Are learned and innate the only types of behaviors?

Many years ago, I was attending an undergraduate psychology class. During the class, a gunman broke in, and held up the professor. A couple of shots were fired.The professor asked the class to write reports on the event, so that he would have good eyewitness reports.The actual robbery was actually a staged event, though the class did not know that at the time. What it brought out very clearly, was the unreliability of eyewitness accounts. There was very little consistency between the various accounts given.

---

Let's end the political smears

A lot of what the public sees is coming from journalists, and their interpretation of the science. And the journalists don't always understand what they are reporting.

---

Let's end the political smears

To me, this all seems to be much ado about nothing.Personally, I would count as innate those behaviors that are present at birth or that are developmental consequences of what is present at birth. Behaviors that are a consequence of birth defects would therefore be counted as innate, as I use the term. However, a birth defect can have non-genetic causes, so such innate behaviors need not be carried by the genes. Whether or one would say they evolved becomes a question on how broadly one uses the term evolution. Does one consider susceptibility to thalidomide to be evolved, or not? I can't say that I really care one way or the other.The impression I get from reading this dialog, is that you are trying to trap Modulous into making a strong claim so that you can then spring a counter example. If you want productive dialog on whether "innate/learned" is a valid dichotomy, I would have thought it better for you to give your counter example early in the discussion.

---

Let's end the political smears

I'm not at all sure that is correct. After all, he does have a topic on spider intelligence, and it seems to me that he is arguing there for the ability of the spider to learn.

---

Let's end the political smears

I guess it is on topic now.We don't have a clear definition of "learn" just as we don't have a clear definition of "know". Much of the discussion has been tossing the terms around without being clear on what is meant. IMO this has been particularly true of sinequanon's posts, which seem to be attempting to make points with allusions and hints but with rarely a clear statement.I take "innate behavior" to be behavior that is present at birth or is a developmental consequence of what is present at birth. It isn't always easy to tell whether a particular behavior should count as innate.I take "learned behavior" as any acquired non-innate behavior.As for the effect of drugs - I would tend to say that behavior under drugs is just behavior that manifests itself differently in the presence of drugs. That is, it is still the same behavior, and could still be innate or learned behavior, merely manifesting itself in a different way.It seems to me that beyond learned and innate, we can only have ad hoc behavior (with which I would include random behavior). And any behavior that is systematic enough to be measured (as with the crows behavior previously discussed), would not be counted as ad hoc.Now it is up to sinequanon to tell us what he means by words such as "learned" and "innate".Finally, a comment on sinequanon. I find him (or her) a bit of a mystery. After many postings and several threads, I am still uncertain as to whether he/she is closer to the creo or evo positions. I'm not sure what is his/her purpose in posting at this site. Perhaps he/she views this as a social forum, suitable for undirectional chit-chat. If there is a point to his/her various topics, then I still do not "get it" in the sense that I haven't been able to tell what is that point.

---

Let's end the political smears

I did agree that it isn't always easy to tell what is innate and what is learned.The context of this is a claim, earlier in the thread, that there are behaviors that are neither innate nor learned. We don't need to be able to exactly identify which is innate and which is learned, in order to discuss what else there is.I was trying to make the point that what else there is consists of random and ad hoc behavior, and I wanted to lump those together into the same category for simplicity. I wasn't really trying to say that random is necessarily ad hoc, merely that I wanted to put it into the same category as ad hoc. Some people might argue that walking is acquired behavior, since it is not present at birth. However, it would usually be considered to be acquired developmentally rather than via learning, since everybody acquires that behavior. And I'll grant that there could be said to be a learned component.If you want to consider it redundant, fine. I was just trying to make sure that I hadn't left anything out. If I slur my speech when drunk, I'm saying that I don't want that speech slurring to be considered a separate and distinct behavior. Rather, it is my ordinary speech behavior but implemented more poorly. That's about the idea. But if we are talking about crow behavior (as was part of the earlier discussion), then we can't really measure purpose, procedure or method in the crows, so we will have to make do with "regular."The whole point I was trying to make is that, based on what we usually mean by "innate" and "learned", any left over behavior that is neither innate nor learned is rarely of much interest. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

---

Let's end the political smears

I actually agree with this. But I wanted to see what sinequanon would do with it, if he chose to resume the debate. It's looking as if he intends to stay out. As a parent, I can assure you that children do not need to be taught how to walk. They pick it up for themselves. To prevent them learning it, they would need to be kept in a constraining environment.Personally, I would agree that walking involves learning. But I don't object to saying that it is developmental. In some sense, these two can overlap. When one talks of development, one is talking of development in an environment, so it is not surprising that a sufficiently deprived environment can prevent a child "developing" the ability to walk. I think the answer to this is known from natural experiments. If deaf children are placed in a community, they will spontaneously invent a sign language. Twins who are raised together have a tendency to invent a private language (usually as an extension of the parent's language).

---

Let's end the political smears