Fixed-Action-Patterns: The Heart And Soul of Survival Instincts
The entirety of the animal kingdom operates on instincts. Our DNA has hardwired those behaviours in order to aid our survival. This is why they are often referred to as "survival instincts". They are simply behaviours that aim towards the preservation and propagation of an organism through various mechanisms of natural selection such as the one of group selection.
If we are to strip an instinct down to its basic constituents we would find a basic survival mechanism that has remained unaltered. This is what we call in biology a fixed-action-pattern. It is an innate behavior, almost like a reflex, that works much like a small computer program that once it starts going, almost always, fulfills a specific pattern to completion.
In humans we can check these fixed-action-pattern fairly easy from our newborns. First and foremost we have the Rooting Reflex which occurs when we stroke a baby's cheek with our fingers on breast. Almost always the baby will turn towards the finger/nipple to feed itself.
Support a baby's head and try to rock it forward towards an empty space and it will open it's hands, almost saying "catch me". This is the falsifiable demonstration Moro Reflex and it is well retained through adulthood. The behaviour simply acts in a way to protect the organism from harm while falling by stimulating an action that aims to grab from somewhere. Newborns that lack this basic instinct often have neurological problems such as down syndrome. Fixed action patterns such as this one are used from doctors to evaluate a baby's health.
The fixed stepping action pattern occurs when we hold the babies up and their legs start stepping into place. This is a signal for initiating bipedalism.
Stroke the bottom of your babies feet and hands and it will curl them up, almost like a monkey. When I used to live with Aboriginal Communities many women threw the babies in their back and the grabbed on to the hair with a firm lock. This reflex has been studied extensively and some studied even noted that the babies will grab from things like ropes and rather have an inclination for hair. This is also noted in earlier primates. We also have to note here that the strength the baby demonstrates in his grip is rather impressive. We call this vestigial grasp and it is perhaps the most prominent fixed-action-pattern.
Cover a baby's head with a shirt or blanket and it will move its head left and right or pushing with her hands to get it off. The righting reflex evolves later on to protect the individual from the most sensitive part of the body — the head. This is also directly connected to the withdrawal reflex. Move your head or another object close to it and it will turn its head away.
Try to feed a baby and touch the tip of his tongue and it will push the food out. The tongue thrust reflex protects the baby choking from foreign object insertion. This is why it is rather pointless to attempt to feed the baby solid foods before it becomes at least 4 months old. It will spout everything out. Again, evolution to the rescue.
In zoology one of the most popular examples of these reflexes is the behaviour of the Graylag Goose. If the bird notices an egg displaced from the nest it will roll the egg back into the nest. The key point here is that the goose will complete the action even if the eggs is removed while the bird is trying to complete the action. This what makes the act of the Goose resemble a reflex.
The reason that fixed-action-patterns tend to diminish as we become older is because they are slowly camouflaged through culture. Nurture trumps nature at the end of day but only after it has build upon it. This is why we see some women getting excited when two men fight for them. Primates always antagonize each other for competition in copulation and females will mate with the one that is most fit. In the same way a muscular body appears more desirable because it illustrates health.
Another example would be a discussion over a meal will more likely bring a deal to its completion as much as a warm cup of tea will make someone more agreeable. All these behaviours are elaborate manifestations of simple survival instincts ( or fixed-action-patterns) that become more elaborate as our culture becomes more complicated. A monkey will try to control resources and it will dominate the tribe as much as a rich man with a large estate and a fat bank account will.
There are more subtle fixed actions patterns that can be studied and even falsified in order to make the theory more robust. Invite someone over and will almost always offer them something to drink. Enter an elevator and you will always try to face the door. If you think that these behaviours are not compulsive then try not to do them and you will feel uncomfortable even anxious. In the same way we could stop a goose from rolling the egg but it's desire would not go away shortly after.
If you also think that this involves only primates affected by culture then think again. Crows are known to have developed their own fixed-action-patterns and they are as recent as the modern road system. They simply take nuts and place them in roads in order for the cars to crack them open. This behaviour has been carried out so much that has become a fixed action pattern that serves as a pivotal mechanism for their survival in some areas.
It is natural to try and distinguish ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom by invoking terms such as "values" and "ethics". The raw truth is that through the evolutionary process some actions are hardwired so much that they define entirely who were are and where we are headed. We will look after our clan and family because of genetic patriotism much like any other species. We will even sacrifice our genes for the sake of a new, better copy with more information in it.
