The Triune system

[Shaker]

Why is the survival instinct being denied here?!! LOL!

It isn't. The survival instinct as a driver of evolutionary change is being denied, as per your earlier assertion.

Cynicism is becoming a habit guys. Not healthy. 

Unfiltered credulity is no replacement.

[Sriram]

I know most of you do not like the idea of the survival instinct being a driving force of evolution....though you cannot possibly deny its existence. The idea of the Survival instinct driving evolution gives life an objective and a purpose and an inner driving force, which materialists find disconcerting. They are unable to fit it in their world view.

They prefer having everything as chancy as possible with as many random  events as possible and are more comfortable with that idea of the world.    There are less chances of a guiding Intelligence that way. LOL!

Problem is that without the survival instinct (and the procreative instinct) no organism would survive and reproduce.....and evolution would not happen at all. Why you people are denying this fundamental force that pushes evolution is truly bewildering!

Take the in built survival instinct, the procreation instinct and the parental instinct in all organisms. Add epigenetics and neoLamarckism. Also add Anthropic principles of fine tuning and of consciousness participating in the development of the universe.

Further take rising complexity and millions of emergent properties and step ups.....and you have a very good case for directed evolution!  No contest! 



 

[Stranger]

I know most of you do not like the idea of the survival instinct being a driving force of evolution....though you cannot possibly deny its existence.

It's got nothing to do with what any of us like.

The problem is you've got it backwards; the survival instinct doesn't drive evolution, evolution produces what we call a survival instinct (in those organisms that can sensibly be said to have instincts, i.e. complex animals).

[Enki]

Sriram,
Natural selection is the main process by which evolution proceeds.
The survival instinct is not natural selection, it is a product of natural selection in some species. One could give a whole range of attributes which aid survival, none of which could be classed as survival instincts but all of which are the result of natural selection.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Some Kind of Stranger,

Sorry can you flesh that out a bit for me, I kind of agree with Sriram here, this need to survive, to procreate is in every living thing, even a flower which I am told does not think has this need to adapt and survive.

Plant life is very interesting, it uses so many different ways of ensuring that it survives, taste, smell, colour, height.

Everything wants to procreate, what is that? even the smallest microbe wants to go on, to survive.

Gonnagle.

[Shaker]

I know most of you do not like the idea of the survival instinct being a driving force of evolution....

It has nothing to do with what we like and everything to do with the fact that you're embarrassingly, howlingly wrong.

though you cannot possibly deny its existence.

Nobody is doing so. What's being explained to you with far more patience than you deserve is that you're wrong because you have it backwards - evolution by natural selection produces a survival instinct and not vice versa as you have it for some bizarre reason.

Problem is that without the survival instinct (and the procreative instinct) no organism would survive and reproduce.....and evolution would not happen at all.

Utter horseshit. Why do you people always choose to spout off on subjects you patently know nothing about?

Why you people are denying this fundamental force that pushes evolution is truly bewildering!

Because it doesn't drive evolution and you are a clueless clown.

[torridon]

Dear Some Kind of Stranger,

Sorry can you flesh that out a bit for me, I kind of agree with Sriram here, this need to survive, to procreate is in every living thing, even a flower which I am told does not think has this need to adapt and survive.

Plant life is very interesting, it uses so many different ways of ensuring that it survives, taste, smell, colour, height.

Everything wants to procreate, what is that? even the smallest microbe wants to go on, to survive.

Gonnagle.

Sriram has it back to front, Stranger has it right.  The will to survive is a product of evolution. A will to survive cannot come out of nowhere it is something honed by natural selection, just as much as the peacock's tail or the squirrel's habit of burying nuts in the ground or the instinct to eat when you are hungry.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Torridon,

So the very first life on earth had no survival instinct?

Gonnagle.

[Shaker]

Dear Torridon,

So the very first life on earth had no survival instinct?

Gonnagle.

How could it? A survival instinct is a property of a brain at a certain level of complexity.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Shaker,

The need to survive needs a complex brain, if you say so old chap, not saying you are wrong but it does not sound right to me.

Gonnagle.

[torridon]

Dear Torridon,

So the very first life on earth had no survival instinct?

Gonnagle.

Does a bacterium or a viral pathogen have a will to survive ? Emotional states like hope, or fear, or determination only emerge at vertebrate levels of complexity.  At the simplest end of biology, life is basically complex chemistry just doing what complex chemistry does, it is about proton gradients across membranes as mandated by thermodynamic law and the conservation of energy.

