| From: The Phantom Menace ® | 26/06/2001
22:28:09 |
| Subject: re: Instinct | post id:
333239 |
| Do we evolve new
instincts, would it be possible to ever evolve a driving instinct or
something? New instincts can evolve through a mechanism called the Baldwin Effect. Suppose an animal is capable of learning an advantagous skill, but doesn't have any strong instinct for it. Variation in the population will generally mean that some individuals are better at learning that skill than others and these individuals would, on average, out-reproduce those who don't. Over time natural selection will make the species better and better at learning that skill, until ultimately the animal is so primed for this skill you would say that it has an instinct to learn it. A human example would be language. Language might seem to be entirely cultural, but our capacity to learn language is far beyond what would be expected if the brain didn't have any built-in 'knowledge' of language. Children can learn grammar instinctively, their brains know to 'look for' grammar in the noises their parents make and their are commonalities in grammar across all languages that make this possible. They then can use grammar to make sentences that have never been spoken before. The human brain and language have developed together, each advance in the brain's language abilities has led to more complicated language which in turns encourages the brain's development in language learning. An instinct for driving could be developed. Certainly those who are better at learning to drive, are less likely to be killed on the roads and since a lot of road deaths occur to younger drivers (before reproduction) there would be natural selection operating to improve the ability to learn driving. But the problem is that driving is not a static skill, it changes too quickly along with the development of the automobile, and driving as a skill will probably not be around long enough to have any major impact on the design of out brains. | |