Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: Greg on 24/12/2008 15:57:37
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Greg asked the Naked Scientists:
For years, I have assumed that emotions were the instinctive reactions to various stimuli, but lately I've been listening to your podcasts (along with various other sciency ones) and I haven't heard any scientists equate emotion and instinct. How wrong have I been all this time?
What do you think?
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I don't think that emotion and instinct are synonyms, but emotions certainly are instictive. No one has to teach you to be happy when you taste pleasant food, nor does one have to teach you to cry when you are in pain.
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I think that the main role of emotions is in motivation, but this only really applies to sentient creatures. I would also say that emotions are more learned than instinctual, as illustrated in the difference between the way that children are viewed by society now when compared with how they were viewed, say one hundred years ago, when all they were really good for was cleaning out chimneys.
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It's a good question.
My own take is that instincts refer generally to something 'hard coded' in the brain. That is not to say that they are entirely genetically determined - clearly the brain undergoes wiring changes from before birth to the moment of death. It is, however, to distinguish instinct from emotion. My understanding of emotion is that it is a chemical/hormonal 'bath' which acts on the brain to produce various states. I suppose I'm saying that instinct is more intrinsic that emotion...
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i think that the difference is that:
with emotions somebody had love
with instinct somebody had sex
[;D] it may really be the same effect called different. [8D]
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Hm... So let's roll this around a bit and see if something interesting comes out.
The stimulus is someone getting in your face and shouting (we'll call this a dominance display, shall we?)
The reaction is anger (we'll call that an emotion, agreed?)
Now, if we assume this is happening to dogs or to apes, we're probably happy to say that instincts are there, but no emotion?
And if this happens to humans, we're assuming there's emotion, but no instinct?
The Jerk in the Bar is shouting in your face and the dog snarling and holding his head over the head of another dog- are these both dominance displays? The reaction of the other bar patron and the other dog- are these both instinctive responses?
Of course, the concept of Love makes things difficult. For us. We think and write and make a lot of Love. There's a lot of baggage tied to our ideas of Love (I know it's ungrammatical to capitalize it, but it's such an important ideal for so many people, indulge me for a minute) Letting go of the baggage is difficult. Accepting evolution as a reality has been a long process of letting go of baggage.
So, could Love be a response to a chemical/hormonal 'bath' that occurs when the proper stimuli are present? Can Hate be the same thing? It's probably easier to say that Lust is an instinctive response, but Love is not. We don't seem to mind identifying 'bad' emotions with instinct (fear, envy, jealousy) but we don't allow the 'good' emotions to have the same origins (Love, happiness, etc.)
Can 'good' emotions be the upside to our responses fitting the stimuli in a way that has been selected for by evolution, in the same way that euphoria is the upside to successfully procreating (thus making our instincts feel we are continuing the species)
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The stimulus is someone getting in your face and shouting (we'll call this a dominance display, shall we?) The reaction is anger (we'll call that an emotion, agreed?)
Is that the reaction (anger) from the person being shouted at or the person who is shouting?
Now, if we assume this is happening to dogs or to apes, we're probably happy to say that instincts are there, but no emotion? And if this happens to humans, we're assuming there's emotion, but no instinct?
Not too sure what you're trying to say here...
The Jerk in the Bar is shouting in your face and the dog snarling and holding his head over the head of another dog- are these both dominance displays? The reaction of the other bar patron and the other dog- are these both instinctive responses?
I think the reaction from the dog will be instinct because its more a matter of life or death. Not too sure about the other patrons, they might not do anything...
Of course, the concept of Love makes things difficult. For us. We think and write and make a lot of Love. There's a lot of baggage tied to our ideas of Love (I know it's ungrammatical to capitalize it, but it's such an important ideal for so many people, indulge me for a minute) Letting go of the baggage is difficult. Accepting evolution as a reality has been a long process of letting go of baggage.
So, could Love be a response to a chemical/hormonal 'bath' that occurs when the proper stimuli are present? Can Hate be the same thing? It's probably easier to say that Lust is an instinctive response, but Love is not. We don't seem to mind identifying 'bad' emotions with instinct (fear, envy, jealousy) but we don't allow the 'good' emotions to have the same origins (Love, happiness, etc.)
Can 'good' emotions be the upside to our responses fitting the stimuli in a way that has been selected for by evolution, in the same way that euphoria is the upside to successfully procreating (thus making our instincts feel we are continuing the species)
Good points, I might get back to you on that one.
