This came up in Biology class today, when discussing our current study topic; evolution. I thought that basically, our advanced intelligence has lead to the virtual abolishment of instinct in human beings.
Now, the argument that some people came up with (An argument that I had not anticipated) Is that instinct is a myth. Are there any here that share that view?
Also, my teacher proposed that were a group of humans be stranded in the wild, we would die, due to lack of instinct. Some say instinct is a primitive substitute for intelligence, and that we have evolved to supress instinct. I was wondering what intelligent people would think of this. (There is a lack of that mythical substance in public highschools)
What about intuition? Isn’t that a form of instinctive knowing?
Yes. Intuition would be an instinct, but for some, even that has been rendered irrelevant. People can’t even tell when their instinct/intuition is telling them to stop moving/keep moving. I guess on a certain level we still have our intuition, but need to train ourselves to heed it.
I think technology, culture, and some of our ideals may have rendered our instincts irrelevant these days, but I’m sure they are still there- evolution hasn’t killed them. Get people in a situation where they are a little more hungry, food is a little more scarce…life a little less easy, and those instincts will show up again very quickly, I suspect.
As to whether or not we could survive in the wild, that has nothing to do with instinct- I may experience the raw, animal instinct to kill other creatures to survive, and just be really bad at it and end up starving. That doesn’t mean my instincts are gone, it just means I’m not skilled in executing them- two different things, I think.
Not exactly. What allows us to kill, what allows us to hunt, or should I say what WOULD allow us to do these things (Without modern tools like firearms) would be our animal instinct. And, instinct would tell us to curl up under a certain tree rather than another. It would tell us to eat this, rather than that, to place a trap there rather then there. I know, you can be taught to know these things, but is a dolphin taught to swim?
I guess my message is very unclear, because it is very hard to state. It’s more of a feeling then an argument. Why do people get bush fever? I think that is becasue of lack of instinct. All modern convenience has erased the need for isntinct.
institution and all things related to human ‘intellegence’ are part of instinct.
as far as im concerned our instinct is our will to survive and nothing more.
therefore, though we have human intellect, that intellect is contrived due to our environment and our will to survive within said environment.
human beings adapt.
lately i’ve been fasinated with the phenomonon of feral children, with more study, and in terms of myself, more reading and learning on the subject i think i can completely change my view, and hopefully the views of others, on the subject of human nature or more specifically the nature of human instinct.
if a child, abandoned at a young age, is left in the company of dogs essentially that child will become a dog. This is the case with girl who grew up in a low income, basically desolate district of the Ukraine.
aparently she not only behaved like a dog, but developed an acute sense of hearing and smell.
therefore, it would be her instinct to survive in a given environment, to thrive in said environment.
therefore human instinct is not supressed, to my thinking, because the intellect is a development of an individual due to their environment and thriving in that environment.
often instinct is seperated from morality; but if instinct is our general nature then morality stems from instinct.
therefore morality is an essentially part of our instinct; our will to survive which was developed through our evolution.
there is always the notion of intellect or morality clashing with intinct, but in a way i think is an illusion. A pychologicaly illusion caused by our own complexity. The girl raised by dogs did not think about these questions, was not capable of a said struggle between ‘instinct and intellegence’ because of her environment and her pyschology due to that environment.
looking around you at society can clarify why these illusions of struggle exist because our environment and the things that influence our thought are in abundance and conflict. Our environment is complex so therefore we are as well.
someone give me a counter argument, however, cause im damn curious to know if im wrong.
i must be off base somewhere.
I agree with about half of this. Instinct would give us the drive to kill things, the drive to seek shelter and so on, but it's not going to have anything to do with telling us [i]how[/i] to do it. I mean, we may have basic instincts to eat things that smell sweet and not sour, for instance, but nothing more complex than that. And it certainly wouldn't tell us where or how to set a trap- it may as well tell us how to load a rifle if it were going to do that.
Actually, I bet they are, yes.
I’m not famliar with bush fever.
Hi Gloob
I’ll share a problem with you I’ve come up against recently dealing with your question. You may want to ask your teacher depending how open they are to perplexing questions.
I have this beautiful pair of angelfish that spawn. Reading upon the care of angelfish I discovered something that I just don’t understand. The question never came up for me because my pair are great parents. They take care of and guard their young as well as could be asked for. Yet I found this is not always the case. Take this paragraph for example:
groups.msn.com/Breedingtropicalf … lfish.msnw
I had always thought that parenting was instinctual but apparently it is a learned behavior. It seems that if the fry don’t experience it, this knowledge can be lost.
But how do they learn it? Angelfish guard their eggs and fan them with their fins to keep them clean. Once the eggs hatch the helpless fry are attached onto a leaf by their parents and guarded, cleaned, and sometimes moved from one spot to another. In a week they are free swimming and form a school around their parents where they are protected… It really is a beautiful sight to see these two large angelfish surrounded by this cloud of small fry that follow them.
But when the fry are newly hatched they are very tiny and undeveloped
home.earthlink.net/~photofish/
What is developed in them that allows them to learn parenting skills? If it were instinctive then the parents wouldn’t matter but it seems that they do and having researched this with ethical breeders, I know this to be true.
Perhaps the difference between instinctive and learned behavior may not be as clear as initially thought.
Ask your teacher for an explanation and you’ll either get a smile or a smack in the head for being a trouble maker. 
if your driving in a car and react to a near accident, is this instinct or intelligence guiding your actions?
No animal on earth has only intelligence as its guide. They are all founded upon instinct, even humans are.
can you say then that instinct is just a decision made long ago? and the strength of that instinct is the efficiancy with which we execute the decision the inscinct is tied to?
Yes, I think so.