's both instinct and culture.
Can't it be argued that hierarchy formation is either cultural or circumstantial and not so much instinct? For example, if you are in a wilderness survival situation, and there is someone present with the most wilderness survival-craft, wouldn't he be the natural leader due to his abilities? That's not so much instinct as much as a rational choice. In groups of school age children, often the biggest and most aggressive kids become the leaders. Or perhaps the most charismatic and imaginative. However, again, that is simply rational analysis. Who thinks of the best play activities? Who is going to get their way with physical force? Who has the greatest abilities? Well, it would be rational to pick ones in terms of maintaining self-interest.
Story-telling can simply be a byproduct of language. People like to be entertained with narratives all very much linguistic-cultural based. Music perhaps is an instinct, but it would be an instinct like language is an instinct and a byproduct of brain that can recognize patterns and make connections between pitches and tone but also it is very much a learned behavior as far as producing the music- even just by trial and error and observation of other people playing and dancing (which almost always has to be in the equation).
Religious behaviors may just be a case of more primitive ways to understand the world, but it also strengthened group cohesion and tribal stability. This doesn't seem instinctual as much as culturally utilitarian.
...with the practical effect that humans are no longer animals as such. Whilst biologically their kinship with animals can’t be disputed, it is just the ability to think and speak which differentiates humans from animals. And it’s not a biological differentiation, but an ontological one - they’re actually a different kind, or mode, of being.
Humans, after all, are born helpless; unlike other primates, a human baby can’t even cling to mother and has to be nursed for some years before becoming mobile. And extra-somatic learning occupies around 18 years for humans, which exceeds the entire lifespan of many other creatures.
That is one reason why I think that the ‘biologism’ or biological reductionism that is so common today sells the human species short. It wants to argue that humans are ultimately understandable in biological terms - that we’re ‘just animals’, as has already been argued at least once in this thread. I think part of the motivation for that, is that we’re not given the tools to imagine ourselves as something more than animals - after all, what more could there be? Furthermore, it saves us a lot of existential anxiety, trying to ask such an open-ended question. Perhaps I’m being overly polemical in saying that, but it’s a serious point.
Anyway, overall I’m in agreement with the OP.
Good point. The result of having less built-in mechanisms for the baby to survive is that it has more time to enculturate cultural ways of survival via its linguistic-conceptual developing brain.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think there may be an inability here to see the vast difference between an animal that survives through a very large percentage by cultural learning and conceptual thinking versus other animals which use mostly instinct (with some propensities for limited associative learning or problem solving). There is a tendency for "just so" stories. Everything becomes an instinct rather than constructed via the virtual world of concept formation. We have to be careful what to delineate as a true instinct and what is culturally-linguistically based in our behaviors and habit-formations. We are so ready to place ourselves as "just another animal" that we often overlook the complicated way that linguistic-minds shape us. Let me add, I am very much a naturalist in terms of science essentially and materialist explanations are what I see to be the best structures of explanation. However, I don't jump the gun in explanations that reduce assumed instinctual behavior into instinct when in fact, it may just be a cultural trope that is so embedded and assumed, it seems like instinct.
It can be and is argued because our behavior is a mosaic pattern of instinctive and learned behavior. I do not know whether we can definitively sort out all of the pieces.
Given the tools of molecular decoding, we can see that genes direct a significant portion of behaviors. Twin studies show how identical twins who were separated early on, developed remarkably similar lives. Genes presumably carry instincts, along with physical characteristics, in animals (in which we are grouped).
Is 'story telling' a by-product of language or is story telling the very essence of language? As we write our posts here, aren't we telling stories? There is a speaker, an audience, action occurring in the past, present, or future, conditionally or not, objects acted on, and so forth. We are born with [have an instinct for] language, but we have to learn it. Young children can learn multiple languages simultaneously when they are exposed to multiple languages at the same time.