This is why acat will run away if you attack it when there are no newborn kittens for her to defend but will stand her ground even if it causes her own death if she has some. The cat does not abide to heroism. It abides to its own survival instincts, her own fixed action pattern that dictates her to stay there and defend her babies no matter what. In humans, it gets more complicated because of the complexity of culture. For example, if you are in heavy populated area in China you are less likely to be acknowledged if you have a problem in the middle of the street. If on the other hand you are on a less populated area people will be more likely to assist you. This is not so fixed by every individual but due to the fact that we always study populations and not individual members of species the correlation becomes strong enough to make a case for a more elaborate fixed-action-pattern.
Traditionally survival instincts challenged humans because their prevalence renders us to just another animal. Philosophers and religions tried to work around them by inventing terms such as "values" and "ethics" but at the end of the day, everything is reduced to its basic fixed pattern constituents. Fixed-Action-Patterns define all of our survival instincts and shape the way we act in our environment. The better we understand where they stem from the better chance we have understanding ourselves.
For the sake of discussion I would like to challenge anyone to come up with a human behaviour that is not directly bound to a fixed action pattern. Please make sure to support your argument with evidence.
Is there a fixed action pattern for designing, say, analog electronics? I know of no fixed procedure to do that, except meta stuff surrounding the actual designing. Yet designing is human behaviour.
Can there even be an a-priori action pattern when you are thinking up something that hasn't been thought of before? The urge to think up new things, sure, some procedure surrounding it for planning and documentation, sure, but the ways we come up with new things differ as much, and often are as new as, the very things we come up with. So I think the very fuzzy process, if any, of designing/inventing new things could well be an exception.
Saying "designing" is an action pattern by itself doesn't refute this; you could black-box everything and call it an "action pattern" even when there is no pattern to be found, making your hypothesis unfalsifiable and therefore less than useful 8-).
I believe there is much like a puffer fish or a bird design a nest and look like elaborate designs that humans would have hard time replicating. We design electronic boards as a utility for enabling better living standards much like other species cater their nest to ensure a better livelihood (more suitable mate, offspring etc). If you like we just make a design within a design. There is a transference of the design from the raw copulation stage to the more modern that demands a tool . Also note how many of our designs replicate shapes in nature or concepts found in nature even if they are electronic.
it is possible but i think improbable due to the sheer number of people under globalisation being exposed on a daily basis to the same stimuli.
Note how I said "derivative". We can falsify the original fixed-action-patterns. not the derivatives.
Hm. I'm unconvinced 8-). I think designing/inventing requires unlearning of, and letting go of, action patterns rather than using them. The urge to invent may be an action pattern, the end result may look like an action pattern or design already found in nature, but I doubt action patterns play a role in the actual designing/inventing. I think things like General Relativity Theory, or even Phase Locked Loops, were thought up without following any action pattern, but rather by ignoring existing action patterns and letting something else take over, the undefinable creativity, where real intelligence, the ability to solve new problems without instruction, takes over from standard operating procedures the majority of humankind uses to get by.
Then again, ignoring action patterns to arrive at new thinking could be an action pattern by itself, which means you are still right, but I refuse to accept that, as it is no fun 8-).
Is calling something a "fixed-action-pattern" any different than saying, "Determinism is a thing and for every action, I can tell a deterministic story using things like evolutionary psychology to explain it"?
Even what we call "randomness" could really be described as a level of deterministic complexity beyond our capabilities (i.e. we don't know the position and direction of all particles in the universe in time, and it may not be possible to know within our dimensional reality).
I think the concept of values and ethics are still valuable because many people act as if they have agency, and the worldview of ethics/values impacts the physical structure of brain neurons and how they fire in terms of reward/response so that someone may actually act in a way that increases wellbeing for themselves and others if they believe values and ethics are "real" and should be followed and appreciated. If we dig deep enough, yes, we can call them fixed-action-patterns, but if we dig deep enough, we could also say you and I are exactly the same as a rock because we're all made of atoms. What matters is the categories we're using here and how the information is organized. Yes, humans are animals, but we are somewhat unique in that we've created very complex communication systems which allow for the transfer of memes (in the way Richard Dawkins described them). This creates completely different interactions within our species which does separate us away from basic natural selection pressures. I'll agree we can't completely separate ourselves because ultimately our desires to get a vasectomy or well, really, anything could be explained via some lower level functional benefit. Also, as you said, when we put a bunch of us together, new emergent properties form which change our response mechanisms. We are a highly social species, even though we perceive ourselves as individuals.
