Hello, I am one of those resident antinatalist BC was talking about. Welcome to the forum. I'm not sure how much "press" the concept would get if put in the dictionary, but I guess it's worth a try. I suggest you read up on some past conversations and add some unique topics of your own. What are your beliefs about antinatalism. Are you more of a consequentialist, negative utilitarian, Schopenhauerean variety? Do you agree with Benatar's arguments exactly as he states them or do you have your own critiques while still agreeing with his main arguments? Is it strictly contingent suffering you would like to stop (i.e. most painful experiences) or do you allow for a more subtle "structural suffering" in your worldview whereby there is a sort of lack and instrumental nature to existence?

What is the purpose of boredom? Why is it such a universal emotion? — CuddlyHedgehog

Yes, boredom is a way of discovering the inherent lack behind the facade of there having somewhere to be, something to do, etc. I wrote this a while back: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/742/is-boredom-more-significant-than-other-emotions/p1

So they will undercut their own sales? Fat chance. There are toilets more regulated than this.

This may fit better with the conversation already taking place here:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/2886/instinct-vs-cultural-learning-in-humans/p1

Does it actually feel the same? And is there a balance of the two that feels even better?

You seem to be presuming your conclusions again. What you say does not tally with either psychological science or my own experience.

But perhaps you have proved the case for you? — apokrisis

This was meant as metaphorical bookends to the extremes. It encompasses all viewpoints from one extreme to the other, not presenting a stark dichotomy.

I also think this emphasis on psychological science puts the cart before the horse. The person has to be born first. Someone chose to have the new person who then has to follow this treadmill of psychologically-defined regimen which in itself does not provide one path to some salvation- simply providing more things for people to do to fill their day (e.g. exercise, hobbies, flow activities, etc. etc.). This doesn't answer the existential riddle. Utilitarian calculus counting is not life's salvation to the problem of instrumental nature of existence. If anything, it enhances its banality in the very nature of its utilitarian counting. The philosophy of the proper, "well-adjusted" middle class gent.

Sounds a pretty minimal idea of a life to me.

You reduce living to some kind of consumptive activity. You seem to see no role for creation, challenge and variety.

So again you assume your conclusions by speaking of life in as meaningless a way as you can imagine. Rhetoric 101. — apokrisis

Nay, it seems like you are accusing me of what I think you are proposing. This very utilitarian "science of happiness" is the epitome of the consumptive behavior. As long as we use words like "discovery", "over coming challenges" and "achievement" we can provide the ruse for the young folk that they have something they need to do, look forward, a reason why being matters. This distracts from the very philosophical grappling that takes place.

Utopia is already the wrong answer. Perhaps the dichotomies of heaven and hell, good and evil, just don't apply to nature. Your frame of reference is already wrong. — apokrisis

That's not my frame of reference, those other other peoples. If you read carefully, I was saying I was questioning other people's use of these terms because indeed, these are non-existent, perhaps reified, unexamined terms.

Don't forget experience -- another factor in us being who we individually are. — Bitter Crank

Yeah that's what I meant by linguistic-conceptual as that is the preconditions for which humans usually experience the world and integrate his/her personality from environmental interaction.

Yes, that is the point. Personally I like the whales or maybe the highest form of life, the great Methusalah tree. Now that's living. — Rich

Funny how we are admire things that we are not- what looks like simpler ways of life. Lives comprised mainly of instinct or just growth in the case of plants. Whatever seems to diminish the kingdom of self-awareness it seems. As E.M. Cioran said bitingly: “Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on.

Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.”

Who knows what they may be thinking? Probably nothing like humans and so what? They may have evolved beyond humans and just enjoying life. — Rich

Hey, in a way I agree with you. To have a bird's life.

Is it that difficult? If evolutionary logic defines what is natural, then doing something contrary to that logic lacks a natural justification. You would have to explain why the choice - as a general one you advocate for a whole species - is not merely possible but somehow ethically cogent. — apokrisis

I mean this sounds like some modern Natural Law Aquinas theory. Natural justification? You are putting the cart before the horse. Humans can have a range of thoughts, actions, and beliefs. If humans can do it, believe it, or think it, then that is something that this species can do, and is ergo natural.

Yeah sure. If that is your choice, then who cares. The breeders win in the end. — apokrisis

I guess if you want to get into it, then there is the idea of counter-factual outcomes- something I know you appreciate. A child that could have been born but didn't, is a true statement in the real world. An outcome with an alternative outcome is something that exists in this world. Whether or not there is a comprehensive species-wide outcome of zero is not relevant here. That is something you are asserting into the argument that was never there- at least from what I am personally arguing (as opposed to perhaps consequentialist-antinatalists or something like that).

OK. Then that is a change of tune. Great. You are not against procreation itself, you are against a social system with poor general outcomes.

Who could disagree there? — apokrisis

Sort of, it is a system that seems to promote the distractions from such existential questions. However, I think people will start to question things more and are doing so. Why are we doing anything is a great place to start. All possibilities become no possibilities... The do nothing no-goodnik or the do-everything-over-achiever. It's all the same.. what is it all about.. The Nietzschean coke-addled.. mountain-climbing, socialite debonair extremist- the eternally reposed, ascetic monk sitting on the mountain.

Well it probably is inevitable. But still, at least recognising the true nature of the situation gives a possibility of choosing a different path.

Or more pragmatically, if you view things as already fated by nature, you can make your own life plans accordingly. — apokrisis

Funny you say that, because that goes the same with procreation. It probably is inevitable but could be different path..

As far as fated by nature, what matters is that we survive/maintain our comfort levels/get bored and need entertainment. Any self-reflecting human with existential curiosity looks at this and wonders, what the hell for.. We know achievement happens, but are platitudes of "exploring opportunities and achievements" really going to be the best we are going to do for the almighty answer for this? I've asked people in other threads to explain Platonic perfection, what a utopia looks like, what does completeness look like, etc. No one usually has a good answer. It is all striving because we are born and can't do otherwise. Well, why cause the striving? It goes beyond utilitarian calculus, and platitudes. It goes to a more profound look at things- one of a holistic perspective.