We would (I am guessing or hoping) learn singing and dancing fluently too, if we did not also learn so damned much performance anxiety. No, I am not claiming we would all be playing Bach, or singing or dancing like [fill in the name of your favorite performer]. But most people are capable of folk-singing and folk-dancing. We don't because we have learned inhibitions.
I will grant that it is difficult to feel like an animal as I sit here in cold Minnesota in front of a computer screen made in China communicating with people on 3 different continents, while I drink coffee raised somewhere in Africa or South America and roasted in Seattle, WA, and stay warm in a bathrobe made in Portugal. The little heater that is keeping more of the chill away is running on electricity from a mix of nuclear, coal, and wind power.
We are indisputably animals, and "no longer animals as such". The rock bottom core of our "human problem" is that we are animals who imagine that we have transcended our animal nature. Tech, bio, and mens don't always jive.
There is no reason to believe that human life is more or less evolved than other life. Other life may have long ago answered this question and evolved beyond it. What one can say is that some forms of life, such as humans, do like to to think in terms of a hierarchy. I wonder if other forms of life look at human existence as quite barbaric and silly? It's possible.
You think that Facebook and mass pollution moves us up the hierarchy? I'm sure you realize that humans just create trash that cannot be environmentally recycled. As far as I'm concerned the human experience has become an experiment in greed, overconsumption, and enormously excessive trash throw-off. I wonder how it will be turn out?
Actually, we already know how it is turning out: Not good.
But that's what I mean by tech, bio, and mens don't always jive: We can figure out how to suck up oil from deep below the surface of the earth and convert it into plastics and fuel. That's a highly centralized function. But then the plastic is distributed to every corner of human life, with no centralized method (anywhere) to collect and reuse it -- or at least sequester it. It ends up everywhere from the deepest oceanic trenches to the highest mountains. CO2 is the same thing, of course.
There are roughy 500,000,000 people living in North America, consuming -- and excreting -- all sorts of pharmaceuticals from aspirin to cancer medications, and all these excreted chemicals (and more besides) are ending up in the water (even the air).
We don't seem to be able to think through the problem of centralized production (chemical plants) and atomized distribution (billions of people using drugs and indestructible plastics).
That brings up a point about personality. What is personality? How is it constructed? How much of it is genes versus environment? How does having such individual personalities affected by things like mental illness or tendencies make humans different than other animals? Granted, chimps,dolphins, and our pets seem to have their own personalities in terms of moodiness, affection, adventurousness, etc. but there seems to be a difference not only in degree but in type as to how human personalities are constructed from linguistic-conceptual cues combined with genetic predispositions.
Personality is personal memory/experiences. It is a point of view constructed by your mind based upon what it has learned. It would be the same for all forms of life differences only in kind.
The problem with materialist explanations is that they are without any notion of cause in the sense of the reason why something exists, other than the material reason. In the case of neo-Darwinian materialism, this manifests as the attitude that humans are wholly and solely the outcome of evolution which, doctrinally, is an unguided process, with no aim other than successful reproduction. So it actually tends to undercut the very kind of understanding that you are contemplating in the OP. Materialism adopts the language and rhetoric of philosophy, but its conclusions are strictly anti-philosophical.
Quoting Bitter Crank
In many of the various mythological anthropologies, the station of human life is unique because of the opportunity it provides for transcendence. Buddhists believe that, insofar as we remain 'driven by passions', then we're doomed to endless existence in the 'round of Samsara'. Whereas in human form alone we are able to see beyond the merely biological.
[quote=Henri Bergson]Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance.[/quote]
Of course, which road leads to knowledge and which road leads to the veils of ignorance isn't agreed upon. And never mind the road, we aren't agreed on the destinations, either. One road goes this way, the other road goes that way. Where do they end?
Quoting Wayfarer
Life arising from the mud and persisting? Cyanobacterias still going strong after 2.8 billion years; the chambered nautilus, 500 million years old. Sturgeon, 200 million years old. We, derived from fish, discussing our evolution. Merely biological? Much more than mere.
"Nothing is mere."
