Xref: utzoo sci.misc:2846 sci.psychology:1162 comp.ai:2726 comp.ai.neural-nets:345 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!mailrus!cornell!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!cadre!geb From: geb@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Gordon E. Banks) Newsgroups: sci.misc,sci.psychology,comp.ai,comp.ai.neural-nets Subject: Re: Learned Behavior vs. Hard-Wired Behavior Message-ID: <1824@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> Date: 29 Nov 88 13:56:28 GMT References: <3978@charon.unm.edu> <1753@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <5959@hoptoad.uucp> <17868@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> Reply-To: geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks) Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA. Lines: 19 In article <17868@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle) writes: > > The ability to stand, walk, run, avoid obstacles, and run with a >herd without getting trampled appears in horses in the wild within hours >of birth. Even domesticated horses typically stand within an hour of birth. > This does not say that gait characteristics of other species, such as man, are not innate. The horse nervous system is just much more developed at birth. Infants do not really "learn" to walk. They start walking (unless prevent) when maturation of the nervous system reaches the proper stage. The programs for walking are largely in the spinal cord anyhow with some contributions from the basal ganglia and cerebellum. A good guide to what is innate in humans is to look for behavior that exists in all cultures, even as remote as that of Australian aborigines. Laughing, smiling, speech, fighting and sexual behaviors, all are found in all genetic stocks. Much more may be innate that is different in different genetic stocks, but that is more difficult to separate from cultural influences.