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So, could Love be a response to a chemical/hormonal 'bath' that occurs when the proper stimuli are present? Can Hate be the same thing? It's probably easier to say that Lust is an instinctive response, but Love is not. We don't seem to mind identifying 'bad' emotions with instinct (fear, envy, jealousy) but we don't allow the 'good' emotions to have the same origins (Love, happiness, etc.)Can 'good' emotions be the upside to our responses fitting the stimuli in a way that has been selected for by evolution, in the same way that euphoria is the upside to successfully procreating (thus making our instincts feel we are continuing the species)
Agree with lust is an instinctive response and love is not. You can't just love someone instantly, it could take years to build. I think fear is definitely an instinct, some of those people with phobias are a good example. Humans of old were designed for fight or flight so the obvious 'instincts' that were required are probably not as clear cut anymore because frankly nowadays hardly anyone needs them.
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Hmm. Well, that begs another interesting question.
Have we shed a lot of supposedly vestigial instincts? Or are they just hindered, masked and complicated by what's going on higher in our brains? Are we quantitatively different from earlier humans and their instincts? If so, what stages have these changes taken, and over what length of time?
My original point is to question whether we are still acting and reacting by instinct that we, using our higher brain functions, call emotions. The addition of higher brain activity- or 'reason' if you want to keep it separated from 'instinct'- is what prevents us from calling any single behavior 'instinctive' in the same way that we call animal behavior 'instinctive'. In short- we overthink it, simply because we can.
Or maybe I've taken the point to it's absurd farthest length.
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You have very interesting vocabulary... but there might be an element of overthinking, preventing us from calling any single behaviour 'instinctive'
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I'm tickled. 'Interesting vocabulary'- maybe comes from the fact that I'm from the Southern United States, and maybe from the fact that I don't know what I'm talking about. Hopefully, it's only that I'm trying to offer up a short form of an idea that's been knocking around in my head for a long time, and I'm jumping into the middle of it without laying any groundwork. Either way, this is a lot of fun. I don't do a lot on chat forums. I should probably edit for poor grammar at least, but I'm too lazy.
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Were not the instincts just three:
Reproduction
Species conservation
Survival
???
There are many emotions, on the other hand....
(and many more on both hands)
[;D]
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A good point you make, I've never thought about it like that
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I might not understand your point, are you saying that there are only three instincts?
Those sound like three catagories that instincts fall into. The instinct to nurse (I knew the name of this when we were getting ready for our first child. I've forgotten it now.) for instance, might fall under 'survival', I suppose, or maybe under 'reproduction', depending on how you were breaking them all out. 'Fight or Flight' fits neatly under survival, but again- these are all terms to artificially separate items in a spectrum. Any prompting from deep inside oneself- that originates in the more primitive sections of our brains and prompts behavior that doesn't have a rational, higher-brain origin- are instinctive. The drive to stay with ones family, the drive to leave at a certain age, the drive to establish and maintain dominance hierarchies, the need to be submissive when the alpha in any particular group begins asserting him- or herself... not every person has the same set of instinctive responses to given situations (or more precisely, sets of situations, as the stimuli will often be made up of many inputs- environment, and all it breaks down into and the others in the environment) The instinctive responses are often ones that we don't even realize that we're making, but are more easily spotted in others. Instinctive responses are often the ones that confuse and upset us (another instinctive response piled on) when they don't jibe with our rational desires, or when we are doing our best to deny the instinctive reactions as not being in our best interests. Rationally deciding on a behavior with our higher cognitive skills doesn't placate the instinctive drives from our lower brain functions.
So, there's no particular reason to say that there are only three instincts and certainly no reason to think that there is some ultrasimple set of emotions that correspond exactly to an ultrasimple set of clearly defined instincts. Instincts are multifarious and multiuseful, evolved to supply us with quick reactions to many, many stimuli. Emotions are what we find loaded into our brains when our instincts prod us- We feel happy when any of a number of instincts have been satisfied, we feel uneasy or crabby when fighting against a persistent instinctive prodding. We feel the need to go or to do or to protect or to eat or to love when stimuli both from within or without fire off any number of small instinctive reactions- emotions are the reactions both to the original prompts, the failure to obey the prompts or having satisfied the promptings.
Or not. Like I said in the very first question- I've never heard anyone else propounding this theory, particularly. And I've never tried to write it out or explain it. I'm not a biologist, or psychologist or any kind of an -ist. And I've never done the sort of research necessary to educate myself in the field. Outside of reading some books by Timothy Ferris and Stephen Gould and the like, I'm sort of lost here.
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I’m lost too... I always thought we humans only had those basic instincts because we were able to reason... In a sense, because we’re free.
Lost, lost, lost...
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Well, you may certainly be right. I wouldn't be the first person to talk crazy and begin from the wrong suppositions.
I've always thought that instinct was a lower-brain thing we shared with other creatures and that reason (higher-brain function) was something extra, laid on top of the older instinct that gave us more ways to react and respond to stimuli. I don't know how 'free' would enter into it one way or the other. I'm happy to listen, though, if you'd care to explain.