How I'm rushing through this! How much each sentence in this brief story contains. "The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth. I usually pick one small topic like this to give a lecture on.Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars—mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is mere.
I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more ? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination—stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern—of which I am a part—perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”
? Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics
So the question becomes whether we are still engaged in a generally natural game? Despite developing the new "mind-expanding" thing of conceptual thought, are we still essentially thinking in ways that are being shaped by evolutionary forces?
Your goal of making a metaphysical-strength argument in favour of anti-natalism requires a particular answer on that. So where is the specific evidence?
Now it is the case that being conceptual creatures, we have progressed to the point where even our own existence - individually, or collectively - becomes something we can question the value of.
But then that in turn raises the question of how we value the alternatives that we can imagine?
Is there a way we actually do value them - ie: one that speaks to a practical evolutionary logic. Or some other metaphysics?
So the whole instinct vs cultural deal is waste of time here. We know we are an evolved blend of the two. They have both been constrained by the same general Darwinian forces. Nothing much has changed in terms of the overall game being played.
The question now is have they become unstuck in some meaningful fashion. Have we become so enlightened about certain metaphysical facts that we should volunteer to strike ourselves from the evolutionary record? If that is your case, then present the argument.
Another possibility is that modern culture has predictably reached a super-organismic status. The good old days of small hunter-gather tribes which had a happy collective balance has been surpassed first by agrarian empires, then by industrialised nations, and now by globalised social media. Individuals have been reduced in status in some - arguably - catastrophic fashion where the only logical response is to bring the whole procreating enterprise crashing down.
Again, if that is your case, then make that argument.
But trying to both draw a sharp line between instinctive and encultured behaviour in a way that denies a historic continuity of evolutionary logic is a waste of time. Bad philosophy from the get go.
If you want to argue for the legitimacy of anti-evolutionary ethics, then that is what you should stick to as the focus.
This claim has to be false since the meaning of the word "most" here is unquantifiable.
Humans more than any other animal are more tabula rasa than any other, yet how could you possibly measure behaviour of self preservation as simply linguistic/cultural, as separate from innate and instinctual sense of fear of death etc.
You can't learn hunger, sex drive, breathing, walking. To what ever degree these 'behaviours' have linguistic and cultural origins they are all innate too. Even the ability to have language is innate; how do you divide the parole from the langue, let alone innate grammar systems and body language from learned behaviour?
No cultural theory can explain some of the most fundamental and universal behaviours of human kind. I am currently watching on TV, Chinese people SMILE. How would you weight this universal against a dictionary? Does a smile count as ONE thing, when its value could mean the difference between life and death?
I would agree that what makes people DIFFERENT is less about genes and much more about environment, culture and learning, but that is to be set against a world of universal human characteristics.
In the nurture vs nature debate, nature is what we all share as a species, and there is precious little difference between a 21stC pale white scandinvian and a black as coal 15thC Australian aborigine when it comes to our natures, but a world of difference in culture and upbringing.
More recent embodied approaches show how innate affective tendencies (disgust, cuteness) can predispose us to selectively organize cogntion(Jonanthan Haidt).
Notice that the inherited body, via affectivity, doesn't produce meanings by itself or act like a simple instinctive mechanism, but interacts with intention and language to guide meaning-making. It can't tell us what to think or how to act, but it provides part of the background of sense.( I know you know this already. I should really address this to Charleton. )
What’s vastly different between the way the modern physicist sees the stars and the way the ancients did, is that the modern knows what is physically there. When the ancients gazed out on the stars, they saw patterns of meaning. And they weren’t at all conscious of themselves as being observers of what they were seeing, so much as participants in the legends of the creators and ancestors, of which the stars and comets were portents and signs. The Universe was not an ‘it’ to the ancients, but a theatre, an imaginaire, animated and populated by gods. Whereas our scientists have penetrated the mystery, rushed onto the stage, and found only props and curtains, pulleys and wheels. The actors have all long since fled.