I have no idea what evidence you have to conclude this. — Rich

I guess I cannot show you the mind of other animals, but based on their behavior and the fact that they lack linguistic ability- I can feel confident saying that other animals don't really reflect very much on why they are alive or the value of existence, or other existential questions.

Now it is the case that being conceptual creatures, we have progressed to the point where even our own existence - individually, or collectively - becomes something we can question the value of. — apokrisis

Yes, a major point- humans can do this and are the only Earthly animals to do this.

The question now is have they become unstuck in some meaningful fashion. Have we become so enlightened about certain metaphysical facts that we should volunteer to strike ourselves from the evolutionary record? If that is your case, then present the argument. — apokrisis

Can you clarify what you are trying to say? I see you have some finer point, but it is layered in this quasi-rhetorical questioning. Do you mean to ask whether we as humans can reflect on our own existence, find it wanting, and decide not to continue procreating? In that case, indeed we can do that on an individual level. Of course, my argument all along is not everyone will stop procreating, but rather to get people to question the ends of their own existence, what they are living for in the first place, and to recognize certain aspects of existence- instrumental nature, striving-for-no-ends, etc. These are concepts that indeed are very human due to their self-reflective nature.

You seem to propose some ends- that of an organismic equilibrium (after perhaps "corrections" of extinction) and vaguely have to do with how energy acts and dissipates. But how is seeing humans as acting a way that is part of this super-organism (i.e. cannot help but lead towards some telos) not simply being a self-fulfilling prophecy? In fact, by somehow promoting grandiose notions of participating in the super-organism, this seems more Romantic than many other philosophies you slap with that label. If it is inevitable that the super-organism acts a certain way, then there is nothing we can do, that we are bound to reach some equilibrium that is not of our conscious choosing... thus doing nothing, you are then choosing something and thus fulfilling a self-fulfilling prophecy.. acting as though there are no choices when there clearly are.. see that?

But trying to both draw a sharp line between instinctive and encultured behaviour in a way that denies a historic continuity of evolutionary logic is a waste of time. Bad philosophy from the get go.

If you want to argue for the legitimacy of anti-evolutionary ethics, then that is what you should stick to as the focus. — apokrisis

I don't even know what that means "anti-evolutionary ethics". We can choose not to procreate. That in itself is obvious.

Materialism adopts the language and rhetoric of philosophy, but its conclusions are strictly anti-philosophical. — Wayfarer

Can you elaborate on this? Also, I don't necessarily agree with a pure neo-Darwinian view of evolution. There are often exaptations that are not selected for and this is especially so in the wide ranging cultural traits humans possess. Stability matters more here. Is there an equilibrium where the species is surviving- whether genetically selected or through more holistic materialist means.

Given the tools of molecular decoding, we can see that genes direct a significant portion of behaviors. Twin studies show how identical twins who were separated early on, developed remarkably similar lives. Genes presumably carry instincts, along with physical characteristics, in animals (in which we are grouped). — Bitter Crank

That brings up a point about personality. What is personality? How is it constructed? How much of it is genes versus environment? How does having such individual personalities affected by things like mental illness or tendencies make humans different than other animals? Granted, chimps,dolphins, and our pets seem to have their own personalities in terms of moodiness, affection, adventurousness, etc. but there seems to be a difference not only in degree but in type as to how human personalities are constructed from linguistic-conceptual cues combined with genetic predispositions.

Humans, after all, are born helpless; unlike other primates, a human baby can’t even cling to mother and has to be nursed for some years before becoming mobile. And extra-somatic learning occupies around 18 years for humans, which exceeds the entire lifespan of many other creatures. — Wayfarer

Good point. The result of having less built-in mechanisms for the baby to survive is that it has more time to enculturate cultural ways of survival via its linguistic-conceptual developing brain.

That is one reason why I think that the ‘biologism’ or biological reductionism that is so common today sells the human species short. It wants to argue that humans are ultimately understandable in biological terms - that we’re ‘just animals’, as has already been argued at least once in this thread. I think part of the motivation for that, is that we’re not given the tools to imagine ourselves as something more than animals - after all, what more could there be? Furthermore, it saves us a lot of existential anxiety, trying to ask such an open-ended question. Perhaps I’m being overly polemical in saying that, but it’s a serious point. — Wayfarer

I think there may be an inability here to see the vast difference between an animal that survives through a very large percentage by cultural learning and conceptual thinking versus other animals which use mostly instinct (with some propensities for limited associative learning or problem solving). There is a tendency for "just so" stories. Everything becomes an instinct rather than constructed via the virtual world of concept formation. We have to be careful what to delineate as a true instinct and what is culturally-linguistically based in our behaviors and habit-formations. We are so ready to place ourselves as "just another animal" that we often overlook the complicated way that linguistic-minds shape us. Let me add, I am very much a naturalist in terms of science essentially and materialist explanations are what I see to be the best structures of explanation. However, I don't jump the gun in explanations that reduce assumed instinctual behavior into instinct when in fact, it may just be a cultural trope that is so embedded and assumed, it seems like instinct.

Besides language, general cultural features such as hierarchy-formation, domination of individuals and groups over other individuals and groups, story-telling (composing narratives out of experience), eating together, music (nothing specific, just the employment of music and rhythmic motion (dance) in some form, religious behaviors (again, nothing specific), and so on all demonstrate instinct. — Bitter Crank

Can't it be argued that hierarchy formation is either cultural or circumstantial and not so much instinct? For example, if you are in a wilderness survival situation, and there is someone present with the most wilderness survival-craft, wouldn't he be the natural leader due to his abilities? That's not so much instinct as much as a rational choice. In groups of school age children, often the biggest and most aggressive kids become the leaders. Or perhaps the most charismatic and imaginative. However, again, that is simply rational analysis. Who thinks of the best play activities? Who is going to get their way with physical force? Who has the greatest abilities? Well, it would be rational to pick ones in terms of maintaining self-interest.

