The term Instinct is an
action that changes the relationship between an organism and its environment. Instincts
are complex behavior patterns like reflexes, which come with inborn and are
rather inflexible but they differ from reflexes in their complexity. For
instance, the widespread behavior of scratching is common to most birds,
reptiles and mammals but for instance, even if foraging for food is a crucial
behavior for animals, a single gene can alter it.
When we think the term
Instinct as a behavior, which may occur as a result of an external stimulus
such as sight of a predator, and an internal stimulus such as hunger, it is
claimed that it is useful to distinguish between innate behavior and learned
behavior.
Innate behavior is
determined by the nervous system. It is usually determined, a given stimulus
triggering a given response whereas learned behavior is more or less
permanently altered as a result of experience that any individual organism has
such as learning to play baseball well. For
instance, the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov found out that placing meat
powder in a dog’s mouth would cause it to salivate. The dog has learned to
respond to a substitute stimulus, the conditioned stimulus.
The conditioned response
is the simplest form of learned behavior. It is a response, which is a result of
experience so we can say that the principles of conditioning can also be used
to train animals to perform tasks that are not innate.
When it comes to monkeys,
how human beings learn is one of the most prominent ways we differ from other
species. We humans have the ability to transform property and skılls we learn
and we are born with from one generation to another. And we have language,
which is the unique human trait that allows us to learn complicated and varied
skills from each other. According to
some researches related with monkeys, it is indicated that monkeys also have
the ability to use tools and learned skills. More interestingly, they do it
without the use of language.
Obviously you have benefited from the research and your notions on what "instinct" is now is considerably more sophisticated from what it was before you started.
YanıtlaSilSomeone you could maybe also look at is B. F. Skinner and his school of behaviorism:
https://www.google.com.tr/search?q=b.+f.+skinner+instinct&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&gws_rd=cr&ei=pGCDUsmoFomYtQbH0ICwAg
(It may be good however look at Skinner critically. He is someone whose behavior modification methodologies have been widely criticized.)
The next big step now is to combine "instinct" with what you, as an artist, want to do with the term, how you are thinking of integrating it into your own output.
Something I came across while I was looking for stuff to send to Melisa. I only looked at this very briefly but for some reason I think it may interest you:
YanıtlaSilhttp://lareviewofbooks.org/review/john-grays-godless-mysticism-on-the-silence-of-animals
The funny thing is that it comes up as the number one page when one conducts a search for "animals+mysticism". As far as I could see at a very short glance, this has nothing to do with "instinct", but I have a feeling that it may relate to some of your broader interests regarding humans vis a vis nature, animals, etc etc:
"Such is the exhilaratingly anti-humanist, dystopian, indeed Ballardesque, vision of a drowned world at the heart of Gray’s work: when the earth is done with humans, it will recover and the blip of human civilization will be forgotten forever. Global warming is simply one of the periodic fevers that the earth has suffered during its long, nonhuman history. It will recover and carry on. But we cannot and will not."