Now we want to literally ‘go to heaven’ - in spacecraft! ‘The heavens’ as we understand them, are unthinkably vast interstellar spaces, rocks, dust, stars, radtation and so on. The wan hope of interstellar travel has now become our version of ‘heaven’. But can the frail human frame, which surely compared to those vastnesses is as ephemeral as a dandelion, ever hope to propagate itself by such means?
Yep. And while Piaget's structuralism is a big step in the right direction, I in fact am in the semiotic or social constructionist wing of the debate by being a Vygotskian on the issue of cognitive development.
So I am even less in the innate camp. Except I then argue that cultural evolution is just evolution continuing at a different level of semiosis - a linguistic one as well as a neural and genetic one.
That is why there can be both a sharp division and yet not really any division. All cognition is entrained to the constraint of being functional in an ecological sense in the long run.
Schop's arguments are always directed at supporting the rightness of anti-natalism. That is the real issue of the thread.
And Vygotskian psychology was a natural repost to Nihilism and Existentialism, so continues also to be one against the latest incarnation of the Romanticist's pessimistic tendency.
Can you elaborate on this? Also, I don't necessarily agree with a pure neo-Darwinian view of evolution. There are often exaptations that are not selected for and this is especially so in the wide ranging cultural traits humans possess. Stability matters more here. Is there an equilibrium where the species is surviving- whether genetically selected or through more holistic materialist means.
Yes, a major point- humans can do this and are the only Earthly animals to do this.
Quoting apokrisis
Can you clarify what you are trying to say? I see you have some finer point, but it is layered in this quasi-rhetorical questioning. Do you mean to ask whether we as humans can reflect on our own existence, find it wanting, and decide not to continue procreating? In that case, indeed we can do that on an individual level. Of course, my argument all along is not everyone will stop procreating, but rather to get people to question the ends of their own existence, what they are living for in the first place, and to recognize certain aspects of existence- instrumental nature, striving-for-no-ends, etc. These are concepts that indeed are very human due to their self-reflective nature.
You seem to propose some ends- that of an organismic equilibrium (after perhaps "corrections" of extinction) and vaguely have to do with how energy acts and dissipates. But how is seeing humans as acting a way that is part of this super-organism (i.e. cannot help but lead towards some telos) not simply being a self-fulfilling prophecy? In fact, by somehow promoting grandiose notions of participating in the super-organism, this seems more Romantic than many other philosophies you slap with that label. If it is inevitable that the super-organism acts a certain way, then there is nothing we can do, that we are bound to reach some equilibrium that is not of our conscious choosing... thus doing nothing, you are then choosing something and thus fulfilling a self-fulfilling prophecy.. acting as though there are no choices when there clearly are.. see that?
Quoting apokrisis
I don't even know what that means "anti-evolutionary ethics". We can choose not to procreate. That in itself is obvious.
I have no idea what evidence you have to conclude this.
I guess I cannot show you the mind of other animals, but based on their behavior and the fact that they lack linguistic ability- I can feel confident saying that other animals don't really reflect very much on why they are alive or the value of existence, or other existential questions.
Is it that difficult? If evolutionary logic defines what is natural, then doing something contrary to that logic lacks a natural justification. You would have to explain why the choice - as a general one you advocate for a whole species - is not merely possible but somehow ethically cogent.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yeah sure. If that is your choice, then who cares. The breeders win in the end.
And that choice may be pretty rational if you put economic self-interest at the top of your list these days. Or if you feel that life is complicated enough already.
But it is where you elevate anti-natalism to a general good that your argument is in want of ... an actual argument.
I just like to keep the various different position clear and distinct, not mash them together as you are now doing in your recent anti-natal threads.
Quoting schopenhauer1
OK. Then that is a change of tune. Great. You are not against procreation itself, you are against a social system with poor general outcomes.
Who could disagree there?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well it probably is inevitable. But still, at least recognising the true nature of the situation gives a possibility of choosing a different path.
Or more pragmatically, if you view things as already fated by nature, you can make your own life plans accordingly.
Quoting schopenhauer1
How I am promoting rather than diagnosing?