Story-telling can simply be a byproduct of language. People like to be entertained with narratives all very much linguistic-cultural based. Music perhaps is an instinct, but it would be an instinct like language is an instinct and a byproduct of brain that can recognize patterns and make connections between pitches and tone but also it is very much a learned behavior as far as producing the music- even just by trial and error and observation of other people playing and dancing (which almost always has to be in the equation).

Religious behaviors may just be a case of more primitive ways to understand the world, but it also strengthened group cohesion and tribal stability. This doesn't seem instinctual as much as culturally utilitarian.

I have not been robbed at gunpoint any other time, and I likely never again will. Therefore, my unlearned responses to being robbed at gunpoint will never become habit. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Yeah but you knew certain responses like "danger" because you know what a gun can do. That is a cultural response. You've learned through media, stories, movies, etc. what can happen with the gun. A gun waved at a chimp, probably won't have any if at all. The chimp would simply have to associate it with a dangerous incident previously- not from cultural transmission. Of course, one can argue that chimps teach each other different calls for their various dangerous situations, but this may be more a 1-1 ratio of stimulus response. They cannot help but respond to an enemy. It is still more inbuilt than a the vast landscape of possibilities in the human thought process.

I do not know if it is due to ignorance or dishonesty, but one that a lot of people really love to completely attribute to "nature" is sexual attitudes and actions. I see from the opposite pole: things like arousal are involuntary biological responses, but probably 99% of "sex" is cultural. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I think you may be right here, but maybe you can elaborate.

I fail to see how this Skinnerian analysis of behavior is accurate. One can say, based on these sentiments, that people who are depressed will remain depressed because it is an instinctual trait of human beings to become depressed. Yet, people come out of depression... — Posty McPostface

Was this response for me or BC?

baby exposed to human speech.. It WILL learn the language it is exposed to whether it likes it or not. It might have preferred to learn Parisian French, but if it is exposed to Brooklyn Yiddish, that is what it will learn. We are compelled by instinct or we are primed, or it just happens automatically to learn language. The way our brain works is determined by genes. Instinct. — Bitter Crank

Yes, I agree that language is an instinct for humans. We can start learning it within the first two years. But as I said to another poster, "Human behavior isn't necessarily specialized for survival. After we learn to do things like walk on our two legs, and learn primary language, the learning process is very generalized and malleable. There are no fixed learning specializations. They are culturally driven preferences the community decides to expose the child to."

Babies seem to be born with very, very basic ideas about the way the world works. A prime demonstration of this is showing a baby a balloon filled with ordinary air. Let go of the ball and the baby smiles. Present the baby with a ballon filled with helium (or better, hydrogen gas about ready to explode spontaneously), let go, and the balloon rises to the ceiling. The baby is shocked. SHOCKED! It is surprised because the rising balloon violates it's basic expectation of the way the world works. — Bitter Crank

Granted, I'll give you the expectation for things not to fly can be considered an instinct. That still may be learning, just limited experience. Associative learning is the way most animals learn, as far as I know.

Probably not. Birds' survival depends on a lot of instinct and some learning. — Bitter Crank

I agree. However, the percentage of learning in other animals is much lower compared to instinctual behaviors. A bird may learn its chirps from other birds, but it can't help but chirp it seems. It can't help but build its nest. It can't help but feed its young. It can't help but to do certain behaviors based on stimulus to environment and almost always the same behaviors.

Dogs that are in laboratory situations where they get rewarded for xyz behavior and can observer the other dogs doing the same thing, will stop cooperating if they do not receive a reward and other dogs do. Primates in a similar situation will stop cooperating if the quality of their rewards are deficient--like getting a piece of lettuce instead a slice of apple. Either there is an instinct for fairness, or the lab animals are capable of seeing futility. What's the point of cooperating if I am not going to get a reward? — Bitter Crank

I'll grant certain associative learning. Dogs are especially bred to have associative learning help shape their behavior. That is how its species developed along with man- the already present tendencies of a social pack animal combined with the ability to use associative learning more effectively until it was completely domesticated. No doubt associative learning can take place and perhaps even lead to a sort of recognition of fairness. Does this mean we have an instinct for fairness? Perhaps.

Most animals have to learn certain things; there is variability among animals--not all worker bees are equally good at their tasks). Squirrels that aren't good at finding their buried food once it gets cold tend to starve. — Bitter Crank

Okay, variable rates of survival abilities.. However, those abilities are largely instinctual (finding the acorn, building the hive, etc.).

I don't think dogs are born to summon assistance from people, but they do. Perhaps it has something to do with their instinctive gaze-following behavior. Dogs are one of the few animals that follow the human gaze. Dogs learn that if they want something that is inaccessible (the ball under the couch), they can get a person to fetch it for them by directing the persons' gaze to the ball under the couch. Dogs engage in unrelenting staring to alert us to their wishes. Once you stop reading and look at them, they will indicate (physically, of course) whether their food is overdue or that they want to go outside (to shit/piss/bark/wander aimlessly around). — Bitter Crank

That is basically instinct shaped by domestication.

Sex is mostly instinctive. Did you have to read a book to learn how to jack off? I hope not. Two dim teenagers can figure out how to have sex the first time without previous coaching. (Prior coaching is hard to avoid these days.) There is no grand design to a good share of the world's many billions of pregnancies. Arousal ----> insertion ----> ejaculation ----> sperm meets egg ----> conception ----> VOILA another baby on the way. It doesn't take any long-range planning (not a bad idea, it just isn't required). — Bitter Crank

I have granted that sexual gratification and the desire for pleasure in general is instinctive.

I'm not sure about "decoupling" (what's this?) — Caldwell

What is the narrative for how instincts (fixed behaviors) diminished in favor of largely cultural learning. This must have been a challenging transformation that took place over millions of years.

Pre-linguistic humans had the instinct of 'force' and how to use it. Remember that cave men would break animal bones by pounding -- they knew how to get the meat inside. How did they know that weight plus application of force equaled deconstruction. (And think about how early ideas of turning plants into powder to make something else out of them -- making a paste, a dough, collecting yeast from the air). You've seen birds take a nut and fly high and drop the nut to break its shell. That's instinct. — Caldwell

That is part of the complicated narrative of how humans got from innate behaviors and fixed specialized learning to more complex learning. Perhaps you have an interesting theory regarding this change over time.