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I think I’m getting in way over my head here... (I’m just a lawyer who is interested in science). What I once read was that if you push a little kitten close to the edge of a table, the animal will react by retreating, as a result of pure instinct; however, if you bring a baby close to the edge of a table, he won’t react at all, he will fall...
Still lost, lost-er (at least it’s fun)
Regards
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Ah! excellent point.
Who did that experiment? Expensive in babies, I'd guess.
I'm in waaay over my head, too, but like you say, this is awfully fun. I'm a cartoonist, by the way. I don't know neurology, but I'm all for fun...
So, I'd ascribe the kitten's better function to the fact that they're born relatively more developed than humans are- in other words, a kitten wouldn't equate to a newborn baby in any particular way. Human babies must be born more dependent on their parents because to wait any longer in the womb would mean that their heads wouldn't fit through the birth canal- clearly that's not adapted to survival. Of course, being born more or less helpless doesn't sound like it's adapted to survival either, so maybe I'm talking through my hat again. Such a thing would, however, point to a human survival instinct to live in cooperative groups- those without the instinct to group wouldn't survive as well in a harsher environment. Cats seem to have an instinct for a more solitary existence once they're weaned, harsher environment or not.
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Where are all the scientists when we neeeeeeed them????? [;D] [:o]
They better show up soon, or we are going to rewrite everything.....
[;)]
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Yeah! We need some of the earlier respondents to come back in, too. When I first posed the question, they said it was in line to be used in an upcoming podcast, but there's still lots to discuss 'til that happens.
I have another thought about how much trouble there'll be when raccoons discover fire, but it's not so much a science theory as a humorous premise...
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I think I’m getting in way over my head here... (I’m just a lawyer who is interested in science). What I once read was that if you push a little kitten close to the edge of a table, the animal will react by retreating, as a result of pure instinct; however, if you bring a baby close to the edge of a table, he won’t react at all, he will fall...
When you put a baby into water, it'll hold its breath, thats instinctive. Will cats do that? I don't know, but someone would have tried it.
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But I think I'm sidetracking, basically does instinct = emotion or instinct ≠ emotion?
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Do you think other animals have emotions?
We think they have instincts, don't we.
In Spain they used to say that dogs didn't have any soul an (?) therefore couldn't feel any pain.
Like when I grew up.
Instincts is a way of surviving, emotions tells us about what and how we feel while doing so.
Sometimes they take the 'overhand' and make us do things not related to surviving.
Do emotions do the same to other animals?
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Do you think other animals have emotions?
Yes, just why I think that, I'm not sure at the moment because I do not have valid reasoning to back it up. But what do you mean by animals? All animals? Like ants and worms and bugs all included?
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It will be very interesting if we could 'hear' what a male dog is thinking when he sees a female dog. Does he have emotions? Or does his instincts tell him 'me want my b****' [:o] in the crudest of voices? [:-\]
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I don't think emotions may necesserily equate to instinct. Though they may have very close relationships, studies of brain activity will show there is more to emotions than there is, dorment, mind-less ponderings of instinctive natures.
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Our instincts are falling behind the animals because of all this technology that we live in today...
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Well, if animals don't experience emotions like we do, then they must have more powerful instincts. In fact, their entire daily drive [may] be straight down to pure instinct.
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Backing up a bit, let's see... I think we're examining whether emotion is a part of the instinctive structure. Whether, let's say, emotions are the various ways that various instincts presents themselves to us.
I don't know what feeling pain has to do with having a soul, but my dog feels pain. He caught himself in the fence yesterday trying to get out. He was trying to get through the fence to be with my sons. Whether he 'wanted' to do that because his instincts told him to stay with his pack, or whether his emotions told him that he would not be happy unless he could get to the boys, I don't know. In fact, that's the point here. What I'm really asking is if those two things are one and the same; the emotional carrot-on-a-stick is simply the way that the instinct presents itself.
Ants and worms? Why include them in 'animals'? Let's simplify for the moment and stick to mammals that we're familiar with, unless someone has a comment about something else. Like birds, maybe. Wait and see.
As for crude voices, why the adjective? And why assume that the dog, or we humans, are really 'thinking' when lust is the issue? The instinct to procreate is one of the most basic, and comes on dogs and us frequently. The emotional upshot of the instinct is something we call 'lust' in ourselves when we're being crude, or 'amorous' when we're feeling more delicate. We, or our dogs, might feel 'frisky' or 'lonely' or any of many other degrees that all lie along a spectrum of 'lustful'. I use the word 'feel' very specifically there- it's an emotional state that manifests because the instinct to procreate is brought on by a stimulus. In the case of Chemistry4Me's dog, the stimulus might be that he has seen, or more likely smelled, a female- possibly one in heat. (Being in heat is a physical state of being ready to procreate, and the male's reaction to the scent would have evolved as an instinctive reaction, I guess.) In the case of a human, the stimulus might be that a woman is wearing an attractive outfit, or has made eye contact or any of many signals to attract others. Or, it might be that the male lives in the U.S. and is deluged by sexy images all day every day, and his libido is constantly firing off instinctive signals that equate to 'Me want my b****."