[Sriram]

Sriram has it back to front, Stranger has it right.  The will to survive is a product of evolution. A will to survive cannot come out of nowhere it is something honed by natural selection, just as much as the peacock's tail or the squirrel's habit of burying nuts in the ground or the instinct to eat when you are hungry.

torridon,

Refer to your comment highlighted by me above.

That is the crux of the issue. The fact that you don't know where the instinct can come from and therefore you believe it has to arise due to NS.

In fact, not just the atheists here but scientists world over have the same problem. A conscious and compelling need to avoid and circumvent any suggestion of a inherent Intelligence or mystical guidance.  For this purpose they will go to any lengths to come up with convoluted and even ridiculous explanations for phenomena.

Take the first RNA molecule that formed on earth. It began to replicate and make copies of itself. THIS is the foundation of the survival instinct and the procreation instinct. Every other organism on earth has a survival instinct and a procreation instinct and in somewhat higher organisms, a parental instinct.  This is the basic programming of all DNA.

To say that Natural Selection produces the survival instinct is absurd. For one thing, Natural Selection is not a process.....unless people want to think of Nature in mystical terms of having a Will and a conscious selection process (I can go with that btw!).

NS (as described by scientists) is just a metaphor that describes how organisms best suited for a specific environment manage to survive better than others and reproduce thereby passing on their traits to future generations....while other organisms die out. This process cannot produce a survival instinct for heavens sake! A survival instinct is a basic requirement for organisms to survive and reproduce in spite of environmental pressures.....and that instinct is present in DNA replication itself. 

Some years ago scientists  spoke  of the survival instinct as though it is a compelling enough reason for evolution without the need for God or anything...fine, so far so good.......but other people started asking questions about how and why this survival instinct came about. Oh...oh..now what to do!? So scientists had to hurriedly come up with some convoluted idea of NS being responsible for the survival instinct.  LOL!

Anyway, it is clear to me that organisms are meant to survive and procreate. There is also a clear push towards complexity and higher mental functions. Seen with the other theories I have mentioned about....a direction and purpose to evolution is evident.

Cheers.

Sriram

[Stranger]

The need to survive needs a complex brain, if you say so old chap, not saying you are wrong but it does not sound right to me.

Think of artificial selection (pigeons were a favourite of Darwin) whether an pigeon gets to pass it's genes on is entirely up to the human breeder. It has nothing to do with any instincts it has - it's just how random variations from the previous generation moved it closer or further away from the 'ideal' that is being breed for.

OK?

Now, get rid of the intelligent breeder and replace it with the environment and you have natural selection. The environment has no ideal in mind, 'cos it doesn't have a mind to put one in. Nevertheless, some random variations will do better than others. If the environment changes, then the variations that do better will be different too.

It is that process that often favours behaviours that we label 'survival instinct' in organisms that are complicated enough to actually have instincts. Not the other way around.

The very first replicating systems (life is too hard to define) would probably have been nothing but complicated chemical reactions. You can manufacture an RNA molecule, that given the right environment, will just make copies of itself. Once you have replication with variation (i.e. not perfect replication) natural selection can get going.

Do you think something as simple as an RNA molecule has any instincts...?

[Stranger]

Take the first RNA molecule that formed on earth. It began to replicate and make copies of itself. THIS is the foundation of the survival instinct and the procreation instinct.

Molecules with instincts - I give up.

 

[torridon]

torridon,

Refer to your comment highlighted by me above.

That is the crux of the issue. The fact that you don't know where the instinct can come from and therefore you believe it has to arise due to NS.

In fact, not just the atheists here but scientists world over have the same problem. A conscious and compelling need to avoid and circumvent any suggestion of a inherent Intelligence or mystical guidance.  For this purpose they will go to any lengths to come up with convoluted and even ridiculous explanations for phenomena.

Take the first RNA molecule that formed on earth. It began to replicate and make copies of itself. THIS is the foundation of the survival instinct and the procreation instinct. Every other organism on earth has a survival instinct and a procreation instinct and in somewhat higher organisms, a parental instinct.  This is the basic programming of all DNA.

To say that Natural Selection produces the survival instinct is absurd. For one thing, Natural Selection is not a process.....unless people want to think of Nature in mystical terms of having a Will and a conscious selection process (I can go with that btw!).