Just because a bird flies south for the winter doesn't mean that it doesn't 'think' it is doing that of its own accord. Just because a human thinks it has free will doesn't mean it does. — MonfortS26

Even if there is no free will, humans still have many options and preferences we can select from.

Is the process of learning in humans any different?? Do humans deliberately learn?? They may be able to deliberately choose what to learn, but the process of learning is mostly intuitive/instinctual in humans as well as animals. — MonfortS26

I'm talking from the parents/community perspective. It's not an instinct to teach. It is a cultural preference that is deemed necessary for proper enculturation of the child for survival. It is instinctive to pickup and learn a primary language, I will agree with that.

Is this any different from humans learning how to be good parents?? Is there any evidence to suggest that this is the only place that chimps learn how to be good parents?? That they have no thought process themselves?? And do you have any evidence that chimp mothers are genetically incapable of abandoning their offspring??

I don't have evidence that chimps can abandon offspring, but if it does, I'm not sure if it is a choice as much as the pre-programming not working as it should.

Are there any behaviors that humans learn that aren't either specialized for survival or derived from behaviors that are?

Human behavior isn't necessarily specialized for survival. After we learn to do things like walk on our two legs, and learn primary language, the learning process is very generalized and malleable. There are no fixed learning specializations. They are culturally driven preferences the community decides to expose the child to.

Is this the product of instinct or something else?

I think picking up language is an instinct yes. But this is where it ends. The Brocas and Wernickes regions makes it a specialization in humans.

Are desires not instinctual?? are concepts necessary for desires to exist?? Would a person that was raised in an environment without an existing language be unable to desire?? In my opinion, it seems more likely that desires are all instinctual and we use concepts to be able to communicate them to other people and ourselves, and the adaptation to a language is in itself instinctual.

This is the heart of the difference between the two views. I don't think specific desires (e.g. "I want to raise a child) are pre-linguistic. Rather, if there is no language, there are no desires outside very basic drives for warmth, not being hungry, and a preference for pleasure.

The only way I could think of to prove that SOME desires are separate from culture would be to perform an experiment on humans to test what would happen if you raised someone in an environment without language or culture, and that would be deeply unethical.

I agree. That is why this is still largely speculative and up for philosophical debate.

Couldn't it be instinctual for the culture to transmit that information??

But my argument is that cultural preferences cannot arise pre-language. The drive for specific preferences comes after a personality is constructed via environmental interaction with cultural learning..

You believe in free will don't you?

Not in animals which have fixed instincts.

Yes our ability to learn is improved by our ability to use language, couldn't that be viewed as an instinctual evolutionary advantage? Can you really call the human thought process anything but instinctual???

I think that learning a language and concept formation is instinctual but our preferences and desires after this are not riding on some pre-linguistic instinctual desires. I think pop-cultural evolutionary psychology wants to reduce cultural learning to some more primary instinct, and is overmining the concept.

These aren't just some basic, uninteresting drives. They are behavior that make up the vast amount of our existence. — Rich

Yeah, but would you call that instinct? I think it is more reflexes and automatic behaviors. Instinct to me is a bit more complex fixed behavior, but not complex learning.

You have no evidence of this? How did you arrive at this. Was it actual observations or biases formed during the educational process. Maybe biases are instinctual? — Rich

I guess my evidence is that animals don't just reject learning something. Animals can't say, "hey, I'm going to sit this learning stuff out". Preferences are fixed.

Observe all of the actions that your body is doing all the time "automatically" such as the processes of eating, breathing, reacting,

and thinking. They can't and shouldn't be ignored simply because they are "automatic". — Rich

But I already recognized there are some basic drives that are indeed baked into the equations. Autonomic nervous systems like heartbeat and breathing, I wouldn't even describe as instinct, but I guess you can lump it in, it wouldn't change much to the argument. The main point is that where almost all behaviors of animals are instinctual, they are not so in humans- even ones we folk-psychologize (e.g. like nurturing instinct).

Not at all. The learning process is exactly the same. — Rich

Not exactly. I also recognized that animals learn too- but much of their learning is also innate in that they cannot but "help" but learn. There is no decision, or alternatives. The learning itself is specialized (i.e. one particular specialized behavior) and the learning cannot be helped. Humans on the other hand can learn a wide-variety of subjects and can choose what, where, and how to learn. It is not fixed. The content is wide and varied due to ability for conceptual transmission via language.

If one fully analyzes the entire range of behavior of humans one quickly comes to the conclusion that most everything we do is instinctual (I prefer to think of it as memory from the past). This would include every aspect associated with movement, emotions, feelings, biological processes, sensing, as well as the thinking process itself. All of this, habitual in nature, prerequisite for any new behavioral formation such as throwing a baseball or using chopsticks. That some of us may find learning to throw a baseball easier than others, is an interesting side observation which provides clues about the nature of instincts, habits, and their relationship to memory. — Rich

I would think this is the opposite of instinct. This is learned behavior, and not the kind where we just can't "help" but learn, but ones where the culture/family/community transmits information and instruction. Thus, there is choice involved insofar as the culture is dictating what is to be learned.

As for animals or insects, I have no idea how they communicate but for sure they are learning and forming new habits also all the time. Bed bugs seem to be exceptionally good at this. — Rich

And this would be instinctual for sure.

