Are learned and innate the only types of behaviors?

Depends on the situation specifically. However, if I had made a specific zoological observation that contradicted a general statement made by a scientist I might consider it an expected anomaly and put it down to the fact that the scientist was talking generally for convenience. If it was a significant diversion from what the scientist was saying I might be tempted to contact the scientist to discuss the matter after I had read around on the subject a little. I would recommend scepticism of both positions until more can be learned. I would suggest that most people would be more amazed about how easily non-experts can misinterpret observations or rely on weak assumptions. That is half the job right there. You should be sceptical of many published scientific findings. However, you should also be sceptical of your own findings too. If the findings are replicated over and over again - the wise course of action is to realize that your own subjective experiences are not representative of the whole reality of the situation.

Once again the situation is important. If the scientist was genuinely absolute, then contacting the scientist might be in order. If it seems he is generalising for clarity of communication, then I wouldn't think it so important. I've sat long and had birds do that with no window. I've also been outside and been unable to see inside because of reflections from the sun. I've also walked straight into a glass door because I couldn't see it. I've also seen birds fly straight into windows with fatal consequences: presumably they didn't see the window.I have also watched flies bouncing off windows, continuously flying into them as if they were sure it was an open space. Even if spiders have better perception of windows than flies, it would still make sense to build webs there because their prey will act as if it were an open space.Most importantly, RAZD is not speaking as a scientist making a statement to members of the public or his peers. He is a member of the public debating on a public board with a stranger. So I fail to see how your example illuminates the topic at hand. Oh naturally they are. As humans we can't help ourselves, we see ourselves everywhere - we even do it to dead bodies - the Theory of Mind discusses this cognitive glitch. We have to be very careful, I'm not sure that this is as big a problem as you think in the sciences but I'm willing to be convinced. Do you have any examples of scientists doing this that we should look out for?I can think of a few examples like the metaphors of cells being like 'living cities' or factories filled with machinery. That kind of thing is great as an introduction but trying to build upon those metaphors as if they were the truth has led to strange conclusions about master factory designers and the like.

I expect as much rigour as we can muster, but this forum is not about producing reports that would pass scientific peer review. However, as I asked, do you have any specific examples of these assumptions in the science world so we can explore them? Strategies don't require 'intelligence'. All that needs to happen is for the spider to treat windows in a similar way it would treat an open space - an instruction that can be hardwired or instinctual. It doesn't need to engage in fly behaviour analysis or fly-empathy to do this. However, that is surely something to discuss on the appropriate thread?

How is a paper that does not anthropomorphise crows by suggesting they 'worked it out', constitute an implied anthrocentric gaffe.The paper is evidence of how humans learned what heights were optimum: First they did trial and error on walnuts, they observed the relationship between theft and height and they came up with a model for what they considered optimum height in any given circumstance.A combination of gaining knowledge through trial and error and observation would be classified as 'learning'. It is possible the crows learned their behaviour by also constructing a model (via some kind of combination of trial and error and observation), though the model would not be communicated in the Crow's scientific literature. Or, they might come ready built with a sequence of rules of thumb building an overall model of optimum behaviour. Either evolved or learned. In our case we can be confident that it is at least a partially learned skill, but the people that wrote the paper did not take a position over whether it was a learned or a natural skill with regards to crows.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

That was the intent of the question, to demonstrate the contradiction. I have edited it slightly now, incidentally. You stated that if it were humans we would have said that they 'worked it out'. Therefore, surely it would anthropocentric to conclude that crows 'worked it out'. The more important point to address is the issue that the authors of the paper did not say that humans 'work it out'. I don't see what the difference between 'working it out' and learning is. I consider 'working something out' comes under the heading of learning. They are simply saying that either crows have a learned skill or a natural skill in assessing/calculating/judging/estimating optimum drop heights relative to thieves and surface hardness and walnut type. They do not drop the walnuts at random, they clearly take a number of variables into account (though they ignore the mass of the walnut, even though that is a variable of some note). I don't see what other alternatives that could exist, it is either learned or innate.So I don't see the problem, could you explain the exact anthropocentric gaffe that was actually made in the paper?Another suggestion would be to find a different paper to examine to avoid tooing and froing over this one. Either way works for me.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

I'm saying, given the scope of the paper, this is a fairly safe assumption. Pretty much.Would you consider this paper to be a strong example of the gaffe you mentioned? If it is, I don't see it. If I assume it exists for the sake of argument, I can't see how it leads to any particular problems. Perhaps you are able to find a more obvious example to work with?

