Instinct - evolved or better answer?

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.

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

In a 'science forum' with a title like "Evolution versus Creation", that's going to happen.I've often pondered alternatives to the woefully inadequate way our (U.S.) educational system is structured. One such daydream features a return to the old one-room school house -- but with a twist: much emphasis would be placed on having more advanced students assume responsibility for teaching less advanced ones. If you really wanted to see some sweat on them, split them up into groups, and make it a competition for the highest group score.I tend to think of a forum like this as sort of a virtual one-room schoolhouse. One thing that's interesting though, is that (unlike schoolchildren) those with the most to learn often seem to be both the least able to learn, and the most eager to teach.While it's rather easy to address this as a defect of character, it may be that this tendency is a feature of the architecture of the brain. After all, when it comes time to dole out reproductive success, what matters most is not how much knowledge one has, but how much knowledge others think one has. Assessing that is largely an intuitive process, and points are awarded for confidence. I have known several schizophrenics in my time, the most memorable of which had a view of the world which he could describe in such rich detail, and with such complete confidence, that I occasionally found myself considering the possibility that my view was the delusional one. Under the right circumstances, an individual like that might gain a following, and go on to enjoy the increased mating opportunities that accompany that.In other words, beyond a certain point, neural plasticity (or we could call it "teachability") might cease to confer an advantage -- beyond a certain point, the most favorable strategy might be to further reinforce whatever connections are associated with the most consistent winner of competition between cognitive sub-modules......and then go out there and sell it.