The attainment of a goal or desire, Schopenhauer continues, results in satisfaction, whereas the frustration of such attainment results in suffering. Since existence is marked by want or deficiency, and since satisfaction of this want is unsustainable, existence is characterized by suffering. This conclusion holds for all of nature, including inanimate natures, insofar as they are at essence will. However, suffering is more conspicuous in the life of human beings because of their intellectual capacities. Rather than serving as a relief from suffering, the intellect of human beings brings home their suffering with greater clarity and consciousness. Even with the use of reason, human beings can in no way alter the degree of misery we experience; indeed, reason only magnifies the degree to which we suffer. Thus all the ordinary pursuits of mankind are not only fruitless but also illusory insofar as they are oriented toward satisfying an insatiable, blind will. — Schopenhauer article from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Question: can people be dynamic and attain "complete harmony and absence of discord"? As people change, discover new things, try out new approaches, abandon old approaches, etc. opportunities for discord arise. How does we attain perfect harmony and still allow for change? Must behavior become static? — Bitter Crank

BC has a good question. Essentially, what is this utopia? Is it political harmony, personal harmony? Just like the Platonic forms, what is this perfection and what happens when you achieve it? The big existential elephant in the room is no one knows what the hell they are doing anything for. In the West, achievement (in economic activities, in hobbies, etc.) is a de facto answer. Don't stop to think about why the need to achieve, that's when the elephant appears quite starkly. You achieve, and then you need to achieve some more. Striving but for no particular goal. We exist so have to survive and entertain ourselves.

trout pouts — apokrisis

It's like plastic tits, fake bums and trout pouts. You can blame modern culture for amplifying instinctual signals, but not for creating them. — apokrisis

Yet some of what may be considered sexually appealing, may vary based on time period and culture.

Huh? I am always explicit on the telos.

What we are doing is the unthinking expression of the thermodynamic imperative. We find all this fossil fuel just sitting in the dirt. We can't help just building a great big bonfire out of it.

If we were thinking - and hoping to progress - we would realise that the fossil fuels are driving us. We are blindly responding to their open invitation. If we had any real utopian dreams, we would get back to living off the solar flux. Or waiting until we had the technical means for something actually long-term sustainable, like perhaps fusion power. — apokrisis

Ok, so extinction probably. What I mean to say about your telos, is that you deem the group-dynamic at play as good. You are essentially Hegelian via Peirce- instead of the State as the Absolute, it is some technological utopia (again, according to you, if we fix our energy dependence problems).

Well I am saying being passive is another choice. And one that relies on a faulty understanding of human nature.

If you complained quietly to yourself, you of course would get no reaction. But instead you post thread after thread with the same self-pitying lament.

To the degree you have some biological depression (brought on by a social situation), then sure you may get sympathy. And advice.

But a few of us may be here just to discuss actual philosophy. So a BS argument then deserves a good kicking. No apologies or excuses required. — apokrisis

Hey you can be an ahole even if I extend an olive branch, no skin off my back. That's pretty much what I expect from you. I'm just saying the repetitive, absurd nature is there to be discovered. The contingent suffering of being born with this or that disease, or encountering this or that situation, also befalls everyone. Is there a reason why we need to bring more people into the world? What reason you provide never finds an settling answer. So you will appeal to biology and make the false analogy to other animals who cannot help but reproduce and have no existential valuations. Thus, the trope about instinctual to reproduce, while not being the reason for reproduction, becomes one through cultural bolstering. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is theorised that the human shift towards the extreme K strategy end of the mating spectrum - the heavy investment required to being able to raise babies born neurally half-baked and utterly helpless - meant that something had to change to foster strong pair-bondings. Dads had to be given a biological incentive to stick around with the mum.

So the suppression of fertility signals was a neat trick. A male wouldn't know when a female was in heat. There wouldn't be the fighting over the right to mate, and instead the strategy would be to stick close with a female and bond by mating continuously. Females of course still might feel sexier at certain times of the month and go do a little cheating - playing the evolutionary game to their own advantage.

So yeah. Check the literature and all these kinds of things have been well debated. — apokrisis

Correct in terms of being well-debated. The version you give is one version, but as you know there are multiple versions for the origins of the suppression of fertility signals. You (I'd assume) want to avoid as much as I a "just so" story because it sounds plausible. It might be probable given some creative abductive reasoning, but it is not necessarily the factor you describe. It could also be a case of multiple causation as well.

But then the other side of that is that this aways was the case. We always were being swept along by evolved and successful cultural structures. And the idea that we have an individual choice is a new feature of the contemporary social order. It is an extra wee trick inserted into the game to increase the possibilities of cultural control while also increasing the requisite variety that evolution itself needs to feed off. — apokrisis

Okay, so you recognize that the ability to have more possibilities of thought (due to our lingusitic-cultural architecture) has provided us the ability to reflect on existence itself. Something no other species can do. The exaptation that comes from this is we can also see the absurd nature of living. We can have those existential angst moments and see things as repetitious, meaningless, etc. These are things which evolution did not necessarily provide for, but which is a result nonetheless.

I guess this is what particularly annoys me about anti-natalism. There is this furious change going on right now before all our eyes. It should be fascinating as well as scary. And then we have all this whiney self-absorbed pessimism. — apokrisis

Well, this is the assumption you make that annoys me about your self-group argument. You have an assumed (or hidden) underlying teleology in your theory. The group through dynamics is not just "doing" but somehow "progressing" and this is a value judgement that is inserted in the story you present. Though, I understand you do think that "progress" may lead to "extinction" due to fossil fuel overload (and it is almost too late).

I understand why there might be an actual epidemic of depressive illness. I understand why there might be a feeling of existential helplessness. But those are symptoms of the more general rupture. And philosophy ought to be focused on where that is all heading. We don't know how to judge it because it is still happening. Meanwhile if you are depressed and helpless, seek treatment. Learn how to dig yourself out of your hole as best you can. Don't use philosophy as your excuse for inaction. Don't use it to block the possibility of making your own life better. — apokrisis

Thank you for your concern (or what looks like concern). However, existential thinking is squarely what is most important as it is our day-to-day lives and evaluations of our lives. That to me, fits squarely in philosophy as much as it does in other fields. I am not providing anything groundbreaking in that respect. Everything from ancients until now had some existential component to it. It can share the shelf with logic, epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, and the other areas of philosophy.

I'm not a primatologist, so won't pretend to know all these instincts but a major one I can think of is chimps have estrus and cyclical reproduction. They can't help but have a mating season- which implies they cannot help but have offspring. Also, as we all know behaviors are a mix of innate and learned origins. Certainly the "raising a child instinct" is there in apes. The learned part is exactly how to perfect this. Chimp daughters will watch their mothers and assist in the raising of younger offspring, for example. However, there really is no choice in this learned behavior. The daughter cannot just say "eh, this is not for me". It is very much a strong programming that this must be learned.