Hm... Mr. Scientist makes a very interesting point- Are instincts dormant or mindless? That sounds like a fruitful line of thought. I would have guessed that instincts are not only not dormant, but are real to us every day, as emotions. I would have also guessed that instincts are intrinsic to 'mind', an inseparable part of what allowed us to evolve and survive until our brains added their 'higher' levels, and not 'mindless' per se.
Of course, maybe this is the basic supposition that I've gotten wrong, and the reason the theory wouldn't hold up.
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I don't know [???], all this discussion is making me even more confused than when we started... [???] [:I] [:I]
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You're invited to blame all confusion on me if you like.
Cartoonists write better inside little balloons.
Big boxes throw us off.
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Cartoonists write better inside little balloons.
Whats going on here [???] [???] Are you a cartonist?
Big boxes throw us off.
And I thought the last sentence was crazy [;D] [???] [???]
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Yep. Cartoonist.
Yep. Crazy.
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Okay, got a little sidetracked there. Yes, I'm a cartoonist. It's a fun job.
Now, to try to get us back on track and simplify things.
The theory (and if I remember right, a good theory is supposed to have three things going for it. Something to do with making a prediction that can be tested and such. Maybe we don't have a theory here yet, maybe it's just a hypothesis) is that humans have a broad spectrum of instincts. Emotions are the way that our instincts present themselves to our conscious minds. Humans also have lots of brain (lots and lots) devoted to higher functions. Instinct and Reason are not always in agreement. Reason (higher brain function) might tell us to take a chance when instinct (extremely basic and powerful brain function) tells us not to, or vice versa. That conflict is often sized up in literature as 'good vs. evil'- the little devil and angel sitting on our shoulder. For example- If a particular subject is not of a monogamous turn of mind, it's because his or her instinct prompts him or her into pursuing sex with people other than his or her spouse. Reason will tell him (or her, you get the idea...) that this is not a good idea. Being human and having the choice that a rat or dog does not, he might decide in favor of reason, and instinct, unfulfilled, will nag at him. If he were to give in to that instinct, his reason would then nag at him. This is the downside to having a complex mind developed evolutionarily over great lengths of time. The conflict- and the meaning of emotion- has been written about, studied, made the subject of poetry and philosophy, and has inspired great art in every realm- and so we instantly reject the idea that emotion has anything to do instinct. Instinct being a word that we have traditionally used for 'lesser' animals and rejected for ourselves and our high romantic notions of our emotions.
I would like to point out that I'm not advocating giving in to any emotion (instinct) just to shut it up. What's the point of having a more complex brain than a dog if one acts no better than a dog?
Oof. That ought to upset enough people to get the conversation back up and running.
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So now the word 'reason' is introduced into the arguement
What's the point of having a more complex brain than a dog if one acts no better than a dog?
Exactly
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Have you actually got an answer from the Naked Scientists yet? Is it going to be on one of the podcasts?
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Yep. Reason was mentioned back in the ninth post, and a few time since. Was I not supposed to mention reason? I think it's valid to say that reason comes from higher brain function and instinct from lower, or more basic, brain function. I could be wrong. Also, I have no earthly idea what the vocabulary about this stuff is supposed to be. 'Higher' and 'lower' and 'brain function' are probably antiquated terms, as used by scientists back when they wore powdered wigs.
As for the podcast, here's all I've heard so far:
Thank you for the question you sent to us. We are e-mailing you to let you know that it has been added to our list for inclusion in a forthcoming edition of The Naked Scientists Podcast.
In the meantime we have also published the question, on your behalf, on our discussion forum. So far, it has received 4 comments from other forum members.
To see what they're saying, follow this link:
If you want to join in the discussion, you can use our quick registration system to obtain your own username by following the link below
We hope you find the answers helpful.
Thanks for supporting the Naked Scientists.
The Naked Scientists Team
I suppose that means there's a chance it'll crop up on the podcast someday if they can find someone with an interesting answer. Till then, we get to speculate as only amateurs and enthusiasts can, I reckon. 'Reckon' means I reasoned it out, I think. At least, I think I think it.
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I think freely that reasonable emotions are instinctive, or the other way around on the contrary [;)] [;D]
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Absotively, yes.
Well spoken.
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What do you meam by reasonable emotions, I am very interested to find out. [:P]
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I thought he was kidding around.
I'd like to hear about reasonable emotions, too.
You're up, Professor Romero!
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[???]
ooops.... eeeh... mmmmmm....
[:I]
gulp....
Pun intended, sorry... I Hope I Didn't upset anybody....
Just kidding, truly sorry.