Who knows what they may be thinking? Probably nothing like humans and so what? They may have evolved beyond humans and just enjoying life.
I mean this sounds like some modern Natural Law Aquinas theory. Natural justification? You are putting the cart before the horse. Humans can have a range of thoughts, actions, and beliefs. If humans can do it, believe it, or think it, then that is something that this species can do, and is ergo natural.
Quoting apokrisis
I guess if you want to get into it, then there is the idea of counter-factual outcomes- something I know you appreciate. A child that could have been born but didn't, is a true statement in the real world. An outcome with an alternative outcome is something that exists in this world. Whether or not there is a comprehensive species-wide outcome of zero is not relevant here. That is something you are asserting into the argument that was never there- at least from what I am personally arguing (as opposed to perhaps consequentialist-antinatalists or something like that).
Quoting apokrisis
Sort of, it is a system that seems to promote the distractions from such existential questions. However, I think people will start to question things more and are doing so. Why are we doing anything is a great place to start. All possibilities become no possibilities... The do nothing no-goodnik or the do-everything-over-achiever. It's all the same.. what is it all about.. The Nietzschean coke-addled.. mountain-climbing, socialite debonair extremist- the eternally reposed, ascetic monk sitting on the mountain.
Quoting apokrisis
Funny you say that, because that goes the same with procreation. It probably is inevitable but could be different path..
As far as fated by nature, what matters is that we survive/maintain our comfort levels/get bored and need entertainment. Any self-reflecting human with existential curiosity looks at this and wonders, what the hell for.. We know achievement happens, but are platitudes of "exploring opportunities and achievements" really going to be the best we are going to do for the almighty answer for this? I've asked people in other threads to explain Platonic perfection, what a utopia looks like, what does completeness look like, etc. No one usually has a good answer. It is all striving because we are born and can't do otherwise. Well, why cause the striving? It goes beyond utilitarian calculus, and platitudes. It goes to a more profound look at things- one of a holistic perspective.
Hey, in a way I agree with you. To have a bird's life.
Yes, that is the point. Personally I like the whales or maybe the highest form of life, the great Methusalah tree. Now that's living. Maybe a bit too meditative though.
Funny how we are admire things that we are not- what looks like simpler ways of life. Lives comprised mainly of instinct or just growth in the case of plants. Whatever seems to diminish the kingdom of self-awareness it seems. As E.M. Cioran said bitingly: “Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on.
Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.”
Oh, I think it is quite conscious, just more quiet about it. The most evolved may not have to go around patting itself on the back. Remember, these life forms have been around a heck of a lot longer than humans.
I don't find that to be the case. Neurons, genes, endocrine glands, enzymes, neurotransmitters, synaptic gaps, the limbic system, pre-frontal cortexes -- on and on -- All play a role. But neurotransmitters are a means to an end, not the end. Even though neurotransmitters operate in synaptic gaps, and neurons operate both chemically and electrically, and even though genes direct the activities of all this stuff, it is still YOU that have experiences, imagine, compose, write, philosophize, not the glands and synapses. If you are surprised by a snake or a big spider in an unexpected place, you feel (I sure do, anyway) a a shiver of fear. Sure, it's a chemical -- adrenaline -- that causes the shiver, but it's a real snake, a real big spider, and my very real fear.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Don't forget experience -- another factor in us being who we individually are.
Does it actually feel the same? And is there a balance of the two that feels even better?
You seem to be presuming your conclusions again. What you say does not tally with either psychological science or my own experience.
But perhaps you have proved the case for you?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Sounds a pretty minimal idea of a life to me.
You reduce living to some kind of consumptive activity. You seem to see no role for creation, challenge and variety.
So again you assume your conclusions by speaking of life in as meaningless a way as you can imagine. Rhetoric 101.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Utopia is already the wrong answer. Perhaps the dichotomies of heaven and hell, good and evil, just don't apply to nature. Your frame of reference is already wrong.
