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meroberts's picture

No flirtation without instigation

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Humans, and animals in general, are unique (from computers and less-evolved organisms) in their ability to create outputs without inputs. This ability gives credit to the Harvard Law of Animal Behavior, which we discussed in class previously. This law implies that animals are able to create never-before-seen behavioral patterns regardless of input. When I was thinking of examples of this behavior, I remembered talking in class about flirting. I don't know if I believe that flirting is an output without an input. I think people flirt because they are attracted to other people. Attraction is based on pheromones and neurochemical processes that I don't quite understand. So isn't attraction the (internal) input and flirting the output? I think it could be argued that every behavior/output is caused by at least one stimulus, sometimes multiple stimuli, whether they be endogenous or exogenous. After thinking about it, I don't know if I totally accept the idea of outputs without inputs. I also don't think that inputs can only be external. I would bet that most of human behavior could be explained by internal stimuli, or a mix of both internal and external stimuli. Although the concept of outputs without inputs does make humans seem more evolved, I think that there is a lot more to the stimulus story. When we rule out internal stimuli from the equation, we can't fully understand the process.

 

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