Thus there is an innate raising a child instinct along with a learned aspect of how to raise the young, but still seems to not be a choice.

@apokrisis
Hormones influencing behavior, I don't buy as instinct. Instinct, is more of an "if/then" innate behavioral programming. A bird cannot help but build the nest. A bird with chicks may defend the next, a bird without chicks may flee the nest at danger. It cannot help but do this behavior.
Hormones like adrenaline, oxytocin, etc. are globalized chemicals that perhaps influence behavior. That does not count as an "instinct' though it might originate in the limbic system and other older parts of the brain related to instinctual responses. So yes, indeed we inherit those parts of the brain, but the outcome has very little in producing innate behaviors which as I am using the term, is much more specific behavior than globalized emotional responses.

Our directed behavior, however, is linguistic-cultural based. I want to do X because of X reasons. Some reasons are unknown, but is that "instinct"? That could just be as a child there were people who influenced the decision through subtle cues. The unconscious has been discussed and written about. There are things we do that may not have reasons, but are done none the less. Perhaps we make post-facto reasons even for the case. However, these decisions are mediated through linguistic-cultural means.

Just proof that you have proof. The decoupling of instinct from general processing is not an easy story. I'd like to see this.

Well no, the brain don’t work that way at all. — apokrisis

Oh yeah.. please go on.. please explain how concepts are innate.

The default answer on any aspect of psychological being is going to be "both, together, resulting in an integrated whole". — apokrisis

But how is saying "interest in stories of love, hurt, power and status? Stories that really engage their emotions?" not stepping more than a smidge into pop-psychology. How is it that love, hurt, power, status (concepts of linguistic origin) something innate? The human brain works more like generalized processor, with the vehicle of linguistic conceptualization as a way of integrating memories, thoughts, images, etc. How can these concepts said to be pre-linguistic (i.e. innate)? What is innate is conceptual formation, not the concepts themselves.

Not sure if you saw the last question.

What kind of content would you predict that a social species with a big natural interest in social dramas might find gripping? Stories of love, hurt, power and status? Stories that really engage their emotions? — apokrisis

But do these preferences come innate or only after being enculturated in a social setting?

Peirce would be a good metaphysics to oppose a bad metaphysics like Romanticism or reductionism. But ordinary science is quite good enough to argue against your claim concerning a lack of biological instinct in modern humans. — apokrisis

But what you and Pseudonym have both avoided now, is what the innate part "looks like". What does the instinct to watch a movie look like, for example?

Yes. You need it to be axiomatic that it has to be an external pressure rather than an intrinsic desire. Yet with a straight face you then also say you are a social constructionist and a naturalist. But if we are socially constructed as selves, then that "pressure" is simply our true being finding its expression. It comes from the self - as much as there is a self for it to come from.

The confusion kicks in because we are then both biological selves and social selves. The communal self we share at pretty basic level. The phenomenological self we share at an even deeper biological level, but also we don't really share at all beyond our capacities for empathy and mirroring.

So there is complexity here again. But don't let it confuse the argument. If you are focused now on the socially constructed self, then you yourself removed the very grounds to complain about any individual preferences being socially constructed.

...
No. You just said that the psychology of that individual is largely a social construction. Indeed, you have been arguing that Homo sapiens represents a complete rupture with nature in this regard. Instinct was set aside and we became totally cultural creatures.

Anyway, having said the pressures were social and external, now you are switching to talk of them being internal and individual. The next step in your faulty argument is to then say that is why these individual preferences are falsehoods imposed on people unwillingly. As if they had some other more legitimate self - an inalienable soul. Which you will then say they can't have - as Newtonian physics and Darwinian evolution proved God is dead and life can have no purpose or value.

You have trapped yourself in a bind - even if not one of your own making, but one that simply recapitulates some bad socially-constructed metaphysics.

So how will you react to that realisation? Will you again go through each point and find that I unwittingly agree with you despite whatever I might have actually said? — apokrisis

So, I think you are creating a strawman here of the internal/external thing. It is a preference/pressure we internalize from social means. What you cannot do is prove what is an innate instinct and what is socially constructed. Do you think "nurturing" is just an instinct or a tendency or preference that an individual may have towards something that originates by being provided the tools of personality/ego/introspection/environmental interaction that comes from a socially constructed mind? Again, my desire to watch a movie- is that an innate desire? No its generated via a linguistic-brain that integrates concepts. As you know, I believe there to be an internal "angst" of sorts in all animals- a Will as Schop might call it to strive (but for no reason except we are alive). This manifests generally in some angst-drive for survival, angst-drive for maintenance/comfort, angst-drive to flee-boredom/entertain. However, none of this "angst" is driven towards any goal-directed behavior without that socially-constructed brain.

Now you accuse me of overromanticizing meaning. However, you overmine the concept of social construction and the group-self dynamic to the point of making a sort of "teleology of balance". Any overriding metaphysics (like your peculiar brand of Peircian triadic semiotics) can be considered romantic. So, I don't think it does much to throw out this label. You are just creating a false dichotomy and then pitting one romantic vision (the interlocutor's) with your own.

Err, no. — apokrisis

I don't know, looked pretty much like you unwittingly agree, but I'll address the rest of your response below.

Well when you shift the goalposts that way, then claiming that there is an "I" that has an innate preference is of course what would be countered by a social constructionist point of view on the subject.

You are now framing it as a personal choice. Which in turn demands a Cartesian model of a choosing self.

The argument was about this "self" being unwillingly forced to procreate due to evolved instinct vs being unwilling forced to procreate by some social necessity. And your emphasis either way is on the unwilling. Yet either way, it might be a willing inclination in being an intrinsically rewarding or pleasurable action - the rewards of having sex and then raising a family being something that both biology and sociology would have reason to celebrate. — apokrisis

I can agree with you on the social constructionist point of view- the "I" is a placeholder, shorthand in this case. The "I" is largely socially constructed, agreed then.

