[regarding something which Adam had posted, but which was flagged and is now removed…]
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As Vinnie noted, “dominated” is problematic. Much of the mundane aspects of our behavior are not remarkably different from apes or other animals - we eat, sleep, move around, etc.
Evolution strongly suggests that humans are likely to be selfish. But so does any experience with humans. Do we use our inclinations towards self-preservation for good or not? Although these questions often focus on evolution, it’s not all that different from the fact that we can make something useful or beautiful or harmful from wood or stone.
Free will is not only experienced by us to be self-evident, it is impossible to deny. If freedom of thought and choice are not true, then no theory we accept about anything can be known to be true. It is not just moral responsibility that goes down the drain, but all theory-making - including the theory that our choices and behavior are all forced on us.
LOL! I deny it.
Agree. Our behavior is dominated by our enculturation, so sociology and psychology have far more explanatory power than biology when it comes to most human behavior. Maybe I’m biased, but I suspect that is at least partly because so much of our cognition and communication is language dependent and we have the capabilities through language to cognitively handle complex abstractions that shape our communal and individual behaviors.
Yes, learning and enculturation is important. However, the field of sociobiology would say that culture and and the process of socialization and enforcement around “cultural norms” is itself a result of evolutionary history and so it sort of becomes a chicken-and-egg question? Ultimately I do think humans have the cognitive ability for abstract thinking to override evolutionary tendencies in their behaviour, if they wish to do so.
Sure, and evolutionary psychology treats complex behaviors that are culturally inherited as a kind of evolutionary adaptation, even if resulting traits are not linked to genetics.
Yes. One must also be cautious around the phrasing “linked to genetics”. Usually when people say this, they mean “the physical expression of the trait is deterministically controlled by genetics”. However, biologists would say that even the ability to learn is a “genetically encoded trait” that differs between species. Different species have different propensities to learn, as a result of their evolutionary history in different ecological contexts.
In other words, learning is a feature “linked to genetics and evolution” but one which explicitly encodes for plasticity in behaviour (as opposed to a fixed and determined phenotypic outcome).
Studies in feral children hint at what you are describing. These children missed learning language at important points in their childhood (2-4 years old if memory serves) and they show decreased cognitive function compared to children who learned language as children. Language appears to be an important aspect of developing our brains in childhood.
Of course, there’s not a lot of data to go on here, and I doubt it is as simple as a one to one correlation. There are a lot of other psychological issues that may be in play.
Our brains are still developing in childhood as well. Genetics supplies the clay, and society supplies the molder, as it were.
This is a good analogy as one could say that genetics determines the hardness of the clay…how receptive it is to being molded by environmental influences during development.
This is a bit off the beaten path, but hopefully only a small detour.
If you have ever gone down one of the many youtube rabbit holes you may have come across Rick Beato’s channel. He’s a former music producer and has been working in music his whole life. He purposefully raised his son so that he would have perfect pitch, and it worked. He could play a 5 note chord on the piano and his young son (7 years old?) could instantly list off every note in that chord just like you or I could call out a color’s name when we see it. What he did was play complex music as his son was a baby and throughout his early childhood. I think there was some basic ear training as well, but nothing over the top. It is a great illustration of just how plastic and trainable a child’s brain is, IMO.
So to bring this back to the topic, I do think there are ape instincts that we all carry as our genetic heritage, but there is so much more that goes into how the brain develops. It’s also a reminder of how important childhood is.
Funny, yes I’ve run across Rick Beato on a youtube rabbit trail 
!
Anyways, yes for sure… Humans are a species with one of the greatest capacities for learning out there. Typically, the trait for plasticity (learning) is valuable when the offspring may find themselves in a different habitat or environmental context than their parents, and must pick up novel skills that are fitted to the local (and unpredictable) context. It tends to make a species very flexible—able to handle novel situations quickly.
Feral children also don’t get socialized into a culture and I believe attachment to adult caregivers also plays into brain development.
Yes, it’s not just language. There’s a lot of research on the effects of early life deprivation and brain development.
Those include problems like Reactive Attachment Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. The two diagnoses covered more than half the kids I encountered in juvenile detention. Both those issues begin to show up because infants are neglected or institutionalized, which is long before language development enters the picture.
An infant begins developing the capacity for language around 9 months or so. A huge part of that normal development involves the mother engaging the infant in one-on-one, joint frames of reference. In other words, mon makes eye contact with baby and makes clear she’s trying to communicate something like “I love you” or “say mama” (see Tomasello). When that human contact is lacking early in life, almost no amount of therapy or unconditional love from adoptive parent or Jesus talk in the church will fix the resulting problems in adulthood.
