Instinct and the Racial Soul

A hypothesis.

With respect to the idea of a Jungian “racial soul,” consider my work on the idea of an “empirical racial soul,” with speculation about possible biological mechanisms.  See this.  Also see this.  Finally, also see this.

One needs to consider the inherited behavioral trait of instinct in this context (emphasis added):

A feedback process driven by experience is required for these simulated synaptic levels to settle into optimal states. Extensive training is typically required before an ANN can perform at a high level. A similar process of experience-driven synaptic modification enables every cognitive and motor skill that people acquire through learning.

Instinct appears to preset synaptic connections to “adult” values during embryology. That is to say, the genes that are responsible for constructing the synapses as part of the neural networks that mediate instinct appear to also set their functional properties to optimal excitatory or inhibitory levels that replicate what would have been achieved if the network had gone through a rigorous and comprehensive developmental learning phase. DNA appears to code for final “adult” synaptic values in the case of spiders where instinct seems to dominate their behavior. Genetics appears to exert a lesser but still noteworthy effect in what are called biologically prepared behaviors such as our fears of heights and the dark.

The ability of DNA to present properties of individual synapses across complex neural networks explains how behaviors can be inherited. This explains how spiders can weave complex webs shortly after hatching. It also explains why dogs and cats behave differently. Genetic variation explains individual behavioral differences—or in other words, why spiders of the same species may behave somewhat differently, or why individual dogs and cats differ temperamentally.

Thus, the idea can be summarized as follows. When an animal learns, there are changes in its neural network that “fixes” that learned behavior in the physical structure of its brain and nervous system. Instinct is inherited behavior; the changes in the neural network that would have occurred via learning are instead encoded in the DNA so the animal is born with the analogous changes in the neural network already there. Instead of the changes requiring a process of learning, the changes are thus present from the start, encoded in the DNA and expressed in a neural network that allows the animal to express a behavior without needing to have first learned it.

Is a “racial soul” encoded in a similar manner?  Is it possible that gene-culture evolution during a population's ethnogenesis results in certain (“stereotypical”) behaviors being encoded, in a heritable manner, affecting human neural networks, so that members of different ethnies behave in particular ways without needing to learn those behaviors?

Or perhaps it is more subtle – it may not be so much that specific human ethnoracial behaviors are strictly inherited – although some basic ones may well be – but that the potential for such behaviors are encoded.  Thus, at an individual level, a member of group X may have an inherited greater tendency to express particular behaviors in the context of certain environmental cues than would a member of another group, and when one looks at large numbers of each population, the mass effect results in stereotypical group behaviors. Or, perhaps, members of certain groups have a greater tendency to be able to learn certain behaviors than other behaviors, as compared to members of other groups. Or maybe, most likely, it is a combination of all of these possibilities - rigid inherited behaviors, potentialities expressed in particular environments, increased ability to learn certain behaviors, all combined with differences due to variation in IQ and in a general ability to learn as well as in behavioral differences that may be inherited, learned, cultural, etc.

That which is labeled a “racial soul” would be those components most similar to that of animal instinct, and inherited in a similar manner, persons being born with certain neural network changes and patterns that would otherwise need to be learned. There’s some rigidity with that, but also some plasticity as well, all modulated by general intelligence and behavioral patterns.