NS (as described by scientists) is just a metaphor that describes how organisms best suited for a specific environment manage to survive better than others and reproduce thereby passing on their traits to future generations....while other organisms die out. This process cannot produce a survival instinct for heavens sake! A survival instinct is a basic requirement for organisms to survive and reproduce in spite of environmental pressures.....and that instinct is present in DNA replication itself. 

Some years ago scientists  spoke  of the survival instinct as though it is a compelling enough reason for evolution without the need for God or anything...fine, so far so good.......but other people started asking questions about how and why this survival instinct came about. Oh...oh..now what to do!? So scientists had to hurriedly come up with some convoluted idea of NS being responsible for the survival instinct.  LOL!

Anyway, it is clear to me that organisms are meant to survive and procreate. There is also a clear push towards complexity and higher mental functions. Seen with the other theories I have mentioned about....a direction and purpose to evolution is evident.

Cheers.

Sriram

Hmm so much wrong in there, its hard to know where to start. 

Just to take the last para briefly, there is no 'guidance' to evolution; people who think so are merely projecting their personal prejudices on top of the science; go find any basic textbook on biology, you will not find any mention of 'guidance', why, because it isn't there, that is merely something in your perception colouring the way you see things. 

Natural Selection is not a metaphor, it is an actuality, an inevitability; it boils down to simple logic and probability - fitter arrangements of things are more likely to persist than less fit ones.  Nothing esoteric or mystical about it. Natural selection produces all the diversity of life forms, that includes behaviours as well as physiologies.

I'd agree complex emotional states in higher vertebrates like hope and fear probably have some primitive precursors if we were able to easily reduce them to simpler models.  We can deconstruct complex bodies into primitive components - I am made of a billion billion carbon atoms for instance - so what would we get to if we similarly deconstruct complex emotional states. This is what you were getting at I think, but we need to be careful with the language and make it clear that self replicating molecules for instance don't have higher emotions, that would be bizarre, but at their level, they are simply enacting the deterministic laws of nature at a simple level and this is what fundamentally what gives rise to more complex states in more complex creatures.

[Sriram]

Hmm so much wrong in there, its hard to know where to start. 

Just to take the last para briefly, there is no 'guidance' to evolution; people who think so are merely projecting their personal prejudices on top of the science; go find any basic textbook on biology, you will not find any mention of 'guidance', why, because it isn't there, that is merely something in your perception colouring the way you see things. 

Natural Selection is not a metaphor, it is an actuality, an inevitability; it boils down to simple logic and probability - fitter arrangements of things are more likely to persist than less fit ones.  Nothing esoteric or mystical about it. Natural selection produces all the diversity of life forms, that includes behaviours as well as physiologies.

I'd agree complex emotional states in higher vertebrates like hope and fear probably have some primitive precursors if we were able to easily reduce them to simpler models.  We can deconstruct complex bodies into primitive components - I am made of a billion billion carbon atoms for instance - so what would we get to if we similarly deconstruct complex emotional states. This is what you were getting at I think, but we need to be careful with the language and make it clear that self replicating molecules for instance don't have higher emotions, that would be bizarre, but at their level, they are simply enacting the deterministic laws of nature at a simple level and this is what fundamentally what gives rise to more complex states in more complex creatures.

Asserting that there is no  'guidance' is no use. I have given enough reasons to say why guidance is there. You are merely attributing it all to random gene variation and a metaphoric process of NS.

Natural Selection cannot be a process because there are no specific laws governing it. It is just 'whatever manages to survive is deemed as selected'. Charles Darwin assumed an Intelligent selection process in nature (in line with artificial selection in which specific traits are chosen consciously in the animal being bred). That's why he called it Natural Selection. But since scientists do not believe in any Intelligent selection, it cannot be a process.

I don't know why you are bringing in emotions into this. Emotions are present in higher organisms but the survival instinct is present even in an earth worm or bacteria. Everything resists death and automatically reproduces.

Merely because instincts in higher animals are linked to emotions does not mean emotions are inevitable for such instincts to exist.  Even a bee has a survival instinct without any emotion attached. 

Humans have several emotions attached to their procreation and parental instincts...does not mean spiders and snakes and bees  also need to have emotions or else they do not have procreation or parental instincts.

The foundation of all survival and procreation instincts are present in our DNA and arise from their basic replication and copying tendency.

Emotions linked to these instincts in higher organisms are irrelevant to this discussion. Those are  just a more complicated process by which the instincts exhibit themselves in higher organisms. 

[Shaker]

Asserting that there is no  'guidance' is no use. I have given enough reasons to say why guidance is there.