Well, that's by the by. A paper which reaches the conclusion that crows drop prey from an approximate optimum height isn't required to establish all other knowledge that it relies upon. For example, it wouldn't be required to prove the mathematical techniques they used. It is not required to prove that evolution is true, or that it is possible to acquire knowledge through learning. You were asking me a question. It isn't a conclusion of the paper so it wouldn't be in there would it? And then the philosophers will turn up and say 'what do you mean 'know'' and we'd have an epistemological gaffe. That's why context matters. In the context it is pretty clear what it means and I don't see any confusion. I fail to see what is wrong with stating that the evidence they present suggests that the crows have evolved or learned the optimum dropping height of prey. You have still not mentioned a third possibility - what is it?You may freely consider this as bad as you like - but if this is as bad as it gets, then I think we're OK. Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Once again, you don't need to cite every single discovery that yours
depends on. It would get rather tedious to see yet another evolutionary
paper with 'Origin of Species' and a list of 100s of subsequent landmark
papers, don't you think? As I said, I don't think using 'know' clarifies things or makes them less
confusing. There are different ways of wording the sentence without using
'evolved', 'learned' or 'know'. However, I still don't see what the
problem is with the conclusion as it is written. The evidence they present
does suggest that the crows have evolved or learned the ability to
pick optimum heights for prey dropping. Once again, if you think there is
a significant alternative that the authors have ignored, let us know. So what you are saying is, that when scientists are writing papers to be
assessed by their peers, they must also make sure they don't cause
confusion with untrained members of the public? Sounds a bit silly to me.
Once again 'pretty much' was an informal answer I gave you in response to a
question you asked me about human skill acquisition. It isn't actually
relevant to the paper - the concept of human acquisition is something you
claim they would handle differently which was your original proposed gaffe.If you want to know what the paper says, you could just read it.This suggests that these crows have evolved or learned to maximize the energy obtained from each dropped walnut.It doesn't say, "this proves that crows have acquired this knowledge
through learning or evolution." and it doesn't mean to either. It just
looks like you are reading way more into it than is necessary in order to
induce a misunderstanding. I agree that some members of the public do
this, but I don't think scientists should make sure they avoid
potential misunderstandings of this nature when presenting discussion
amongst themselves. If they were writing a book, or giving a presentation
to the public - maybe (but only maybe) you'd have a point. Would you care to simply give an example of one of these things which is
capable of not only altering behaviour, but altering behaviour towards some
engaging in some optimum fashion. Let's try it: "This suggests that these
crows have evolved, learned or ?????????? to maximise the energy obtained
from each dropped walnut". If by listing the two things which they
consider the paper to suggest they have provided a target to shoot at. If
you can tell us either it doesn't suggest learning/evolving solutions OR if
it could also suggest some other serious consideration, you have
successfully shown the paper to potentially be in error.So what is your overall point here? That scientists don't use language in
the literature that can easily be digested without misunderstanding by the
public? I don't think that is in question. What has this got to do with
the topic, though? Not at all, I am implying we look at the conclusion of the paper to find
that out. Maybe I'm wrong. Can you point out to me where in the
conclusion I can find a statement to the effect that 'what we pretty much
find is that human skills are either evolved or learned'. Here is the last
part of the conclusion, for your ease and the ease of others that may be
following the argument:

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Our model predicted that if birds maximize the energy obtained from
each dropped food item, they should take into account the intensity of
kleptoparasitism, the likelihood of each item breaking given its hardness
and previous weakening, and the hardness of the substrate. American crows
adjusted the height from which they dropped walnuts as our model predicted,
if they were accounting for each of these factors. Crows did not behave as
predicted with regard to the mass of a walnut. The mass of each walnut may
be harder to assess quickly than a constant or gradually changing
characteristic such as substrate hardness or intensity of kleptoparastism.
Overall, we were successful in predicting many qualitative aspects of
walnut-dropping behavior by American crows. This suggests that these crows
have evolved or learned to maximize the energy obtained from each dropped
walnut. Thus, American crows feeding on walnuts, and avian prey-dropping in
general, provides an excellent system for future studies of the ontogeny of
a complex behavior and the process of prey assessment.