Yeah that's what I meant by linguistic-conceptual as that is the preconditions for which humans usually experience the world and integrate his/her personality from environmental interaction.
Imagine solitary confinement at a jail/prison. Imagine a person living in that environment from the moment of his/her birth with no exposure to society. Imagine him/her then being free at the age of 18. He/she would know [B]nothing[/B] about "sex", let alone have the attitude that it is "part of life".
The biology that we classify under sexuality, such as being sexually aroused by certain experiences, might function involuntarily, but everything else, such as what to do when aroused (approach a person and introduce yourself; think about something else and get back to work; rebuke Satan; perform a certain sexual act; etc.) will have to be learned. 99% of what we call "sex" is like the latter--it is learned, not something one is born with.
People unwittingly concede the fact that so much of it is learned when they talk about, oh, teenagers "experimenting" with sex or when they say that if you don't enjoy it you don't know how to do it right.
Humans may be born with a sex [B]drive[/B], but it is a fallacy to jump from that fact to saying that the countless attitudes, understandings, actions, etc. that constitute "sex"--especially sex that is enjoyed--are programmed into our genes to ensure the survival of our species. But not only is it popular to have that questionable--and probably scientifically shaky--ideology, it is popular to use that ideology to justify promiscuity; attack traditions, especially religious traditions; build support for certain policies; etc.
We recognize the wide scope of culture with respect to just about everything else. We recognize that people in some cultures practice communal defecation while in other cultures the thought of defecating in the presence of others, let alone outside of a stall with a toilet to sit on, is never even on 99.9999999 percent of people's radars. Yet, with something as complex and varied as human sexual behavior we like to think of it as all being in our genes.
It is some of the worst narcissism and ethnocentrism you will encounter. Not only can people not see sexuality other than from their own perspective, they say that their perspective corresponds with immutable laws of biology and the entire natural world.
So, you wouldn't have agreed with Francis Crick, when he said that '“You,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.' (where 'no more' is pretty well an exact synonym for 'mere')?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well, it's a big subject in its own right. Philosophical materialism takes various forms - Neo-Darwinian, Marxist, scientific, to mention a few. But the obvious basis of all of them, is that only material or physical objects are ultimately real. So everything can ultimately (and that word carries a lot here) be understood in terms of material forces described by physics and chemistry. Human characteristics and attributes are said to be supervenient on those fundamental realities, but explicable in terms of them. Life itself is basically understandable in terms of material interactions - physics and chemistry again.
Historically, materialiist philosophies have always existed - Epicurus and some of the Stoics were materialist. Platonists were generally not. Obviously none of the spiritual traditions are. But materialism got a big kick along with the Enlightenment, courtesy of the French philosophes in particular, and later through the work of some very influential theorists, for example Thomas Hobbes. The so-called 'Scottish Enlightenment' which produced Adam Smith and hugely influenced John Locke and also Charles Darwin, was also basically materialist in orientation. Materialism is usually criticized as 'nothing but-ism' - that life and mind are 'nothing but' the output of the 'selfish gene', or neuro-chemicals, or some other entity or substance that can, in principle, be made subject to scientific explanation.
So overtly or covertly, materialism in various forms is hugely influential in the secular West. It is assumed by the secular intelligentsia that life, the universe, and everything, have an explanation which is ultimately findable in terms of the so-called hard sciences, even if many details remain unknown at this time. And this is argued by materialist philosophers of all schools and persuasions, using the techniques and rhetorical skills of philosophy. But the reason I say it's anti-philosophical, is because, if materialism is true, then there's no wisdom (sophia) to be had. We are simply a species of animal, that makes patterns of sounds, that create an illusion of meaning, for the brief moment of a meaningless existence.
Once upon a time we didn't know anything about nerve cells and their associated molecules. We knew what we felt, our joys and our sorrows, and we knew who we were. Discovering the mechanisms for sensation, memory, thinking, emotion and so forth (stuff that goes on in and between neurons in the brain) doesn't change who we are or what we feel.