They're not "reasons" at all but unsupported assertions of yours based on what you want to be the case rather than what we can know to be the case.

You are merely attributing it all to random gene variation and a metaphoric process of NS.

I see you either didn't read, read but didn't understand or read but have forgotten what torridon told you only an hour past:

Natural Selection is not a metaphor, it is an actuality

Natural Selection cannot be a process because there are no specific laws governing it ... But since scientists do not believe in any Intelligent selection, it cannot be a process.

Maybe somebody else can tease out some sort of meaning from this (which strikes me as not even comprehensible English), because I sure as hell can't.

I don't know why you are bringing in emotions into this.

The only person bringing emotion into the discussion is you, based on what you for some reason seem to want to be the case (survival instinct driving evolution, which is utter codswallop).

Seriously, stay out of the science business and leave it to those who understand it, because you're just making a fool of yourself.

[torridon]

Asserting that there is no  'guidance' is no use. I have given enough reasons to say why guidance is there. You are merely attributing it all to random gene variation and a metaphoric process of NS.

Natural Selection cannot be a process because there are no specific laws governing it. It is just 'whatever manages to survive is deemed as selected'. Charles Darwin assumed an Intelligent selection process in nature (in line with artificial selection in which specific traits are chosen consciously in the animal being bred). That's why he called it Natural Selection. But since scientists do not believe in any Intelligent selection, it cannot be a process.

You lost me here.  I don't know why you seem to be insisting NS is a metaphor; a metaphor for what ?  Darwin never assumed any Intelligent selection process; he called it Natural Selection because it was natural, not supernatural, not guided, not intelligent, just natural

[Stranger]

Natural Selection cannot be a process because there are no specific laws governing it. It is just 'whatever manages to survive is deemed as selected'. Charles Darwin assumed an Intelligent selection process in nature (in line with artificial selection in which specific traits are chosen consciously in the animal being bred). That's why he called it Natural Selection. But since scientists do not believe in any Intelligent selection, it cannot be a process.

This is utter drivel. Darwin certainly did not assume an "intelligent selection process in nature".

Look, natural selection really is very, very simple simple - even you should be able to grasp it.

We need only inheritance with variation to get it going.

Take a particular characteristic, as an example, say how tall some organism is. In each generation there is variation in height but generally taller organisms produce similarly tall offspring.

Now, we have an environment. For various reasons (access to light or food, or the need to see over other stuff) said environment might be favourable to (say) taller than average individuals, in the sense that shorter ones cannot get as much food or light or whatever. Hence, the taller ones are healthier, live longer and so produce more offspring.

Now because of all that, the average height of the population increases.

That is natural selection.

Notice that no individual organism can influence the process (it can't change how tall it grows), neither is there any external intelligence or instinct involved. Notice also, that if the environment changes, then the selection may change with it - it could be that shorter becomes an advantage because (say) the need to hide becomes more important than the other factors.

In the simplest cases, this may just be how fast a cell divides - too fast for the environment and the supply of nutrient is exhausted - too slow and something else gets it first.

In more complex cases, instinctive behaviours of individuals are selected in exactly the same way; if food is more plentiful earlier in the day, then the behaviour of becoming active earlier will be selected.

That is why instinct comes from natural selection and not the other way around.

[Sriram]

You lost me here.  I don't know why you seem to be insisting NS is a metaphor; a metaphor for what ?  Darwin never assumed any Intelligent selection process; he called it Natural Selection because it was natural, not supernatural, not guided, not intelligent, just natural

You don't get it. Materialism is so deeply ingrained in some people that they cannot but eliminate all possibilities of any 'inner compulsions' ....however  real.

Survival instinct is an inner compulsion to survive. So is the procreation instinct. It has nothing to do with emotions basically (except in higher organisms). It started off with RNA and DNA molecules replicating. It is that compulsive behavior that is responsible for survival, procreation, evolution and everything else since.

Without that inner compulsion to survive and procreate...NS would be irrelevant. Species would just die out without bothering to adapt.

It is these instincts that drives organisms to survive and procreate. No doubt about that at all.....regardless of what all of you might say.

You might have a problem about how and where from these instincts arise. That is not my concern. As far as I am concerned, it could be Nature, Universal Consciousness, God or whatever. If it is there ....it is there.

Natural Selection....I have discussed this many times. Darwin proposed NS only as equivalent to Artificial Selection where certain traits are consciously chosen while breeding plants and animals.

