the instinct is an innate behavior (in opposition to a behavior acquired ), related at survival, present at all the animal species.

All the live animals on this planet, including the Man, act unconsciously according to two principles which are the instinct of self-preservation and the sexual instinct of reproduction or (which is in fact only another facet of the instinct of self-preservation, that of the conservation of the species). These phenomena include all the behaviors essential to survival, which goes from the vital needs like the hunger, thirst or the sleep with a behavior which one calls the fear. This particular instinct is essential with the survival of an animal in a hostile environment because it enables him to flee an event or a threat being able to endanger its survival or that of its species. This threat can be of natural origin like the lightning, the fire or the vacuum or of animal origin like the presence of a predator. The fear can appear in various forms, such as for example the fear of the vacuum (giddiness), the fear of death, the fear of the unknown (because the unknown can represent a potential threat), etc

Instinct at the Man

Instinctive behaviors exist at the Man in particular in the infant like the reflex of suction of the center, or the movements of automatic walk.

In the adults, it is more difficult to make the share of the instinctive reactions insofar as the Man having become a cultural animal most of those are masked or choked by the training. The question of the instinct at the Man is to be connected to the studies which seek to make the share of the unconscious signals (like the reactions to the phéromones for example), which intervene in the human relations.

Instinct and pleasure

It is also an aspect of the instinctive behaviors. Certain theses support that sexuality and Reward system in the brain developed of par during the evolution for example. This idea takes to its source in the theories not finalists of the alive one.

Instinct, evolution and freedom

To include/understand the concept of instinct, let us approach these theories not finalists of the evolution.

  • the first living beings can be regarded as protections for molecules autoréplicantes. These molecules control their replication by Scissiparité and the individual (the envelope) does not have practically any freedom compared to his direct molecule. The innovation is ensured by the changes (errors in the replication). Because of the Scissiparity, the capacity to answer an environmental variation or to colonize a new biotope is weak.
  • the invention of sexuality by genetic mixing that it supposes increases the variety of the molecules autoréplicantes and this fact the individual variety and the variety of the species. The freedom of the individuals increases complexity progressively or time but they remain basically under the influence of instinctive behaviors.
  • Well before the Man, the social relations between individuals take importance and animal cultures appear (it is the merit of recent research in primatology to have highlighted them). The instinct starts to leave a little place to the culture. Thus, a " is observed; atrophie" behavioral in certain monkeys isolated, deprived from the social relations which they would have maintained with their congeneric for the period their development. Become ripe sexual and put in presence from/to each other, it appears that they miss something of essence which supports the sexual meeting. The males behave as if they did not know how to practice intromission; the female on its side does not take the adequate posture. The behavior of these subjects translates a disorder to which they cannot give the appropriate response. See the details in the article Sexuality (reproduction) (Sexuality in the mammals) from where this paragraph is partially resulting. There is thus a training which supplements the instinctive behavior.
  • With the Man appears a new capacity: the exchange of mental images. It is the language and its capacity of abstraction and conceptualization infinite which detaches the human exchange of the concrete experiment. A loop of cultural behaviors much denser develops with the top of the instinctive behaviors, giving to the Man as an individual an operational capacity and a freedom that no other alive individual had before him.

Instinct and origin of life

The instinct present in all forms of life raises the interesting question of the origin of life. Indeed, if the life appeared by chance, here or on another planet and supply on Earth by the meeting with a meteorite for example, the concept of chance, removes with the life the requirement of continuity. The life appeared by chance, that it exists or not thus does not have any importance since there is no intention. The fact that any living being is protected and reproduces indicates an element which shakes the theory of the chance because in this instinct of self-preservation which animates living it, there is an intention. Concept of intention which enters in contradiction with clean total freedom randomly. However of another with dimensions, we can admit that the instinct is acquired after a slow evolution of the species, where the unfruitful experiments of the epèces which do not have such or such character of conservation, disappear from them same thanks to the natural selection by elimination, only those equipped with a knowledge to make natural or " remain; instinct of conservation" . Let us remember the intruding bird laid unduly in an already occupied nest which, dice its blossoming, spider monkey after persevering efforts, with the spot to balance over the nest host legitimate eggs to eliminate from the potential competitors to food and vital space. The poor parents hardly realizing trickery or resigned to their fate, nourish the intruder since his blossoming to the old adult, in spite of his membership of a different species with their and in spite of his size, specific to its species, making several times their bodies. With your neurons…

Popular speech

In the popular speech, the word instinct is used in an abusive way to replace the word Intuition. It will be said, for example, that one makes a decision while following his instinct, or that one acts instinctively, to speak about a situation where one followed an impulse or an intuition.

See too

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