I wasn't arguing that it was uniquely human (I don't think I was arguing anything at all, really).
That said, what is the cutoff for determining if a behavior is instinctual or not? There's a lot of variables in play. For example, I would imagine my dog's instinct is to just jump up and snatch the treat from my hand. Does she sit, shake, lay down, roll over, high-five, whatever else I tell her to do because she knows it will get her the treat and earn favor? Couldn't this also be explained as instinct?
That is, how exactly do we determine what is "overcoming" instinct in a dog, and what is merely more complex expression of what is also instinctual behavior? We could question this equally with humans as well, except we're absolutely confident that humans have the ability of introspection, even if it's not necessarily put to good use all the time.
Edit:
Let me just state I wasn't trying to be argumentative in my original response above. My "I'm on the opposite side of that" was apparently poorly-worded. I wasn't disagreeing with you, I was trying to say something orthogonal to your comment. That is, I felt like my starting assumption was that human behavior could be heritable, while the context of your comment was that some felt that is even up for debate.
I'm sorry if I'm not making this very clear, I'm frankly taken aback by the amount of furor over my comment, which I meant not as a direct response or argument to yours, but as an aside.
That said, what is the cutoff for determining if a behavior is instinctual or not? There's a lot of variables in play. For example, I would imagine my dog's instinct is to just jump up and snatch the treat from my hand. Does she sit, shake, lay down, roll over, high-five, whatever else I tell her to do because she knows it will get her the treat and earn favor? Couldn't this also be explained as instinct?
That is, how exactly do we determine what is "overcoming" instinct in a dog, and what is merely more complex expression of what is also instinctual behavior? We could question this equally with humans as well, except we're absolutely confident that humans have the ability of introspection, even if it's not necessarily put to good use all the time.
Edit: Let me just state I wasn't trying to be argumentative in my original response above. My "I'm on the opposite side of that" was apparently poorly-worded. I wasn't disagreeing with you, I was trying to say something orthogonal to your comment. That is, I felt like my starting assumption was that human behavior could be heritable, while the context of your comment was that some felt that is even up for debate.
I'm sorry if I'm not making this very clear, I'm frankly taken aback by the amount of furor over my comment, which I meant not as a direct response or argument to yours, but as an aside.