>>> MikalacNS at NAVSEA.NAVY.MIL 09/07/00 01:14PM >>>
Gordon Fitch wrote:
>
> You're supposed to be _just_born_ knowing certain things. I
> don't think this is such an outlandish idea.
------------------
CB: We don't find it hard to believe that animals have instincts as inborn
mental tendencies which have some correspondence to their objective
realities. Humans may have some instincts.
>
-------------------
on the contrary, biologists would all agree that humans have many instincts.
a parent doesn't have to remind little johnnie/janie not to kill someone when they go out to play for the first time. animals (incl. humans) have innate (genetic) wirings (neuro/chem programs) for certain behaviors that depend on the environment to trigger them. if confronted by what they determine to be beneficial they will greet and explore it (homo sapiens sapiens, remember). when threatened by it, they will instinctively (nature) try to flee or kill it. they don't need social conditioning (teaching/learning) to do these things.
-clip-
however, it's useless to ask how much of behavior can be ascribed to nature (genetics) and nurture (environment) because it takes both and no one can separate them out. and that brings us to one of the great dividing lines btwn the Left and Right, IMO. from my forum readings thus far, it seems that the Left assumes the axiom that nature accounts for little and nurture a lot, so they believe that engineering the environment will change people enough to make them more altruistic towards each other and towards their environment.
in contrast, the Right assumes the axiom that nature accounts for much and nurture little, so they think that changing the environment will just bring us right back to where we are today with a lot of chaos and bloodshed in between.
((((((((((((
CB: Do all agree that humans have a bigger nurture component than other species ? That our culture is our distinguishing characteristic as a species ?
Do I go too far in suggesting that language or mathematics learning ability is an instinct in humans, unique to humans ?