Darwin was not an atheist, he was an agnostic and he most probably assumed some sort of an manner through which Nature selects traits because of which complexity and humans have arisen.

Quote:

"Darwin thought of natural selection by analogy to how farmers select crops or livestock for breeding, which he called "artificial selection"; in his early manuscripts he referred to a Nature, which would do the selection."

" In a letter to Charles Lyell in September 1860, Darwin regretted the use of the term "Natural Selection," preferring the term "Natural Preservation".  Unquote:

From

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection


Cheers.

Sriram

[torridon]

You don't get it. Materialism is so deeply ingrained in some people that they cannot but eliminate all possibilities of any 'inner compulsions' ....however  real.

Survival instinct is an inner compulsion to survive. So is the procreation instinct. It has nothing to do with emotions basically (except in higher organisms). It started off with RNA and DNA molecules replicating. It is that compulsive behavior that is responsible for survival, procreation, evolution and everything else since.

Without that inner compulsion to survive and procreate...NS would be irrelevant. Species would just die out without bothering to adapt.

It is these instincts that drives organisms to survive and procreate. No doubt about that at all.....regardless of what all of you might say.

You might have a problem about how and where from these instincts arise. That is not my concern. As far as I am concerned, it could be Nature, Universal Consciousness, God or whatever. If it is there ....it is there.

You're right I don't get it.  Nobody denies that replicating molecules exists, but we have different forms of language to express and understand that process at an elementary level.  What you might call 'inner compulsion' is simply the operation of the laws of physics at that level.  A cheap way to dissipate energy is to make a copy of yourself, molecules that do this are merely enacting thermodynamic law.

[torridon]

Natural Selection....I have discussed this many times. Darwin proposed NS only as equivalent to Artificial Selection where certain traits are consciously chosen while breeding plants and animals.

Darwin was not an atheist, he was an agnostic and he most probably assumed some sort of an manner through which Nature selects traits because of which complexity and humans have arisen.

What Darwin understood through observation was the principle of descent with modification; that creatures produce non-identical offspring and that diversity among siblings will favour some individuals over others in terms of fitness; and scaled up to populations this mechanism neatly accounts for speciation.  What he didn't understand was the underlying biological mechanisms, ie genes and mutations that underwrite heritability, we had to wait for Mendel to come along for that.

[Sriram]

You're right I don't get it.  Nobody denies that replicating molecules exists, but we have different forms of language to express and understand that process at an elementary level.  What you might call 'inner compulsion' is simply the operation of the laws of physics at that level.  A cheap way to dissipate energy is to make a copy of yourself, molecules that do this are merely enacting thermodynamic law.

LOL!!   You are again trying to explain away something very fundamental. You did not agree that the survival instinct  was fundamentally a part of an organisms nature. Now you talk thermodynamics!! 

Its all your (and others) materialistic mindset and your need to offer convoluted and off hand explanations for such extraordinary things as the 'survival instinct'...'procreation instinct'....and the evolution of complexity and humans.

To me it is very clear that there is a natural Intelligence/Consciousness present everywhere which directs evolution. No doubt at all.  (it has nothing to do with religious deities).

The more you people argue against it the more points that arise in favour of it.

[Shaker]

Actually, no, they don't.

The people arguing against understand science, whereas you are to science what Stephen Hawking is to line dancing.

[~TW~]

Hi everyone,

The Triune system is one of the most famous and well accepted ways of classifying the brain and its evolutionary development.

The human brain is said to consist of three systems... The Reptilian system, the Limbic system and the Neo Cortex.

The Reptilian system is responsible for aggression, dominance, territorial behavior. The Limbic system is said to be responsible for emotion, reproductive  and parental behavior. The Neo Cortex is said to be responsible for language, planning abstract thinking and so on.

In evolutionary terms the first one is said to have evolved in reptiles and the second in early mammals and the Neo Cortex in higher mammals and more so in humans.

Of course, this division is not accepted today in such a clear cut manner as in earlier decades, because many organisms have been found to be exceptions to these stages of development. Also, in humans, all the three systems function in an integrated manner as one unit.

Regardless of this, the Triune system is still regarded as one of the most representative models in relation to brain development and functioning.

IMO...the Triune system shows that advanced brain development in higher mammals did not happen merely as an extension of the earlier ones but appears to have developed as separate systems with separate structures.....with a step up at each level.

Just some thoughts.

Cheers.

Sriram

Just an answer complete cobblers

 with not the slightest bit of evidence. Fairy storys for atheist.

~TW~