Well, I think that up to a level where we have created societies that are close derivatives of some behaviours over the last 6-10.000 years (existence of modern civilisation) then we are on the safe. No need to go back to the atom.
Complex communication patterns exist in almost all mammals. We are not different in that matter. he only difference is out system..which again..makes us different, not exactly superior.
also the fixed-action-pattern is an evolutionary term. it is used in biology. it can be falsified and tested under replication studies.
You don't think our communication patterns are sufficiently unique as to demonstrate some level of superiority? We essentially control the planet enough to destroy any other species (including ourselves) and I think a strong argument can be made we did so through cooperation made possibly via our advanced communication abilities which led to things like cooking and our advanced brains. Sure, we might destroy ourselves on a long enough timescale and other species could then be seen as superior for not doing so... but I do think we have sufficiently advanced master of our environment (and some will argue even natural selection itself) to be in a somewhat unique category of animal on this planet.
Cool post. I guess where I have experience natural instincts kicking in most is during sporting encounters. I use to be a sprinter and after some races could not remember what actually happened during the sprint. It was as if I hit some sort of zone where my body just took over.
Similarly when playing rugby when adrenaline kicked in I would just do super human things... taking on 30kg bigger than you without any fear, or even consideration of possible risk.
Or when you are actually falling or in a cycle accident, it is as if everything happens in slow motion. People see they see their life flashing in front of their eyes. ;)
Any of you guys had the same experiences?
Yeah in baseball sometimes the most routine plays can be the hardest because you have to much time to over analyst the situation. Reactionary plays like the ball being hit down the line can sometimes surprise the player in what they are physically capable of.
Yeap!
The fact that most people can relate to these instincts the and the fact that they have remained unaltered for the most part throughout history despite the dramatic change in the environment demonstrates how important they are to our existence.
Wow awesome read about survival instinct using babes as an example...upped and thanks for sharing
Here's some thoughts...
Hospitality. Many people will let strangers have food, or even a place to sleep, when they are hitchhiking. I do this all the time. Many cultures have very strong hospitality rules, so that when a stranger comes to someones door, they are obligated to succor them.
Many American soldiers are alive today because they were taken in when wounded by villagers, even at the risk of their own lives, and families, in Afghanistan, Viet Nam, and other places where the USA conducted aggressive wars.
Free speech. Herd behaviour strongly encourages conformity. Protecting the ability of folks to dissent runs counter to this strongly reinforced instinctive behaviour. Groups like Antifa, etc., are essentially formed to oppose dissent.
Yet, I myself will actually carefully listen to views that oppose my own, and even defend those people against aggression in order to accord them the right to speak in dissent.
Hermits. Being isolated is dangerous, yet some folks, as I have, will take to the wilderness and eschew human company. There are primal instincts to stick with the herd, yet some don't.
Writing. I suspect there IS some kind of instinctive basis for writing/drawing. There seems to be a qualitative difference between writing and speech, as writing helps me to clarify my thoughts in a way speaking does not. Sometimes I realize I think something that I did not even know, only because I was writing on the topic, and was struck by the realization.
I don't mean to challenge the idea of instinctive behaviours, but am unable to agree that the full range of human behaviour, or even all behaviour in many animals, is but instinctive.
Thanks!
Hospitality is a fixed action pattern that was acquired through culture. Stronger groups translated to more dominance and productivity so it became customary to offer something to a stranger in order to make them stick around your group.
Free Speech is not a fixed action pattern. It cannot be classified as such — much like a chair can't be classified as human value. It is irrelevant.
same about hermits, writing.
Humans are always studied in groups. Not as individuals. Some things like hermits are exception to the rule. what in science we call outliers.
The instinctive basis for writing is oral communication. We learn how to write through culture. We feel compelled to communicate in that way because everyone else is doing it.
I won't reply to the other comments cos I simply have no time. I'm sorry. I'm even gonna try to keep this one brief, cos I've reached the conclusion that there's no point debating you without an objective referee.
I agree with the content, in the sense that of course there are instincts, of course there are fixed action patterns, etc., like I said many times. I disagree with what you MEAN by those things. Like I also said many times: There is no literal IN ORDER TO in nature. No teleology in nature. There is no literal AIM TOWARDS in nature.
