luvluv

Karen, I can't believe in evolution until I can belileve in an origin of life. If it takes little green men from mars bringing a DNA molecule to Earth to get life, I don't see how thats any more sensible than saying that God created the world in 7 days. There's no reason to suspect that OE Creationsim is false if scientists can't come up with an atheistic origin of life.

And anyway, where did the little green men come from?

Mageth

luvluv -

Abiogenesis and evolution are separate issues. "Believing" a particular theory in one does not require one to believe a particular theory in the other. Many xians believe god created the first simple life and uses evolution to generate species.

However life may have originated, the evidence clearly indicates that evolution is the mechanism that generated life as we see it today.

Vorkosigan

Luv, there's no reason TO believe it, either. To my mind beliefs usually require positive evidence or argument, but you seem to have differing standards.

An area where answers are not clear or unknown, where the hole is used to support a theistic argument, is called the "God of the Gaps" argument. It is dangerous because it is useful only so long as the science is not clear. But scientific knowledge is always expanding.....

NialScorva

The first quote is mine, however the second is not. I assume you're asking me this, but it's hard to tell, so forgive me if I don't address you completely, or am misplaced in replying.

We had a thread on this several months ago, in fact, I believe it was you who argued that humans don't have instincts as such. I don't think that instinctive behavior is learnable. I am associating instinctive with such actions as migration, hatching rituals, nursing instinct, and other such behaviors that happen regardless of socialization. In animals, there's a degree of behaviors achieved through nature versus nurture. I'd labe the far end of the nature scale as "instinct", and the far end of the nuture scale as "learned", with a continuum in between. My point was that humans are pretty far on the nurture end of the scale, relative to the rest of the world's species.

When I say "programmable instinct", I'm implicitely labling the urge and behavior of learning as an instinct. Instead of having an innate urge to migrate, we have the innate urge to learn and act upon that conditioning, which may result in migration.

luvluv

"Luv, there's no reason TO believe it, either. To my mind beliefs usually require positive evidence or argument, but you seem to have differing standards."

Exactly turt, so while I definitely believe in God I am an agnostic about where life came from and where species come from.

Dr Rick

Isn't migration a specifically engrained behavoural pattern rather than an urge? Instincts, if I understand the term correctly, are behavoural patterns, whereas urges are stimuli to act and not descriptive of behavour. For instance, hunger is an urge, but not a learned or innate behavour. Cooking a meal in response to hunger is a behavoural response, but not an urge.

It seems to me that the two terms, "urge" and "behavour," should not be used interchangeably.

You are right; I argue that humans are devoid of instincts; we have urges (drives), learned behavour, and reflexes.

I could be wrong and easily proven so; just define and describe one single human instinct.

[ March 07, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

tronvillain

rbochermd:
Behavioral patterns appear to be the result of stimuli to act in addition to preferences, learned behavior, and reflexes. In humans, learned behavior is an extremely large component, so "instinct" is no longer an accurate label since instincts are generally considered rigid behavioral patterns.

Vorkosigan

I could be wrong and easily proven so; just define and describe one single human instinct.

rbochermand,

Please read this Primer on Evolutionary Psychology:
<a href="http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html" target="_blank">http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html</a>

Humans have a rich assortment of instincts that facilitate learning. You might also read The Language Instinct by Pinker.

If, by "instinct" you mean a rigid, rote behavior, we also have those. "Calls" such as crying and laughing are two common examples.

Michael

NialScorva

Agreed, they aren't equivalent. But that's not what I said at all. I said the urge, impetus, desire, provocation, or need to migrate was an urge. The reason that I conditioned this behavior is that while some species, monarch butterflies come to mind, migrate without being shown the route, there are species (geese come to mind) where the migration routes may be learned, but the triggers to use those routes are not. All part of the grey scale I mentioned before, sliding from pure genetic expression resulting in behavior to behavior purely derived from life experiences of the critter in question. I merely implied the much weaker assertion that an urge *can* be an instinct, in no way implying the converse.


I mentioned the suckling/nursing instinct in infants, and one could draw any number of instincts that appear at a young age, before learned behavior completely dominates: imitation of sounds, the crying and laughing that turtonm mentioned, imprinting, and any other number of behaviors that are not learned, but provide a framework to learn within.

Dr Rick

Infants will reflexively suckle on an object placed in their mouths, even while asleep; this is known as the suckling reflex and is not an instinct.

You're right; I should have qualified my assertion and stated that adult humans are devoid of instinctive behaviors and asked someone to name an instinct in adult humans. Children may have instincts that facilitate their development, but these instincts are extinguished by adulthood.

How are crying and laughing instinctive behaviors?
One does not instinctively laugh at a joke; what makes one person laugh can make another cry. Such variations are not characteristic of instinctive behavior.

turtonm: thanks for the reference. I have printed-out the article and will read it apres ski this weekend. (It's gonna' be a powder day in Aspen and Vail tomorrow )

[ March 08, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>