There’s pretty clear evidence that the human brain has the concepts “snake” and “spider” genetically encoded in it, as pre-grown neural recognition circuits for their shapes and movement styles. Yes, they really are creepy — to humans. Humans are not instinctively afraid of either snakes or spiders, but there’s good experimental evidence that we’re genetically predisposed to specifically recognize them and to quickly and efficiently learn to be afraid of any specific type of snake or spider, if and only if we see adults in our community act afraid of that type, often in as little as a single exposure to this behavior. So we’re instinctively poised to rapidly learn to be afraid of any specific types of snakes and spiders that our community fears. Which is a fascinating example of instinctively predisposed cultural learning.
Stuff like this is the reason the old Nature-vs-Nurture argument was particularly unhelpful: the answer isn’t just “usually both”, it’s often “a subtle intricately-interleaved combination of the two”: genetic and cultural coevolution.
There’s pretty clear evidence that the human brain has the concepts “snake” and “spider” genetically encoded in it, as pre-grown neural recognition circuits for their shapes and movement styles. Yes, they really are creepy — to humans. Humans are not instinctively afraid of either snakes or spiders, but there’s good experimental evidence that we’re genetically predisposed to specifically recognize them and to quickly and efficiently learn to be afraid of any specific type of snake or spider, if and only if we see adults in our community act afraid of that type, often in as little as a single exposure to this behavior. So we’re instinctively poised to rapidly learn to be afraid of any specific types of snakes and spiders that our community fears. Which is a fascinating example of instinctively predisposed cultural learning.
Stuff like this is the reason the old Nature-vs-Nurture argument was particularly unhelpful: the answer isn’t just “usually both”, it’s often “a subtle intricately-interleaved combination of the two”: genetic and cultural coevolution.