Instinct - evolved or better answer?

Just wanted to say thanks, Larni.Some of this material I knew, some I didn't (always appreciated); there are unfamiliar examples here of familiar phenomena, and those are always delectable.Also, I try to read across many fields, and it is always helpful to look closely at some basics that don't show up in more advanced or technical material.i.e.: cool

This almost seems like one of them there "trick" questions I was asked during exams...but I'll answer it anyway.
Random mutation and natural selection.However, saying something is "hard wired" is perhaps a bit misleading. There is most likely a genetic factor connected to a weaver bird’s ability to weave his nest. At the same time, however, I would also imagine that learning plays a pretty big role as well. Do all weaver birds build a perfect nest the first time round. I don't think so. Practice, trial and error, as well as watching someone else, I would guess, do come into play.But what are we trying to discuss here anyway?

well certain things like left-handedness can be "hard wired" it seems to me, the problem comes in what the left hand is doing versus the right. When does behavior become a conscious choice versus a chemical response to stimuli?I tried sorting this out mentally last night and bogged down. Bogged now too.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Philosophers, neurologists, and many others have been trying without success to sort this out for quite some time. Anyone who isn't bogged down doesn't appreciate the scope of the problem.

Yes, but left-handed people can still learn to do things right-handed...that's all I'm saying. That is to say, instincts (if "handedness" can be considered an instinct) can be altered by various mechanisms. When one consciously alters a behavior?Honestly though, I'm not really sure what it is we are trying to discuss here?

I'm not sure I believe in "hard-wired" responses. It is just too pat, smacks of old style homocentric thinking, and a bit too deterministic (no free will?). Bees "dance" to describe where and what they found - is it hard-wired behavior or language?

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Let go of the idea of "conscious choice" and you'll at least be able to (attempt to) operationalize a lot more stuff.... but probably this is a discussion for another thread? I know that's the reason I didn't respond the first time I read it.Ben

What if some degree of variation/experimentation is included in the "wiring"? I've met people with a wide range of "lateral thinking" ability, from those that can only follow a standard linear process to those that are always devising alternate processes to the standard, sometimes better, often not. I've often wondered if there was a genetic basis for these differences in lateral thinking, or if it was more a matter of nurture differences...In any event, it seems to me that lateral thinking/conscious choice traits would be advantageous (or perhaps even necessary) to the evolution of culture and new cultural attributes. [However, it would also seem that counterinstinctual(?) impulses would need to balanced, lest carriers of the trait run amock whimfully trying alternatives willy-nilly til their eventual demise.]That is, conscious choice as the "random mutation" of the meme world.

yeah, it gets hazy fast.can you edit the link above so that it doesn't make the page so wide?thanks.

lol. I've had that problem trying to set up an SOP and then revising it the next time ... and the next time ... and the next time .... (just making it better honest ... but spending more time with each alteration than it takes to just run the program).A range of abilities, a range of selection constraints?I like "whimfully"

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

It's called "neural plasticity". When we talk about hard-wired responses, it's good to keep in mind that neural "hardware" isn't all that hard. It isn't limited to developmental plasticity, either (as in the classic Hubel and Wiesel experiment where kittens, deprived of visual stimuli at birth, remained functionally blind even after stimuli were restored later); rearrangement of synaptic connections occurs continually in the adult brain, though never again at the frantic pace seen in early infancy. But many organisms capable of "response" to stimuli don't have anything you could really call a "brain"; nerve cells are basically wired directly to muscles. There are vestiges of this in humans (such as "reflex action"). It probably makes better sense to think in terms of relative strengths of various connections: once a connection has been strongly reinforced, it is likely to remain strong, and at some point this might be regarded as functionally equivalent to "hard-wired".Though a Sphex wasp probably isn't capable of experiencing anything like what we call "inner conflict", we might consider human behavior as the end result of a competitive struggle between sub-cognitive modules (we could then discuss the extent to which these sub-cognitive modules are "hard-wired").This message has been edited by Cal, 12-06-2005 01:40 PM

The theory of evolution is an embarrassment to science. It is simply impossible for one species to produce offspring of a different species with whom it cannot breed. This is an elementary principle of biology that evolutionists either do not understand or blatantly lie about. So it's a waste of time comparing apes to humans. One's time would be better served in acknowledging one's own sins and honoring the Ten Commandments. If everybody did that, there would be no wars, std's, or hatred in the world.This message has been edited by Carico, 12-06-2005 06:21 PM

I agree with that.

Hi, Carico. Welcome to EvC.You should learn a little more about evolution; then you wouldn't embarrass your side with misunderstandings and needless hostility--you can disagree without maligning those with whom you disagree. There may be something in the 10 Commandments about that... The particular logical fallacy you commit by way of doing so is called a false dilemma: evolutionsts must be either idiots or liars; they may, in fact, be many other things, including sincerely mistaken or brilliantly right.You may be startled to learn that evolution does not claim that one species gives birth to another; in fact, evolutionists pretty much universally insist quite the opposite. If there is no such thing as evolution, then God created sexually transmitted diseases directly. Who do you suppose He gave syphillis to first, and why? Did the first rape victim who contracted syphillis deserve it?Oh, one other thing: what about the wars that God started in the Old Testament?

What happened, Carico, was that there was this bunch of apes a long time ago and some of them wandered off and formed their own group. After a long time, they became an isolated gene pool, unable for various reasons to mate with the members of that other group. Then that group split up too, and so down through the years there were constant splittings and resplittings of these groups of apes, some of which were beginning to look a little different. Out of one of these long lines of split-up groups that could not breed with any other groups, came the splitting that resulted in man.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 12-06-2005 07:18 PM