However, what you cannot do is a sleight of hand where something that is "intrinsically rewarding" now counts as instinctual. Achieving at a sport is intrinsically rewarding, learning a new language is intrinsically rewarding, laughing at funny joke is intrinsically rewarding. Where does it end? Is it all instinct? The "intrinsically rewarding" part is created via the socially constructed "I" you told me to take into account in the first place.

I mean everyone knows that we respond to social economics. You either have a lot of kids, or try to avoid having kids, depending on the economic equation as you see it.

And even my pet fish - dwarf cichlids - can make that kind of decision. They lay eggs and then either eat them or protect them, depending on some instinctive judgement about the situation in their tank.

So really, the same evolutionary logic is at work, just at a higher level of sophistication. — apokrisis

I would say this is a false analogy. The decision to have less kids due to hard times, is a calculus based on the very linguistic-cultural brain that can do this sort of rationale. The fish is following an uncompromising programming. Two very different things in terms of what is going on.

Anti-natalism depends for its grounding on some kind of anti-naturalistic metaphysics. It arises from being disappointed by the Romantic promise that being alive has transcendent meaning, and then Enlightenment physics saying no, life is transcendently meaningless.

Well as you know, I just reject that metaphysical framing. I take the natural philosophy route on all questions. And that accounts for the issues here with ease. — apokrisis

As for my own antinatalist metaphysics, I do not follow an anti-naturalistic metaphysics. What I am trying to do is show that raising a child is a preference like any other preference- it just happens to be a popular one because of cultural pressures. Sports is also popular due to similar social pressures. The point is people can "like" something, and give "reasons" for why they like it. There is no compulsion outside of people's preferences and likes. Beyond the obvious physical pleasure involved in sex, the preference for actually procreating is simply in the imagination, hopes, preferences, of the individual just like any other goal that is imagined, hoped for, preferred, etc.

I brought in apokrisis because sometimes when there is an argument with the same two people, another perspective is good. Though I've had many disagreements with apokrisis over his metaphysics, he seems pretty knowledgeable about evolutionary biological concepts.

Since you asked, Schop, I agree with Pseudonym that you seem to be trying to draw too sharp a line here. It doesn't make sense to argue that Homo sapiens abandoned neurobiological instinct for socially-constructed desires. Sure, socially-constructed desires radically change things for humans. Yet the underlying biology continuity still exists and we can argue that linguistic culture largely serves to amplify that evolved instinctual basis rather than to somehow completely replace it. — apokrisis

Okay, you say you disagree with my view and that you side with opposing view, but almost all your evidence is pro-cultural basis for raising children and betrays a contrary point of view to what you claim. Let's look at the score:

Humans are born more helpless - their brains a mass of still unwired connections - because we happened to become bipeds with narrow birth canals trying to give birth to babies with large skulls. The big brains were being evolved for sociality and a tool-using culture. So babies had to be squeezed out helpless and half developed, completing their neuro-development outside the womb - a risky and unique evolutionary step. But also then one with an exaptive advantage. In being half-formed, this then paved the way for the very possibility of complex symbolic speech as a communal activity structuring young minds from the get-go. It made it possible for culture to get its hooks in very early on. — apokrisis

Cultural learning- 1

Of course this evolutionary account is disputable. But it seems the best causal view to me. And while it says that there was undoubtedly some evolutionary tinkering with the instinctual basis of human cognition - we know babies have added instincts for gaze-following and turn-taking, stuff that is pre-adaptive for language learning and enculturation - you would have to be arguing for a more basic erasure of instincts that are pretty fundamental for the obvious evolutionary reasons that Pseudonym outlined. — apokrisis

Cultural learning- 2. Now, this was a tricky one, because you did mention instincts, but as they are utilized for cultural learning

It is natural that animals would have an innate desire to procreate - have sex. And it is natural that animals would have innate behaviours that are particular to whatever parental nurturing style is their ecological recipe for species success. — apokrisis

I already agreed that sex is the "basic" instinct via the general tendency to prefer physical pleasure, but that is not the same as literally the conceptual idea of "I prefer to raise a child" which involves much higher cognitive understanding and cultural ques than mere physical pleasure.

However we can make reasonable guesses about what the human instinctual basis was, and remains. Certainly a desire to have sex and an instinct for nurturing are pretty basic and hormonal. Which is enough to keep the show on the road so far as nature is concerned. — apokrisis

Instinctual- 1. Though your evidence for this is weak other than vague guesses about hormones. However, I know you are more rigorous than to resort to pop-evolutionary psychology regarding how a certain sex may be prone to such and such moods and preferences based on such and such monthly cycles. Even the tenuous "just so" stories from popular evo-psych literature/journals might be suspect to trying to perpetuate a pre-conceived cultural norm/trope more than anything else.

Now arguing in the other direction, I would agree that this hardwired biology is not of the "overpowering" kind popularly imagined. Culture probably does have a big say. As society becomes a level of organismic concern of its own, it can start to form views about what should be the case concerning procreation. The drivers might become economic, religious and political - these terms being a way of recognising that society expresses its being as economic, religious and political strategies. — apokrisis

Cultural learning- 3

And likewise, society might wind up turning individual humans into largely economic, religious or political creatures. We might really become incentivised to over-ride our biological urges as a result of the direction that cultural evolution is taking. This may get expressed in terms of the full variety of r vs K strategies. We might get the range of behaviour from Mormons or other cultures of "strength through big families" vs the economic individualism which turns supporting a family into a financial and personal drag (with the individual now becoming, in effect, a permanent child themselves - never wanting to grow up and so creating a new dilemma for the perpetuation of that society, as is big news in Japan). — apokrisis

Cultural learning- 4

Based on your own response, the score is:
Cultural learning- 4
Instinct- 1

So, despite your protestations to the contrary, your very evidence indicates you believe cultural learning is largely the vehicle for which humans procreate and follow a preference to raise children.