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Just to be clear: You asked me a specific question about my position on
human skill acquisition. I answered that you had pretty much summed up my
position. This is not dealt with in the paper about crow behaviour so we
wouldn't expect to find it in the paper's conclusion. The conclusion (I assume you mean the actual conclusion, and you've just
gotten confused, correct me if I'm wrong) seems pretty solid to me, and I
don't see why it is unnecessary or why one would desire to avoid it. That
is what their data suggests. Once again, if you think they've missed
something important you might demonstrate to my satisfaction that the paper
is erroneous. If this is the kind of thing you started your OP to
demonstrate, then it is already known that scientific papers are not
gospel. And does the evidence of your eyes suggest that the crows adjust their
prey-dropping behaviour based on substrate, kleptoparasitism, prey type,
and number of drops in such a fashion as to approach something close to a
theorized optimum height/number of drops - but fail to take into
consideration the mass of said prey?It seems that it took quite a bit more than just using the evidence of one
person's eyes to arrive at that conclusion, but maybe its just me. I'd
suggest it requires experimentation and mathematical model-building skills
which are generally not simply considered 'evidence of ones eyes'.But either way - if this is an example of you finding something to complain
about - I'd say things were looking pretty good.

In other words, you think there is an obligation on scientists when they are writing the conclusions of their papers which are to be assessed by their peers to make sure they don't cause confusion (word things clearly) with untrained members of the public (those that don't have access to full details)?Sounds like I got the point first time round. I still don't see why they should. The conclusion you gave was quite straightforward but anyone that just looks at a conclusion and expects to understand the paper is fooling themselves. Most of the time, it is just the abstract that is available at any rate. The same caveats apply. I have no formal answer, I am not an ethologist. In case your comprehension skills were not up to the task let me assure you that I was tentatively posting affirmative answers to the questions posted. Yes, that was the conclusion I was assuming you were referring to. So as I said, it seems pretty solid to me, and I don't see why it is unnecessary or why one would desire to avoid it. That is what their data suggests. Once again, if you think they've missed something important you might demonstrate to my satisfaction that the paper
is erroneous. If this is the kind of thing you started your OP to
demonstrate, then it is already known that scientific papers are not
gospel. For what? The commonly used model of animal behaviour in ethology? The idea of learned vs innate behaviours? Or do you want a cite for the idea that innate behaviours can be explained as having evolved? This would be a whole thread in its own right but why don't we just go for the pioneers and use Konrad Lorenz and Charles Darwin.Howevr, I don't see the need to cite previous work when it comes to the suggestion made. You have still been unable to provide even a third alternative to their list of possibilities that are suggested by the results of their work. The sentence, as far as I can see, is entirely correct. It remains possible to falsify it and it retains tentativity. Simplifying this line of thinking down:
You said: they should have used the word 'know'
I said: If not using the word 'know' is as bad as it gets, I think we're doing well.
You said: Bad is an emotive word. I just prefer the evidence of my own eyes to what a scientist says "pretty much" happens.Now, you'll have to excuse me if I thought when you said 'I just prefer the evidence of my own eyes' in response to me, you were still referring to something about this paper which is why I asked you if the evidence of your eyes has given you a better answer than reading the science (is there some other reason to tell me your preferences at this point). Now you refer me to the OP. So let me repeat my point, if this is as bad as it gets - we're doing well. I previously suggested you try a more obvious example to avoid the inevitable tooing and froing over the minutae of this one paper, perhaps now would be a good time to come up with something more obvious to illustrate your point?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