Emilio
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Reasonably speaking, my emotion right now would be embarrassment... [:I]
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Well, see, that's a great point!
What sort of instinctive prompting would cause embarrassment? Is embarrassment an emotion? Fascinating stuff. Well done.
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I saw this program on TV a while back and it was like a documentary, there were 20 people in a room (and they were all actors/actresses) and when they were shown the colour red (I can't quite remember the colours but it doesn't really matter) they were instructed to say that the colour was blue.
Then another person came into the room, this was not an actor and he presumed that the other people there were just random people. So everybody (the first 20) got shown the colour red and they all said blue, then it came to the new man, (they had some things attached to his head which lit up the parts of the brain that was being activated/working) and he also said that the colour was blue!
Which I thought was very interesting, surely his instinct immediately after seeing the red colour would tell him "red" but when he found all the other people saying that it was in fact blue, he reasoned with himself and changed his option. They tried this on many other subjects too and they found that some remained stubborn (or correct) and said red while others went with the majority and stayed with blue. But what they did find in all of their subjects was that the part of the brain responsible for (the emotion) fear was activated, and they presumed that the subjects felt fear because they wanted to fell like part of a group, even if it meant choosing the obviously wrong option.
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Greg asked the Naked Scientists:
For years, I have assumed that emotions were the instinctive reactions to various stimuli, but lately I've been listening to your podcasts (along with various other sciency ones) and I haven't heard any scientists equate emotion and instinct. How wrong have I been all this time?
What do you think?
I personally think that your initial supposition is fairly accurate.
Instincts are action tendencies based on feelings or emotions given a stimuli.
eg: A perceived threat is likely to gives rise to an emotion (fear or anxiety) This will trigger an 'instinctive' response to the threat with the brain preparing the body to run of fight. Adrenalin increased heart rate blood supply increased to the muscles, reduced where it isn't required,etc. This holds true whether the stimuli are real or imagined. Hence the thriving therapeutic industry that exists today. [:(!]
For a more detailed explanation on the development of instinct you might look at http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=16535.msg0;boardseen#new
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Thanks for jumping in,, Alansm! I was worried that no one else would post with us.
Chemistry4me's story reminds me of another one, which is apocryphal, but interesting nonetheless.
Say you have six chimpanzees in a room. The room is outfitted with several boxes, and has a large bunch of bananas hanging from the ceiling. The chimps will, in time, stack the boxes or themselves high enough to get to the bananas. When they do, you turn a fire hose on them. (that's the part that makes me sure this story is apocryphal) and you repeat the punishment every time the chimps get close to the bananas. Eventually, they quit trying to get the bananas. Then you swap out one of the chimps for a new one.
The new one will, after a time, try to stack boxes to get to the bananas, whereupon the other chimps will set upon him and beat him up, lest the fire hose is turned on the group. Soon, the new chimp shies away from the bananas. Now, one by one, you trade out all the chimps, allowing intervals long enough for the new chimps to acclimate to the idea that the bananas are NOT to be messed with.
Eventually, you have six chimpanzees who have never had a fire hose turned on them, but will nonetheless attack any new ape that tries to get the bananas.
In the business world, this is the 'We've always done it this way' method of management.
It could no doubt apply to behaviors in other areas of life, too- social, political, familial, religious, scientific, anywhere there is an organized group, I suppose.
And it's off the subject.
Back to the emotions!
Alansm, I wonder if we're talking backward points. It may be that- instead of a perceived threat setting off an emotion that sets off an instinctive response- a perceived threat (stimulus) sets off an instinctive response (fight or flight) which we sense as an emotion (fear, anxiety, distress) that will result in our fighting or fleeing. The adrenaline increased heart rate, blood supply etc. is the physiological aspect of the reaction, the emotion is the neurological reaction and both are inextricable parts of the same reaction to stimulus. And I don't like using the term stimulus, because I'll bet there's rarely ever just one stimulus, I bet when you examine responses, it's hard to isolate anything like that. In other words you'd always want to use the plural stimuli, since there's always a lot of input involved, and therefore a lot of reaction involved. Especially in the real world, the stimuli and their responses pile up.
I guess I should add that I'm not arguing that instinct/emotion is the only thing going on in a stimulus/reaction. I've said before that we've got a lot of higher brain functions that go on, also. So while your instinct might tell you to flee or fight, you're human, and you may reason that there's another way around the problem, and if you suppress your instinct, you can use that other way. Of course, this sets your instinct to nagging at you, which sets up a lot more reactions, but that's another discussion thread entirely, isn't it?
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Are insticts pro-active and emotions are reactive?
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Wow! Nice question!
What do you think? This sounds like a rich vein to explore. I hope you'll speculate with it a little. I'll start:
My kneejerk reaction is that, what with the constant stimuli piling on, we'd have both active and reactive sets of instincts that set off lots of subtle variations along a spectrum of emotional responses.
