Spiders are born with the knowledge (ability) to create intricate webs. Nobody has to teach them. Babies know instictively to suckle. A moose knows when and how to make a mating call, which the cow moose will recognise and respond to.My point?
Almost every animal on the planet has observable inborn genetic wisdom of some sort. Instinct
So what about us?
How much of what we know is inate. Is the concept of language learned, or is it geneticly programmed? How much of what goes on at a bar on a friday night is just instinct masquerading as freewill?
Can we discern between that which is nurtured into us and that which is inborn?
What traits, if any, would you say the human animal displays purely by instinct?
Agreed, these conditions aren’t static. I think enough generations of nurture can become our ‘nature’ so to speak. But although the line between nature and nurture moves, it moves very slowly, and probably has moved very little over the course of recorded history.
The question refers to the ‘now’ of things. What behaviors are we unable to change, just as a spider can not weave anything but a spiral web. Any?
None?
This is purely a matter of speculation, of course.
from the inability to speak to the ability to walk on the moon, the species has come a long way. the mental evolution shouldn’t be ignored. as a matter of fact, it’s the main evolution activity for an advanced species such as the humans - we’ve already done the physical adoptation part - monkeys have done that. the man is, due to his intellect. the man evolves, with respect to his intellect. on the rope of this evolution, nietzschean philosophy is the top nod currently
so pure physically speaking, i doubt that we’ll ever grow a pair of wings. but the development of our brains with the nuturing of knowledge over time, we might be able to live on mars
Depends on which linguist’s work you like. Chomsky thinks we speak because of a single ‘language’ mutation. He is not a fan of ape sign language research, as you might imagine.
To the extent that one’s language and culture tint their worldview (I refuse the hard linguistic relativity position), it is learned.
Well, if it perfectly gives the impression of free will, we can’t tell, can’t know, and as for living our lives it doesn’t matter.
My money is on bar-behavior as performing in expected social roles, but that’s just me.
You will probably want to explore the topics of evolutionary psychology, cognitive science and the computational theory of mind. (They all tie together at some point or another.)
Evolutionary Psychology:
In this view, the mind is a set of information-processing machines that were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
Principle 1. The brain is a physical system. It functions as a computer. Its circuits are designed to generate behavior that is appropriate to your environmental circumstances.
Principle 2. Our neural circuits were designed by natural selection to solve problems that our ancestors faced during our species’ evolutionary history.
Principle 3. Consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg; most of what goes on in your mind is hidden from you. As a result, your conscious experience can mislead you into thinking that our circuitry is simpler that it really is. Most problems that you experience as easy to solve are very difficult to solve – they require very complicated neural circuitry
Principle 4. Different neural circuits are specialized for solving different adaptive problems.
I don’t think they were trying to be confusing. The complexity of biological systems gives the appearance of have been assembled by a designer. Then Darwin described how a process (natural selection) rather than a personality could have lead to the biological systems we see now.
I suppose the word “assembled†might have been less contentious then “designedâ€
the thing about babies with them crting can go either way as if noboby comes tosee them or do any tthing they stop after awhile and they wont cry dont believe me go to a russian orphan house fill with babies and step in not a peep. but i think babies natuarlly know some things jsut we dont know what because we are so much more compicatied than other creatures.
or it is just stimulus-response. If crying does no good in the russian orphanage; why waste the energy?
As for whether the babies “know” this or not; I’d say not as crying is part of the limbic system. (and the limbic systems governs most if not all of the utterances of infants anyway)