Regarding enculturation (socialization), “animal” instincts, and language learning, @T_aquaticus mentioned ages 2-4. Children as infants totally identify with their mothers/primary caregivers. They first begin to differentiate themselves as individuals around the age of 2. Parents today call this the “terrible twos.” That’s also about when they start to learn societal rules like respect your elders, don’t bite/hit/hurt others, don’t take things from others. 10 Commandments basic type of stuff that supposedly came directly from God’s finger to Moses. Nah.
Infants weren’t taught basic selfishness that they had to be “educated” out of between the ages of 2-4. Young kids are taught to share and cooperate, even though such things are part of our evolutionary heritage and a great reason we still survive while other hominins went extinct.
Yes and no. Children are “programmed” from birth to trust the information they receive from parents/caregivers. So kids begin life thinking that what they’ve learned from parents and immediate family is “normal” for everyone else. As they enter school and encounter peers, they take that information into account. About the age of 7 or 8, they start to doubt the trustworthiness of parents and teachers. A simple measuring stick that Western society has developed is Santa Claus. At what age do kids realize the adults have been deceiving them?
Metacognition and abstract thinking come years later.
A couple of examples:
When you find yourself in an unfamiliar social situation, what do you do? Typically, look around and see what others are doing, then copy their behavior.
Second, how do you know that someone knows how to make coffee? Just because they can do it every day in their own kitchen proves nothing. That’s specific knowledge of specific context. Someone only knows how to make coffee if they’re put in an unfamiliar kitchen with unfamiliar tools but they still can figure it out.
A very interesting question. Reversing direction, one can find human like group behavior, both cooperative and aggressive, in wild primates. I think past instincts may be present in people, but perhaps not best described as dominant. The interesting question to me is what lies beyond primal instinct - are there distinctly human genetic dispositions which have developed since splitting away, which are innate and not fully the result of socialization? If so, was there active biological selection, and how would that happen with individuals passing on genes in the context of survival as groups? As there have been overlapping human lineages until recently, what role might genetics have played in the outcome of large scale competition between people groups?
Just to reiterate my reflexive scientific hedging:
“Of course, there’s not a lot of data to go on here, and I doubt it is as simple as a one to one correlation. There are a lot of other psychological issues that may be in play.”
Biology is complex even when we are dealing with cellular processes. It’s kicked up a notch when we are talking about human psychology and neurobiology. I’m instantly skeptical of any paper that points to one gene as the root cause of a complex phenotype, so I am even more doubtful of a single cause when it comes to human psychology.
Would it be fair (and still within your requisite and prudent scientific hedging) to think that “single causes” can more likely be found on the preventative side of things as opposed to the formative side? E.g. - the sudden injected presence of one solitary toxin can single-handedly prevent a person from breathing, living, or having healthy brain function, etc. But the developed presence of all those necessary capabilities is of course, quite complex - and a culmination of a multitude of factors. So perhaps in the same way, the development of a healthy human adult is the result of an astounding array of biological, psychological, familial, social … etc. factors - all contributors to varying degrees. But one solitary privation of something critical (e.g. some of the aforementioned ‘attachment disorders’ severely suffered in infancy) could single-handedly deliver a debilitating blow to one’s chances of growing into a socially fluorishing adult. But the absence of that privation still leaves the necessity of the wider array of factors needed to help that all happen optimally. Perhaps we can survive the absence of some of those factors more than others. Some toxins are fatal. Others may just exist on a continuum all the way into mere ‘junk food’ which we can tolerate in astounding amounts, and even appear to thrive with it (though perhaps less so.)
As far as vague “single causes” go, I think they are rarer than multi-causes in the vast majority of arenas. That even applies to things like economics, and I would expect it to be the case in most complex systems.
In the research world we call these “hammers”. They do exist. One of the most well known examples is botulinum toxin which can shut down the nervous system and cause the victim to suffocate. At the same time, there are bacterial pathogens that have multiple toxins and multiple antigens that work through different pathways during an infection. These will also interact with the current state of a person’s immune system as well as any specific genetic variations they may have. There can also be effects from biofilms and other environmental states.
So, it’s a spectrum.
There could be a single event. As I said, I am reflexively skeptical, but skepticism is certainly not denial or close-mindedness. I can be convinced. I wouldn’t be surprised if a single traumatic event can have a lifelong impact. There are certainly veterans who have PTSD that could probably be traced back to a single event.
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