Or, to be less wordy, "I guess 'Yes'."
I tried to come up with an example to illustrate with, but it turned into a lot of speculation. See what you can do with it: You're at home and utterly relaxed (instinct tells you you're free to do whatever you like), you're suddenly shocked to have a load of people jump out and yell surprise, (which sets off a fight-or-flight instinct) and then you realize that these are your friends and well-wishers (which sets off another instinct saying you're safe). Your emotional state would go from baseline to alarmed to relieved to happy- I guess the instinctive states are reactive in this scenario, and the emotional states are, too. The pro-active instincts might come in when you're faced with behaviors that you initiate- taking control of everyone's attention because you are instinctively an alpha character, or thanking everyone individually- you'd choose whom to speak to based on that group's pecking order (not consciously, maybe, you'd just 'feel' that it was most important to go search out someone special to you)
Whew. All this is wild speculation on my part.
I sure do like your question though.
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And... where do relfexes enter this discussion???
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And... where do reflexes enter this discussion???
Absolutely no idea! [:)]
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I hope you'll speculate with it a little.
I am yet to think of a good example! I'll try my best to though.
To tell you how I got this idea, I was watching a game of cricket (you might be familiar with it) and the commentators were talking about good captains who are very pro-active in placing their fieldsmen on the park, they said that a good captain will trust his instincts and place a fieldsmen somewhere or change a bowler or something like that, and often this change will work in their favour. Then there is the other types of captains, the reactive ones, the ones who do the changes when the ball is being spanked around all over the park (in other words, they make the changes once the horse has bolted). So that got me thinking and I thought the words they used were quite appropriate for this discussion so I posed the question.
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Interesting! Yeah, I suppose that different people, different times, and different sets of stimuli would result in different actions- whether we're talking about instinct or about trained, rational action.
Here's an entertaining speculation: The pro-active captain's instincts spur him to move or change his players at one point in the game while another captain's instinct might lie quiescent until a different set of stimuli occur. But probably more important than the spur to action (instinct) is the captain's knowledge and experience (rationality)
Man, I'm way out of my league here. I hope they use the question on the podcast pretty soon, or we'll rewrite all the behavioral sciences books.
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[/quote]
good captains who are very pro-active in placing their fieldsmen on the park, they said that a good captain will trust his instincts and place a fieldsmen somewhere or change a bowler or something like that
[/quote]
Would that be "instinct" or logical/intelligent reaction to statistics??? Thus, good reasoning...
??
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I finished my previous post and ran off to my son's basketball game. On the way there I had more time to think about it and I decided that it was probably less 'instinct' than training and good reasoning, yeah. But it was an interesting point to examine. I figure that our own vocabulary gets in the way occasionally. Especially in the case of sports, we talk about players' and coaches' 'instincts' when that term probably doesn't apply very well. It might be fair to back up and say that one person or another has the stronger instinct to compete in the first place, or even a disproportionate instinctive drive to win (to dominate, to be the alpha)- I know of some very driven competitors who will irrationally sacrifice anything for a win- but directing players on a field is probably more a strategy/reason game than an instinctive one.
On to the next complication:
How much is our subconscious driven by instinct? None at all? Completely? Bits here and there?
Or
Have I been arguing 'instinct' this whole time when it would have been easier and more correct to simply say 'subconscious'?
In other words, we might say that all our emotional responses come from our subconscious, and humans no longer really have instincts the same way that animals do. That then begs the question, do animals have a subconscious? If so, do they have emotional responses that come from their subconscious?
All this is fun, but I get the feeling that I'm just piling up vocabulary words. I don't have any background in any of this, and I don't think that pop culture and the current state of the U.S. educational system has prepared me to discuss these subjects.
Not quittin' though.
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.... and just now Freud is in the picure...
subconscious...
this is fun
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Well to be honest I don't think we are getting anywhere but as you saide, it is fun! Just something else on sport, imagine that you were watching a really good game of table tennis and the players are moving all over the place and hitting shots from all around the table, many commmentators talk about tactics and working shots around the table until you are in position to hit a winner. But I don't think the players hardly have time to 'think' about where they are going to place their shots, I mean they have between 0.1-0.2 seconds to react, this is where I think the 'subconsciousness' comes in to play (no pun intended!) The player's shots are totally driven by the subconsciousness during a rally because that is how they have been trained.
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Hey, do dogs have an instinct to track other animals, or is that learned behavior?
Assuming that it's an instinct to put your nose to the ground and follow a scent (assuming also that you're a dog), then how does the instinct present itself to the dog? What prompts him to want to do this? Is it an unstoppable desire? Is it a plain irresistible compulsion? Is it a simple 'curious' feeling? Nagging sense that nothing is right until the instinct is followed up on? Idle whim? Does the dog have the 'feeling' that he can quit any time, or is this like an obsessive/compulsive disorder?
