A Question That No One's Answered for Me

[playmaker001]

Most of, if not all our human instincts boil down to survival and value. My question is why's it such a big deal to survive? Why is there this powerful biological motivation in all of us to stay alive? Why fear death? If you don't fear death, why the urge to survive and live on?

It's a question I can't find an answer to. If anybody can point me to some scientific and psychological research that answers my question I'd really appreciate it.

[Jon]

http://www.amazon.com/The-Origin-Species...0517123207

edit: seriously though - creatures without an urge to survive... didn't survive. We're the descendants of people who did whatever they had to to survive. We inherited that instinct from them.

[playmaker001]

Yes i know, but to put it bluntly, why's survival such a big deal? Why did our descendants want to survive in the first place? The creatures without an urge to survive didn't and died off, but why is that a big deal? So they died off, but death is death. What is the benefit of a species living on when all die? It seems there would be no difference whether or not descendants should have an urge to survive or not, the be all and end all is death eventually, regardless.

I'm trying to understand..

[machiavelli]

It's essentially a logical necessity. Has nothing to do with "benefit." We observe species with a will to survive because only those species with a will to survive managed to stick around long enough to get observed. There's no "why." Evolution works by random mutation.

Quick primer on evolution: it requires 3 things: a mechanism of variation (random mutation, in this case), a mechanism of selection (things dying off or failing to breed, in this case), and a mechanism of inheritance (DNA, in this case). Then you get a system that optimizes (to local maxima) along the dimensions selected-for.

[playmaker001]

@machiavelli: So let me summarize what I got out of that post:

A. Random mutation is of course random.

B. Species with the will to survive got that will through random mutation.

C. Humans and the will to survive are a product of random mutation.

D. Thus, humans and their survival instincts are random

Correct?

[Jon]

No

its

a) random mutation is random

b) those mutations that promote survival and reproduction increase in population

c) those that don't promote survival and reproduction go away

d) a will to survive promotes survival

e) therefore once the mutation happens, it spreads.

[playmaker001]

Sooo which premise of mine do you disagree with A,B,C or D?

[Mark]

Read the first three chapters of "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. It will answer all of this and much more. It will also likely blow your mind.

And it's a bit dense, but if you can finish it, it will show you why 90% of the dating advice that claims we're biologically wired to do this or that has no idea what they're talking about.

[Jon]

(04-18-2012 11:42 PM)playmaker001 Wrote:  Sooo which premise of mine do you disagree with A,B,C or D?

C is incomplete and D is incorrect. mutation is random but natural selection is not, therefore humans are a product of random mutation is technically true but misleading, and d is therefore totally incorrect.

[machiavelli]

I would say that the fact of having desires or instincts at all is "random" in the sense that a species can optimize along the dimension of survivability without having any such cognitive states/behaviors. Plants, for example, are very good at surviving despite having no cognitions at all nor anything we'd recognize as "behavior."

What is not random is that all living things, over time, tend to get better at surviving (at least, at surviving long enough to reproduce). One of the paths to "better at surviving" is to develop a desire to survive and the cognitive resources to carry out that desire; it so happens that this is the path that humans have taken.

[playmaker001]

Yeah, I've read Dawkins and love the guy and I have read two of Darwin's books. I honestly was getting at trying to search for my own spirituality and meaning, or if I even NEED to have any sort of spirituality or meaning to have a fulfilling life. Or even more so, is having a fulfilling life even necessary in the grand scheme of things. I don't expect anybody to answer this really. I haven't subscribed to any religion or any sort of spirituality since my Christianity detox when I was in high school. There are some interesting options i MIGHT explore, but I'm honestly a happy person now so I'm in no rush. But, every once in a while there is this urge.