And, my own theory, there is no survival/self-preservation instinct in nature. An organism can only be preserved by Natural Selection. It cannot preserve itself. No instinct of SELF-PRESERVATION! No survival instinct. To argue that there is, is to argue that there is an additional force in nature, besides Natural Selection, that determines whether an organism will survive, and this voodoo force comes from inside us. Like Daniel Dennett has said and all Biology agrees: there is only one game in town. Only Natural Selection. Nothing else. Survival is not up to the instincts. They are blind. They simply are what they are. An organism is what it is. A pigeon doesn't spring a white feather IN ORDER TO get preserved by humans who want to make a dove. If there are (literally) survival instincts in nature, then there's an "I want to be a dove" instinct in pigeons.
I'm okay with biologists using the term "survival" and "self-preservation" etc. cos it may make talking easier, so it has some utility, as long as the biologists know that you don't need anything more than Natural Selection to explain why and how organisms survive.
Instincts exist, but they get selected for or against just like everything else, like the shape of our cells, the color of our hair, etc. It makes no more sense to call something a survival instinct than to call my hair color a survival color. It's simply the color that has survived.
I'm just picking this one out of the many examples you gave. Whether the cat flees or fights, you would still call it a survival instinct. That's why your theory is unfalsifiable. But if I call it a "fight instinct", then it's falsifiable, because if it doesn't fight, then I'm wrong, and there's no such instinct. If I call it a "flight instinct", then again, if the cat flees I'm right, if it fights I'm wrong. It's a falsifiable concept. The survival instinct isn't. And that's why survival instinct =/= specific instinct. Especially the way you use it, like some kind of universal force in nature that permeates all life and, according to your own words, "is the meaning of life".
There is no human behavior that isn't either the result of Natural Selection OR has simply "slipped through the cracks" or "piggy-backed". If that's what you mean, then you're right.
I just want to mention again something I mentioned in my post, cos I knew it directly from Darwin but now I googled it and found an interesting word (it's to be found between square brackets): the struggle for existence. Darwin explicitly mentions, in his chapter of the same name in the Origin of Species, that he means it metaphorically. I'm not sure whether in the link the stress is on "competition between living things" or "to survive", or if both are taken to be the same thing. Whatever it is, Darwin clearly realized it was a metaphor: organisms can't literally struggle for existence/life (i.e. to survive). It's just a useful metaphor.
Like I said, this is pointless without a referee, so I'm moving the discussion to steemSTEM, cos that's what they asked of us: a scientific debate. If I ask them to read our posts, no one will. They're long and rambling anyway. So I'll just make these points there, and hopefully there'll be a biologist who might be interested in offering his views.
We can test the hypothesis that nature favours the characteristics that favour the preservation of a species by rejecting those who do not work. No need for objective referee. There are studies that demonstrate that the characteristics that are preserved are those who favour a better chance for an organism to survive. If it were completely random you would see new inactive genes popping up with every other generation. Instead we see that with every generation a characteristic is strengthened or if the environment changes left as is.
False. And this is how you get the entirety of the argument wrong. A scientist will not test for "survival instinct" in this case. It will test for the survival instinct of preserving offspring. See the difference. If the cat flees with no newborns it means that it aims to preserve itself. It sets a different priority. If it has newborns it rejects that priority by transferring the importance to the new DNA.
Again. The mistake you make is due to poor understanding of the scientific method and how experiments/studied are contact. In the same way you don't make experiments about the "improvement of livelihood of human beings". It will be rejected immediately by the board. Your thesis would have to be specific aka "the improvement of livelihood of the aboriginal people of Australia that live in the northern territory". This is why i told you before that your hypothesis falls short because a) You have no experience in setting experiments and thus a generic biology 101 knowledge won't help you.
It doesn't matter what Darwin thinks or not. Just to let you know, Darwin got many things wrong. You can't linger from one expression. I am not using the argument of Darwin. You are (for some weird fetish reason that has to do more with appeal to authority rather than an actual argument).
I appreciate the courtesy of your reply. In your OP, you state:
and in your reply to my comment you state:
Since your request was:
and free speech, writing, and voluntary solitude are human behaviours, and not irrelevant at all, but exemplary of those features of our species that differentiate us from others, I reckon we can agree that not all human behaviour is directly bound to instinctive fixed action patterns.
free speech is not a derivable of a fixed-action-pattern behaviour. freedom is. speech is.
those are rather self evident.
I agree these things are self evident. You stated in the OP that 'everything' was a result of fixed action patterns, instinct, and I do not agree with that.
Freedom of speech is a thing. It is a feature of human society, of every society where individual humans interact, and not merely a product of instinct. I point out that therefore there are human behaviours which are not the result of fixed action patterns, which you requested in the OP.
I love biology, I also study in biology, I will wait for your next post lesson
Keep on enlightening those minds of a human. You're doing it great!
Evolution! :D