I don't know why Crick, or anybody else, takes the view that we are "no more than" the mechanism.
All sorts of mechanisms are operating when we make or hear music. Music moves us even though we know that music is transmitted by vibrating air produced on various mechanisms. That there is a mechanism doesn't reduce the value of music, does it? We know how pipe organs work; there is a lot of mechanism stuffed into the organ loft. All the electronic and mechanical mechanism doesn't reduce the glory of a great organ, it just makes it possible.
Some confuse the chemical messenger with the message. Parents don't adore their newborn baby because oxytocin is emitted; oxytocin is emitted to carry love. Sure, oxytocin has an effect when sprung on an unsuspecting person in a lab, but the result is temporary.
Just because a passing ship has photographed far distant Pluto, and just because another ship either has left the solar system, or will soon, just because explorers are rolling around Mars, doesn't turn space into some sort of heaven. Mars hasn't recently been the God of War, and Jove hasn't been the big cheese in the pantheon of Gods since... a couple thousand year, give or take a century or two.
Maybe something mysterious is lost when knowledge of the cosmos is gained, but it isn't as if the hard-won knowledge about the cosmos cheapens it. The same for the hard-won (and still incomplete) knowledge about the brain doesn't make the mind just a big calculator that can be taken apart and revealed to be a box of levers, wheels, nuts, bolts, and springs.
Did wisdom come through and within human thought or did it come from outside human thought? Aren't we the authors of such wisdom as we know?
Because they're 'philosophical materialists; Crick is a notable one, being a Nobel Prize winner, and co-discoverer of DNA. And the narrative is that science dispels the illusion of anything beyond the physical. That’s why they’re described as ‘reductionist’ - because they reduce the spiritual and mental to the physical. You’re not amongst them, purely as a matter of instinct, whereas I’m always inclined to argue against that attitude. But there are many for whom the scientific account threatens their sense of who and what they are. As I tried to explain in your Against All Nihilism thread, nihilism is a frequent consequence, or symptom, of the dissolution of traditional sources of morality in the acid of modernism and post-modernism. It doesn’t seem to affect you that way, which is a good thing, but it often does have that effect.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Obviously a profound question. You would have to ask yourself, in what does wisdom comprise? which is the basic question of philosophy, if ever there is one. Taking my cue from the Greek tradition, in particular the Dialogues of Plato, I think one starting point might be The Apology.
Quoting ?????????????
Which of the other animals species is able to consider such a question?
As a matter of interest, to what category or kind does the word ‘being’ pertain? It would not generally be used in respect of inanimate objects. Elephants, horses, dogs, and so on, are arguably beings. But in normal speech, ‘being’ is usually used to designate human beings.
Materialists say that only matter is real. If emergent properties are dependent on matter then that remains materialist.
This was meant as metaphorical bookends to the extremes. It encompasses all viewpoints from one extreme to the other, not presenting a stark dichotomy.
I also think this emphasis on psychological science puts the cart before the horse. The person has to be born first. Someone chose to have the new person who then has to follow this treadmill of psychologically-defined regimen which in itself does not provide one path to some salvation- simply providing more things for people to do to fill their day (e.g. exercise, hobbies, flow activities, etc. etc.). This doesn't answer the existential riddle. Utilitarian calculus counting is not life's salvation to the problem of instrumental nature of existence. If anything, it enhances its banality in the very nature of its utilitarian counting. The philosophy of the proper, "well-adjusted" middle class gent.
Quoting apokrisis
Nay, it seems like you are accusing me of what I think you are proposing. This very utilitarian "science of happiness" is the epitome of the consumptive behavior. As long as we use words like "discovery", "over coming challenges" and "achievement" we can provide the ruse for the young folk that they have something they need to do, look forward, a reason why being matters. This distracts from the very philosophical grappling that takes place.
Quoting apokrisis
That's not my frame of reference, those other other peoples. If you read carefully, I was saying I was questioning other people's use of these terms because indeed, these are non-existent, perhaps reified, unexamined terms.