I gave you a reference to Lorenz, who has been credited with starting the innate instinct versus learned behaviour dichotomy - a position that looks to me to be established science. If you want to argue that it is not established at all, then that's fine - I don't think this topic is the place to present it, the 'spider' thread would be infinitely more suitable for that.The idea that instincts are evolved is also pretty much a settled issue as far as established science goes, and I gave you Darwin as a starting point there.You are welcome to argue that either of the two points have not been established enough to merit a lack of citation. If the best you can come up with is that you have higher citation demands than the Behavioural Ecology journal, I really don't see this as being that big a deal. If this is it. If this is what you wanted to get across in this thread, then you've done it. I feel your opening posts were proposing something a little more radical than all this. So as I say, from the evidence you've given so far - we're not doing too bad if this is as bad as it gets. I would prefer to try and advance the topic when signs it is going to stall emerge. The sense of haste you feel I assure you is nothing to do with any awkward points. If you want to continue discussing it, I'd appreciate you pointing out an alternative to the suggested learned or evolved dichotomy and show how the evidence in the paper also suggests this as an equal contender. That would be another way to move the discussion forward, and since you have revealed you could conceive of behaviour modifying entities I rather hoped you could do us the honours of sharing them. Once again, I don't see the problem in saying that the evidence suggests that the crows have learned or evolved the skill since that is exactly what it does suggest. You have not been able so far to tell me what other option is possible; if and when you do we might get somewhere.Once again, if relying on a common agreed body of knowledge to build your paper is the worst example of scientific gaffes, anthropocentrism, and scientists claiming something absolutely which is contrary to personal experience or observation - then science is as close to a perfect intellectual endeavour we can ever expect to come from primates.But I'm sure you can find much more obvious, blatant or shocking gaffes that we can explore - I can't believe there is so little room for improvement. If you really want to get away from this discussion with the idea that I find it awkward, then perhaps for the sake of the topic, it might be prudent for me to take the 'hit'. Seriously though, a paper which doesn't cite something to your satisfaction, which you perceive to be entrenching an un-evidenced position...is that it?

Is there any particular reason you have decided to ignore my points and just repeat one of your own?Let me add that I don't see the need to trapse around ethology and evolution papers trying to find something to satisfy you because I don't think anything will. So let me ask:- do you agree that there exists a collection of papers in which evidence for innate behaviour is given (whether or not you agree with this conclusion)? Do you agree that there exists a collection of papers in which evidence for learned behaviour is given? Do you agree that there is exists a collection of paper wherein evidence for the evolution of innate behaviours is given?Now, does there exist any evidence whatsoever (presumably from your own eyes given the topic of the thread) for any other mechanism for the acquisition of knowledges/skills/behaviours?Since we are repeating points let me also repeat yet again: Seriously though, a paper which doesn't cite something to your satisfaction, which you perceive to be entrenching an un-evidenced position...is that it? I'm sure you can find much more obvious, blatant or shocking gaffes that we can explore - I can't believe there is so little room for improvementNow, I don't know about you, but I'm still not seeing much potential fruit for our labour. Even if you crushingly defeated me and I whimpered that I concede the point, you are left with a point about citation standards. That seems rather lame for the amount of effort involved, if you had simply wanted to say 'some journals have quite lax standards of citation', I would have just taken your word for it and we could have avoided any intervening hullabaloo.If you want to however, we can have the thread about preference of our own senses over that of scientists (a potentially interesting discussion) devolve into bickering over a single sentence in a paper about crow behaviour. It seems to me that the correctness of the innate vs learned dichotomy could get its own thread (in the science fora rather than the coffee house), and we could concentrate on the more interesting topic at hand.I asked you

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I'm not sure that [the littering of anthropocentric gaffes] is as big a problem as you think in the sciences but I'm willing to be convinced. Do you have any examples of scientists doing this that we should look out for?

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The OP looks to me to provide an interesting starting point for a discussion of empiricism, fallibility of perception, the conservatism of the scientific community and all this. And look at it, it's turned into something much less interesting. I'd really like to move on to the points raised in the earlier posts and I have already stated I'm happy to concede the citation point if it means we can do that. If you really really want to discuss the citation point, I'd suggest we move the thread into a science forum.Otherwise, you've made your point about it, myself and others have given their arguments in retort and I think the discussion is best served by exploring other territory perhaps closer linked to the OP and the first few posts.

We disagree. You think a cite is necessary. I don't. I don't think the following really qualifies for requiring a citation in an ecology journal.a) there are learned behaviours
b) there are unlearned behaviours
c) the current consensus is that a complex (abe: unlearned!) behaviour that is efficient or optimum is almost certainly the result of evolution.Because these are general points, it is unlikely a single paper will go into them. They are found on a body of work that started with their respective pioneers, so any single cite is unlikely to do everything that you are demanding. I'd have to get a whole body of evidence together and compile into a convincing whole. Essentially to complete the task to my own satisfaction, let alone yours, would require writing a discussion paper or managing to find just the right one. For example, this paper states that

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The Baldwin effect is sometimes referred to as the simple notion that, through evolution, unlearned can replace learned behavior.