In humans, would obsessive/compulsive disorder be considered an instinct run amok? Something overactive in the ol' brain stem?
Whattaya think?
I can't believe that we've gone on this long without someone claiming I'm a heretic or infidel. That's the plus side of posting on a science forum, I reckon.
Just to put that in context, I was called 'blasphemous' for having created this cartoon: http://comics.com/the_buckets/2008-12-21/
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The one with the manger? I can't tell which speech bubble starts first! Or who is talking.
then how does the instinct present itself to the dog? What prompts him to want to do this? Is it an unstoppable desire? Is it a plain irresistible compulsion? Is it a simple 'curious' feeling?
Does a wild dog do that, or do only domestic/trained dogs do that?
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Yes, the one with the manger. Who is talking and in what order wasn't critical to the humor, only what was being said and in what context.
As for the idea that it's a blasphemous cartoon, any time you do a cartoon that deals directly with people in a religious setting, the newspapers get letters. There are always people that believe that church should always be treated with absolute reverence. I always imagine that those folks are older women who've never raised kids. Don't ask me why, I just do. Same kind of people write to complain when I have the teenager in the strip sticks his tongue out.
Wild dog or domestic? Good question. Never occurred to me. I guess I was thinking of domestic, but I assume that wild dogs track by scent, too.
Speaking of which, here's my favorite aphorism (because I made it up, so far as I know) "The assumptions you don't know you're making do you the most harm."
So I was assuming that all dogs follow scents, when really I have no idea. In fact, I'm assuming all kinds of crazy stuff with this theory.
Let's pick it apart some more and see what it really means!
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but I assume that wild dogs track by scent, too.
I think they're just hungry and its a way to look for food, i.e, tracking down other animals.
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Exactly.
So where does the behavior come from? Is it hard-wired in the brains of canids? Or is it learned behavior, from seeing other dogs? Or is it such a simple task that it occurs to every dog everywhere?
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Is it hard-wired in the brains of canids? Or is it such a simple task that it occurs to every dog everywhere?
I am inclined to think so.
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Hm... I wasn't thinking of those two things as the same. I figured that a hard-wired action was an instinct, but a task being so simple that any dog would stumble on it was somehow a lucky chance of environment or something.
Trying to point that out, though, I've begun to wonder- if a behavior is that easy to 'invent' for every dog, maybe it's an aspect of instinct anyhow.
Or were you trying to say something else? That there's no reason that dogs couldn't all stumble on the idea of following scents to food, and that a dog that didn't do so wouldn't necessarily be at a disadvantage. Instinct need not be involved if there's a behavior that dogs just 'do' because it's effective?
This IS getting entertaining, isn't it?
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I am afraid your usage of vocabulary is very perplexing, thus I cannot fully grasp what you are trying to say.
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What is emotive and what is instinctive?
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I think I've stretched to my limit, and I'm not being very clear. I never considered this idea in such depth before.
In that last post, I wasn't talking about 'emotive' at all. Your good questions have me trying to define what might be instinctive and what might not be, now.
Like I said, it's very entertaining. And, like I've said before, I'm in way over my head here, so I'm just merrily speculating.
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Greg asked the Naked Scientists:
For years, I have assumed that emotions were the instinctive reactions to various stimuli, but lately I've been listening to your podcasts (along with various other sciency ones) and I haven't heard any scientists equate emotion and instinct. How wrong have I been all this time?
What do you think about it now that we've been discussing it?
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Hey! Now THAT's a good question!
I'm sure there are some who see it differently, but to my mind, we haven't discussed anything that refutes the idea that emotions are the way we perceive our own instincts and their various promptings.
It may be more fair to say that the underlying premises of the hypothesis haven't been challenged yet. It may be most fair of all to say that I have no background whatsoever in the subject and I'm way off base in both the underlying premises and the basic hypothesis through my own sheer ignorance.
I'm having fun rolling it around with everyone though, and I certainly have appreciated your input so far, Chemistry4me. I wish we could get some folks with neurological or biological or biophysiological or whatever the proper educational/professional category it is to comment here. It would be really helpful to have someone post who has a current working knowledge of the subject, it's structure, and the correct vocabulary. I await future Naked Scientist podcasts with excitement and trepidation. Excitement because we'll get to learn something new, but trepidation because this discussion thread will bite the dust.
What about you? Any of your underlying premises been challenged?
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What about you? Any of your underlying premises been challenged?
Well, I am not sure that I've had an underlying premises to begin with!
Do you think that the answer to your question "do emotions equate to instincts" is a definite no or yes (if you had to choose one)?
