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Is instinct, as we in martial systems know of it, actually real? As I continue my studies especially toward training our actions to act as if by instinct I am coming to my own conclusion that instinct as it is currently defined may not be reality. It is as if one assumes certain stimuli triggers certain parts of the brain toward actions never learned, never practiced and often inadequate.
In truth, the only instinctual activities my body and mind take involve encoded actions such as breathing, blinking the eyes and the beating of our hearts so that all other actions come from learning and practice. This is arguable and will be dismissed because humans like things simple and the simplest answer is to assume such things come about by instinct. This is why when we train and practice to condition ourselves to act certain ways when certain stimuli are sensed we call that, Instinct or Instinctual.
Personally and from a non-medical and non-scientific background, experience, knowledge and understanding I find this … flawed. What follows is my current definition of what it is that we call instincts that relate to those actions and activities and responses, etc., thought of as instincts. In truth, it is something else entirely.
“A learned programmed conditioned response to stimuli, internal and external, triggered toward appropriate, sometimes inappropriate, unconscious responses (from the lizard in us rather than the conscious human logical side).” - cejames
“Instinctual behavior thought to be innate or inherited, as if these words, demonstrably refer to a definable, definite, and delimited category of behavior. The idea that there is anything in any organism, especially in humans, whether in the genes or in anything else, that determines fixed action patterns is to be rejected as false.” - Montagu
Here is an example I can conceive that may help understand this way. When we react with the flight-or-fight response to stimuli we do that from what we learned in our environment. When we fall, it hurts and we either respond with some emotion and that triggers our adrenal chemical responses tying those bodily chemical releases to some stimuli. The brain then perceives and experiences some other like stimuli causing adrenal to dump and that triggers all kinds of psychological and physiological responses comes from what we learn from our environment and tribe, etc. I am sure you can blow holes in this but just consider the gist of it and contemplate the rest with external studies, observations and experiences.
Look at it this way, danger once taught triggers our chemical systems causing us to respond or act where, without trained and practiced response, our actions fall back on what we did early on in the learning process as if we witness others doing it, we do it ourselves be flinching, triggered physical response due to sensory input, i.e., it hurts, pull away, etc., then on to flight if that makes the pain and such go away faster.
Now, conditioning with intent, etc., as I propose in my notes on practice, turns your actions practiced from an conscious effort to the unconscious learned programmed conditioned response that by its unconscious triggered run using the very trained and practiced methodologies, etc., to get-r-done. Simple yet complex ergo why using the term instinct or instinctual works with humans toward understanding much like the use of, “Muscle Memory,” to explain those primal conditioned response from the lizard’s deep brain.
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