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but even that paper doesn't really cover it.You however do think it requires a citation.I think the statements are uncontroversial, pretty much the foundation of the work being done and accepted by the intended readers and so don't require citation.In fact, I think our positions and arguments are now out there and repeating them is surely a waste of time and memory, don't you? You think this presents a problem. I am not convinced by your argument that it is, you remain unconvinced by my argument that it isn't. Unless we have something new to say - let's not bother, eh?I have even offered concession on this point, yet you have decided not to take it. I offer again, let us grant that this was sloppy wording or improper citation and move on. Even if you were entirely right about this point, I don't see any thing particularly noteworthy. In a world of dodgy ethical practices, fraud, people talking about subjects clearly out of their field I feel we can discuss much more interesting things. So, any more examples to look at?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Well, that really depends. Let me give you a straight answer in example form for ease, I would consider falling over when drunk to be unlearned behaviour. I would consider talking to a rock on acid to be a learned behaviour (though the impulse to communicate might be unlearned...but in both cases there is usually a complex web of learned and unlearned behaviour at work). Well, they might have considered it, but the proposal would run against the 'evidence of their eyes' - when birds drop things from higher up, it takes longer for them to retrieve them. Fortunately, in the spirit of science, they go observe it for themselves. They found that prey loss increases with height.

On reflection I wouldn't say they were strictly speaking 'new', I'd say they were 'modified'. The same goes for brain damage I suppose.However, moving back towards the original point, where we were talking about a certain type of behaviour. I may not have mentioned it every time, but I tried to repeat it as much as I could stomach without sounding repetitive. And the behaviour in context was optimum or efficient behaviour, like the behaviour of the crows under discussion.I grant that it might be possible for a drug (or brain damage) to induce specific behaviour that is more optimum or efficient in principle, it is just highly improbable and definitely highly improbable if all the observed members of a seemingly random group exhibit the behaviour.If a bird scientist observed humans and thought it worth mentioning, with no evidence, that one possible reason that certain humans can play good poker is because they are on drugs or brain damaged - they would get an appropriately amused twitter I'm sure you'd agree. Finding this out was part of the test. They observed that the crows drop lower and more often when there are many birds around, and higher and less often as the number of birds decreased. As you say 'That was for one drop.', and that was what they were talking about 'one drop'. For each drop, the higher it is dropped from the greater the chance of breaking the nut but the higher chance of theft. The authors postulated that if natural selection was at play, or if the birds were able to learn how, the birds would have found some optimum.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

We're not talking about improving physical traits through drugs, we're talking about adopting optimum strategies. What behaviour is changed to form some kind optimum way of running when a sprinter takes steroids? Yes, you've heard of tentativity right? We're talking science here; there's no need to list all the philosophically possible causes - just the ones that are actually suggested by the evidence. Yes, that is what their model predicts. What's 'no' about what I said?

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They observed that the crows drop lower and more often when there are many birds around,

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OK, so the paper says that crows drop lower when there are many birds around:

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As predicted, there was a significant negative relationship between drop height and kleptoparasite intensity, indicating that crows dropped walnuts from greater heights when the potential for kleptoparasitism was lower.

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And the paper also shows that the higher that walnuts are dropped the less drops it takes

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By dropping nuts experimentally, we found that the number of drops required to crack a walnut decreased with height of drop, regardless of species

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And the paper thus stated

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For each drop, the higher it is dropped from the greater the chance of breaking the nut but the higher chance of theft.

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I also said

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Thee authors postulated that if natural selection was at play, or if the birds were able to learn how, the birds would have found some optimum.

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And the abstract states:

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Complex and energetically expensive foraging tasks should be shaped by natural selection to be efficient... When faced with multiple prey types and dropping substrates, and high rates of attempted kleptoparasitism, crows adjusted the height from which they dropped nuts in ways that decreased the likelihood of kleptoparasitism and increased the energy obtained from each nut.

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I'm not sure why that would prompt you to say 'no' and then tell me what part of the conclusion says. They didn't just test 'one drop'. They observed the rate of kleptoparasitism by measuring the rate of kleptoparatisism of the first drop of all the English walnuts at the Birch Lane site. If you think that this constitutes some kind of methodological issue then I'll happily hear you out. However, the data they did collect does agree with their model (mostly). The birds do take into account the chances that their prey will be stolen in selecting a height.