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Not have a set of underlying premises? That sounds like an assumption you don't know you're making. (see previous posts for my favorite aphorism)
I have no idea whether there could be a definite 'yes' or 'no' answer. Like I said, I have no background in the field. There can easily be some freshman or sophomore information that completely negates me even asking such a ridiculous question and I wouldn't have the slightest idea. My degree is in Graphic Design. And while writing and drawing cartoons forces one to become a careful observer of human behavior, it doesn't earn anyone an education in brain function. Even if the question is valid, I'm sure there'll be opinions on both sides- and probably a few in the middle- such is the nature of academia.
If I had to guess, I suppose that it's a crackpot hypothesis. If I had to fantasize, I suppose that it would inspire some behavioral psychologist to write a paper for 'Nature'.
Mostly, I'm wondering- assuming they finally use the question on the podcast- what field the answer will come from.
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Yes, I think that my brain is running out of ideas, fast. I think a mere mortal like me will never be able to explain and understand such things [:)]. But that's the reason why I'm here: to learn things [:)]
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Well, emotions are running high here in the U.S., what with an incoming president saying lots of inspiring things.
Knowing that, I'm not sure what kind of instinctive prompting might be at work to produce the soaring elation of his supporters or the simmering fear of his detractors- some kind of 'them' and 'us' satisfaction based on feeling 'at home' within the group in power? An emotion of happiness because one senses oneself rising in the pecking order versus an emotion of discomfort when one feels that his or her place in the pecking order is dropping? I have no idea. Fun to speculate, though.
I had been kicking around the idea of again examining 'anger' and 'fear' as an emotional reaction to having your 'fight or flight' instinct triggered, but I'll leave that to you to speculate on positively or negatively, as you wish. What do you think?
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I think anger is an emotion, definitely. But fear, I am not so sure... I guess if you were to 'fight' you could be angry and if you were to 'flight' it would be because you feared something, right? However, can't you also 'fight' and be fearful at the same time? Is fear not what drives you during times of stress? Whereas I doubt you would be 'flighting' in anger, I see no reason to. Do you?
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Good point, though I may not be getting your entire meaning.
I heard something recently that would have me re-evaluating parts of the theory. A historian was commenting that the Australian Aborigines and the North and South American Native peoples (that he split into three groups by different arrival times) didn't have cultures with the sorts of pecking order that I was taking for granted as an instinctive human behavior. That's the sort of lynchpin information that would help me give a definite 'yes' or 'no' to the original question I posed. If behavior that I assumed was instinctive turns out to be cultural, then emotions wouldn't be tied inextricably to instinct, but possibly to culture.
Of course, it might be argued that various cultures would express different instincts in different ways, and that differences in culture might in fact stem from differences in core instinctive drives, but I wouldn't argue for or against that. I thought my little idea was plenty big enough. Trying to tie Culture, Expression of genetic code, and instinct all together will take a braver soul than I, and it'd take a few university degrees, too, I bet.
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So you think there might be another spanner in the works, well, we'll see how it goes. *sigh*
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An article from Cornell University suggests that as we grow old and loose our cognitive ability that we can function on our emotions or gut feelings.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Jan09/Sr.decisions.sl.ar.html
I believe that this indicates that feelings are programmed throughout our lives, whereas we are pre-programmed or born with instincts.
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Interesting article, thanks alansm. [:)]
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I'm glad I finally made time to check back in! I haven't taken the time to read the article, but it looks like the sort of thing I was hoping for when I first asked the question.
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So my take would be that we start with instincts as babies, but very soon we will be able to reason. Even before we have words we use reason, as tests done with babies and 'gravity' shows. They just took some magnets, or something alike, on to a big board, one in front and one at the back, if I now remember rightly. Then they moved the magnets the correct way for 'gravity' to show, while measuring the eye movements of the babies. Next time they changed the trajectory to something not following 'gravity', and the babies eyes still moved the way they expected the 'thing' to fall according to 'gravity'. This can be seen as a 'instinct', but my and the experimentalists guess was that its a basic form of logic reasoning, coming forward at a early age.
There must be things like instincts but how they come to be I don't know, but emotions grows of growing up, some people f ex, have an inability in putting themselves in another persons shoes, so to speak, just like young kids have in the sandbox. Emotions its a part of us that evolves with understanding and being able to relate ourselves to others and situations, It's a changeable part of our human behavior, whilst instincts seem to so be much deeper embedded. in our so called 'reptile brain' perhaps?
It would be very interesting knowing what mechanism it is that may transfer instincts in us and all animals. And yes, I believe that animals, just as those babies have a logic of their own, as well as the same emotions as we present. That we don't want to look at them that way is a result of us using theme as thoughtless commodity, slaughtered for our needs. If you look at 'primitive' hunters they often had, and perhaps still have, a great respect for those animals life, having rituals explaining how their needs had to go before the animals. We don't have that anymore, we lost that contact with the life force surrounding us, and I do see that as a loss.
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thank you very much
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You are welcome.