What is Instinct?

[MyM]

Ears, touch, taste. We have more then sight for learning. How does the blind at birth learn?

Edit: have you read the dialogue I linked in my OP? It gives insight into where I'm coming from.

Yes I read it lol kinda long too kinda got the idea the child was not a child at the end lol ... but am talking about the cat they are not "taught" what to do when they give birth....teaching it to go to the litter box, to play catch with it, to follow you, these things are learned behaviors, but to teach a cat what to do when it gives birth, impossible for it to be learned. It is totally instinctive. Just like lions know where to kill at the jugular veins. It's just there.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

Read the paper I posted friends!

It touches on this a little bit. It's only a 19 page dialogue. Between scientist father and his daughter.

@Guitar's Cry , @MyM , @MrIntelligentDesign

You posted a paper?

 

[The Hammer]

Yes I read it lol kinda long too kinda got the idea the child was not a child at the end lol ... but am talking about the cat they are not "taught" what to do when they give birth....teaching it to go to the litter box, to play catch with it, to follow you, these things are learned behaviors, but to teach a cat what to do when it gives birth, impossible for it to be learned. It is totally instinctive. Just like lions know where to kill at the jugular veins. It's just there.

And if this knowledge is passed down through the genes, then is this not another way of knowing? Of learning?

Edit: Yeah it's a bit of a long read. And I am sure the daughter is just a stand in for an inexperienced querent.

 

[The Hammer]

You posted a paper?

Yup

 

[MyM]

And if this knowledge is passed down through the genes, then is this not another way of knowing? Of learning?

Edit: Yeah it's a bit of a long read. And I am sure the daughter is just a stand in for an inexperienced querent.

knowledge again....how can one obtain knowledge in a cat's experience? passed down through genes? It's got to be instinctive because genes are what the cat is made up of....instincts are what they do. You cannot teach a cat on the techniques of cat-birthing and they don't teach their young to do it. Cats don't know better to learn like that. Even their young male cats mate with the mother....it's just instinctive.

 

[The Hammer]

knowledge again....how can one obtain knowledge in a cat's experience? passed down through genes? It's got to be instinctive because genes are what the cat is made up of....instincts are what they do. You cannot teach a cat on the techniques of cat-birthing and they don't teach their young to do it. Cats don't know better to learn like that. Even their young male cats mate with the mother....it's just instinctive.

"Instinct" is just another box, a label. If knowledge, what you call instinct, is passed down through the genes; it's just another way of learning, of knowing.

 

[MyM]

"Instinct" is just another box, a label. If knowledge, what you call instinct, is passed down through the genes; it's just another way of learning, of knowing.

It is instinct. Of course it is going to be labeled INSTINCT. Knowing is instinctive but you cannot teach a cat to "know" how to give birth so therefore it is 100% instinctive.

Learned behaviors are different than instinctive behaviors. You can teach and show and then there is the already known.

 

[The Hammer]

Learned behaviors are different than instinctive behaviors. You can teach and show and then there is the already known.

I get that. But I disagree. Knowledge = Learning. Whether passed down genetically, or through social interaction.

And learning, means that animals make rational and sentient decisions.

Instinct is a metaphor for just one other way of knowing.

All ways of knowing is founded on metaphor. Just like dreams are metaphors. And life bears much semblance to a dream.

 

[MyM]

I get that. But I disagree. Knowledge = Learning. Whether passed down genetically, or through social interaction.

And learning, means that animals make rational and sentient decisions.

Instinct is a metaphor for just one other way of knowing.

All ways of knowing is founded on metaphor. Just like dreams are metaphors. And life bears much semblance to a dream.

A metaphor is a figure of speech, representing or symbolizing something. How can an INSTINCTIVE BEHAVOR be a figure of that. It doesn't represent a speech. It isn't just a "knowing" part of a knowledgeable sentence. It is something that IS DONE...an action.

Life isn't a dream because you are awake living it. Dreams happen when you sleep. (if you're talking in that sense). A person can have a dream goal-figure to work towards and then it is still considered an action goal so it cannot be a metaphor. (to me)

Metaphors came after one trying to explain things by twisting things into their own imaginations. Instinctive behaviors have been around since beginning of time Bears hibernate...that is instinctive....it's not a metaphor of knowing. It is a fact that they KNOW and ACT on their own instincts and they know exactly how to do it.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

Yup

I'll check it out when I get to a computer.

 

[Aupmanyav]

I am talking the instinctive not learned.

My contention is that it is not always instinct.