So how do birds migrate then, if nothing as complex as the desire to journey to a specific other place on the earth for a set period of time before journeying back again could never evolve without language? — Pseudonym

This is frustrating but I will stay with it. The birds' innate behavior is nothing like how we use language but is nevertheless the way their behaviors manifest. Just as language is the way our behaviors manifest.

So humans, like all other animals, at one time had a set of genes that coded for the innate desire to raise young, if we hadn't have had we would have become extinct. You're suggesting that at some point in our evolutionary history, we lost that set of genomes entirely but immediately (it must have been immediate otherwise we would have become extinct within one generation) it was replaced with a convergently evolved set of genomes coding for complex language functions which allowed us to develop cultural preferences for raising children, just in time to save the human race from extinction. — Pseudonym

Well, it wasn't immediate. I couldn't tell you the details that occurred between Australeopithicus and Homo Sapiens, but certainly there was a decoupling of innate behavior as brains wired for language and cultural transmission were the way in which humans started to survive. Look at a baby human versus that of many other mammals. The baby human is the most defenseless. Why? Very few innate behaviors. Also, the epigenetics and the learned behaviors of other animals also have an instinctual component that is not driven by the much more generalized learning process that humans posses via linguistic/conceptual brains.

1. What would have been the competitive advantage of the mutation that replaced our genetic sequences coding for an innate desire to raise young? Presumably, not having answered my religion question, you believe in evolution by natural selection. Whatever it was must have been an incredibly strong influence for the new mutation to have swept through the entire species, but I can't quite see how it would have given anyone a competitive edge over those naturally invested in raising young. — Pseudonym

Not everything works in a 1-1 ratio in regards to competitive advantage. It was very advantageous to have generalized learning brains. The kind of plasticity this allowed in behavior, created a situation where humans could create tools and other cultural artifacts that would help bolster survival.

2. If there was a competitive advantage to not having a desire to raise children, how come it was immediately replaced with a cultural desire to have children, wouldn't those cultures have faded away almost immediately as a result of whatever competitive force was driving this massive shift in genetics? — Pseudonym

It was not an all at once massive shift. It probably took millions of years and branches of humans of variations of plasticity and innate instinctual behaviors.

3. When did this sea change in our genetic coding take place. It must have been after complex language and culture because it needed to be replaced immediately with the cultural urge to have children in order to avoid extinction, yet paleobiology has yet to turn up any significant change in the human genome since then. Is this something you predict we're gong to find out in the next few years of genetic research? — Pseudonym

Again more slowly, and genes did change between various human species.

4. You mention convergent evolution, but this refers to the novel arrival of features via two evolutionary paths, what you're proposing here would not be an example of this. We've established that it is a biological necessity that humans had a genetically innate desire to raise young at some point in their evolutionary history. What you're proposing here would be the the novel emergence of a trait already present in the organism, but emerging as a result of a different force and then entirely supplanting the original gene(s). This is, to my knowledge, completely unprecedented. Are there other examples of this happening in the animal kingdom you're working from, or is this the first time this has happened in evolutionary history? — Pseudonym

I'll actually agree with you on this. I was thinking that as I wrote it, so good job pointing out that this is not quite convergent evolution. However, over time, cultural evolution took over much of the functions of the innate behaviors of instinct. So, this shift did happen, though slowly.

My question to you is how do you not fall into the erroneous notion that any desire is innate? My desire to pick up the phone, my desire to go out in the yard and rake, my desire to watch a movie. Where do truly "innate" desires come into play vs. cultural-linguistic ones? So yes, humans happen to have unique traits of cultural transmission, high neural plasticity, and a linguistic-conceptual mechanism that does make us unique in the animal kingdom.

It looks like someone acting in such a way as to bring the object of that desire about. If someone acts in such a way as to eat cake, we can can presume they desire to eat cake, if someone books a holiday in the Algarve, we can presume they desire a holiday in the Algarve. We might need to do some work to get at what the underlying desires might be, but that's not scientifically unusual. Evolutionary biologists make completely unremarkable educated guesses as to what a particular limb or organ is 'for' in evolutionary terms. It's really no big deal to do the same with apparent desires. — Pseudonym

Right, but the desire for a holiday in Algrave is not innate. It is exactly something that would only be known through cultural mediation and a linguistically-wired brain. The preference for a holiday, let alone a "holiday at Algrave" is not something that just wells inside of us like some primal desire.

You realise this is self-immunising don't you? If you can't tell whether someone is having a pre-linguistic thought, then how do you know they're not? — Pseudonym

I've had vague longings perhaps, maybe over hunger, maybe other vague urges, but nothing as complex as "wanting such and such specific thing" has welled up inside me without some linguistic label attached to it. "I have a desire to sit on the couch and eat potato chips" for example, is not something waiting inside me that just comes out de novo. I needed a) language b) a culture with couches, potato chips c) a preference for such things. Now, you can say, that there is a primal desire to have fatty foods. Fine, I'll accept that, but the higher level aspect of exactly what kind, in what place, is mediated through higher levels of cognitive processes- like language/conceptual integration, etc.

I've already given you the evidence (out of respect for your preferred tone I'm not going to tell you how many times). It is that every single other animal on earth has such a desire hard-wired. How much more evidence do you need than it being the case for literally every other example in existence?

If you have some religious conviction that humans are special, that's fine, but it makes it easier to discuss if you make that clear from the outset. — Pseudonym

This is a bit ridiculous to me. I can easily reverse this. Can animals paint the Sistine Chapel? So, does that mean that humans don't have this ability because they are the only animal to do this? So you seem to like studying evolution. I do as well. Have you ever heard of convergent evolution? Two types of similar evolutionary adaptations (wings on a bat, wings on a bird) that came about through completely different evolutionary trajectories. No doubt, our ancestors had a more or less, instinctual/innate instinct to raise young. It literally came from a hard-wired programming. However, somewhere along the way, procreation continued but through cultural means. Why? Because humans by-and-large survive through cultural learning. The concept of raising a child that is one's own progeny, looks like other animals having instinctual behaviors to take care of children, but it is learned from childhood onwards what this practice of raising a child is, how it is done, why it is important, etc.