{ "model": { "rank": 2725, "code": "thing-q18237", "model_id": "vr.tr.instinct", "name": "instinct", "purpose": "Enable an AI agent to recognise a proposed instinct, assess evidence for its origin and current expression, and identify justified responses without treating an instinctive impulse as an instruction.", "family": "Thing Registry", "category": "Activities and processes", "status": "research-draft", "kind": "thing", "plane": "ACT", "domain": "ACT.ACT", "industry": "", "version": "", "url": "/models/thing/q18237/", "tier": 2, "score": 98, "payload": { "layer": "wikidata", "aliases": [ "sexual instinct", "estrous cycle", "parental instinct", "nesting instinct" ], "aliasCount": 4, "merged": 4, "knownIn": 98, "facets": null, "markers": [], "lexicalClass": "", "senseRank": null, "alsoRegisteredAs": "vr.tr.instinct", "source": { "dataset": "wikidata", "item": "Q18237", "url": "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18237", "license": "CC0 1.0" } }, "research": { "vercy": "1.0-draft", "publication": { "status": "research-draft", "adjudicationStatus": "unreviewed", "publishableCanonical": false, "generatedAt": "2026-09-07T11:20:15Z", "providers": [ "Codex", "Grok" ], "missingProviders": [], "pass": 2, "cost": { "grok": { "usd": 0.04487134, "turns": 2, "seconds": 166.9, "error": null }, "codex": { "seconds": 75.8, "error": "Reading additional input from stdin...\nOpenAI Codex v0.153.3\n--------\nworkdir: R:\\02_PROJECTS\\02_Meta_Models_Platforms\\Ver.cy\\current\\thing-registry-backlog\nmodel: gpt-6-astra\nprovider: openai\napproval: never\nsandbox: read-only\nreasoning effort: none\nreasoning summaries: none\nsession id: 01a07b96-633b-72a2-acb1-7ffca0a4f403\n--------\nuser\nYou are drafting a Vercy meta-model for one registered thing. Answer as JSON only, no prose around it.\n\nThing: instinct\nRegistry id: vr.tr.instinct\nPlane / domain: ACT / ACT.ACT\nRegistry definition: (none recorded)\nNames folded into this entry: (none)\n\nA Vercy" } } }, "metaModel": { "id": "THING-Q18237", "registryId": "vr.tr.instinct", "name": "instinct", "version": "0.1.0-research.1", "entryKind": "thing", "family": "Thing Registry", "domain": [ "ACT.ACT" ], "status": "research-draft" }, "canonicalUrl": "https://ver.cy/models/thing/q18237/", "model": { "registry_id": "vr.tr.instinct", "name": "instinct", "purpose": "Enable an AI agent to recognise a proposed instinct, assess evidence for its origin and current expression, and identify justified responses without treating an instinctive impulse as an instruction.", "definition": "Instinct is a species-typical, stereotyped, and apparently unlearned behaviour pattern, genetically organized and typically released by a specific sign stimulus, that once triggered tends to run as a centrally patterned sequence rather than being assembled by individual learning or continuous peripheral guidance.", "scope_statement": "This model owns an attributed instinctive disposition toward a recognisable pattern of action, including its bearer, eliciting conditions, expression, developmental evidence, and regulation; attribution remains provisional where inherited predisposition, learning, and immediate reaction cannot be distinguished.", "in_scope": [ "The action tendency attributed to an organism or defined population", "Evidence supporting or challenging an instinct attribution", "Cues, internal conditions, and contexts associated with activation", "Expression, interruption, and non-expression of the tendency", "Developmental emergence and modification through experience", "Consequences and justified ways to accommodate or regulate expression" ], "out_of_scope": [ "Individual action events and their complete execution histories", "Acquired habits and skills considered independently of an instinct attribution", "Reflex mechanisms and physiological regulation without a broader action tendency", "Emotions, drives, and needs except as conditions affecting the tendency", "Deliberate goals, ethical commitments, and decision policies", "Artificial agent heuristics described metaphorically as instincts" ], "distinguishing_features": [ "Against habit: require evidence about acquisition history; automatic or repeated behaviour alone does not establish an instinct.", "Against reflex: identify the proposed organised action tendency beyond an immediate stimulus-response event, and record unresolved overlap.", "Against drive: specify the pattern of action being predisposed, rather than only an internal pressure such as hunger.", "Against intuition: distinguish an impulse toward action from a rapid judgement or felt belief.", "Against deliberate choice: record whether the tendency arises before explicit planning, while allowing its eventual expression to be deliberately regulated." ], "characteristics": [ { "name": "Instinct attribution status", "kind": "state", "unit_or_values": "proposed | supported under stated criteria | contested | rejected | unassessed", "why_it_matters": "Prevents a familiar label from being mistaken for an established explanation." }, { "name": "Bearer and reference population", "kind": "relation", "unit_or_values": "Organism, species or population, and relevant developmental stage", "why_it_matters": "Limits transfer of an attribution between individuals, populations, or life stages." }, { "name": "Predisposed action pattern", "kind": "category", "unit_or_values": "Operationally described orientation, action sequence, or response family", "why_it_matters": "Identifies what is predicted beyond a vague claim that behaviour is instinctive." }, { "name": "Eliciting conditions", "kind": "relation", "unit_or_values": "Candidate external cues, internal states, and contextual conditions", "why_it_matters": "Supports conditional predictions about when the tendency might become expressed." }, { "name": "Expression state", "kind": "state", "unit_or_values": "unknown | not observed | incipient | expressed | interrupted | recovering", "why_it_matters": "Separates a standing disposition from what is happening in a particular episode." }, { "name": "Conditional expression frequency", "kind": "measurement", "unit_or_values": "Observed expressions / defined eligible opportunities, with observation period and uncertainty", "why_it_matters": "Makes recurrence assessable without counting occasions when eliciting conditions were absent." }, { "name": "Cue-to-expression latency", "kind": "measurement", "unit_or_values": "Seconds or another stated time unit, with cue and onset definitions", "why_it_matters": "Helps assess activation dynamics without assuming that speed proves instinctiveness." }, { "name": "Experience dependence", "kind": "category", "unit_or_values": "unassessed | expressed before relevant observed experience | experience-modified | relevant experience required | mixed or contested", "why_it_matters": "Records developmental evidence without forcing a simple innate-versus-learned classification." }, { "name": "Regulatory conditions", "kind": "relation", "unit_or_values": "Observed conditions associated with inhibition, interruption, redirection, or resumption", "why_it_matters": "Identifies possible responses while preserving uncertainty about their reliability." } ], "affordances": [ "Create or revise an instinct attribution using explicit criteria and competing explanations.", "Compare expression across cue conditions, developmental stages, and experience histories.", "Estimate the likelihood of expression within the conditions actually observed.", "Identify missing evidence and propose proportionate, non-harmful observations.", "Identify environmental accommodations or regulatory options supported by evidence.", "Flag when an instinct attribution is being used to excuse behaviour or justify an unsupported intervention." ] }, "sources": [ { "id": "britannica-instinct", "title": "Instinct", "url": "https://www.britannica.com/topic/instinct", "what_it_supports": "Working definition (inborn, stereotyped, apparently unlearned, genetically determined pattern released by specific stimuli); the split of the term into impulsion/drive, innateness, and behaviour; Lorenz's six attributes of instinctive activity; Tinbergen's hierarchy; classic releaser examples (herring-gull bill spot, stickleback red, honeybee oleic-acid hygiene, frog prey-catching); the German Instinkt versus Trieb distinction.", "url_status": "blocked" }, { "id": "simplypsychology-fap", "title": "Fixed Action Pattern: Definition & Examples", "url": "https://www.simplypsychology.org/fixed-action-pattern.html", "what_it_supports": "Fixed action patterns as stereotyped innate sequences triggered by a sign/key stimulus; the claim that they continue after the stimulus is removed; Lorenz and Tinbergen as originators; Barlow's later characterization.", "url_status": "live" }, { "id": "libretexts-innate", "title": "15.11.1: Innate Behavior", "url": "https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_General_Biology/Biology_(Kimball)/15%3A_The_Anatomy_and_Physiology_of_Animals/15.11%3A_Behavior/15.11.01%3A_Innate_Behavior", "what_it_supports": "The practical split of innate behaviour into taxes, reflexes, and instincts; instincts as complex, whole-body, inborn patterns distinguished from simple reflexes.", "url_status": "live" }, { "id": "libretexts-map", "title": "3.3: Modal Action Patterns", "url": "https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Psychology/Cognitive_Psychology/Principles_of_Learning_and_Behavior_2e_(Daffin)/01%3A_Part_I._Setting_the_Stage/03%3A_Elicited_Behaviors_and_More/3.03%3A_Modal_Action_Patterns", "what_it_supports": "Modal action patterns as the preferred term over fixed action patterns; greylag goose egg-rolling and three-spined stickleback courtship as textbook cases; once begun, the pattern is carried through.", "url_status": "live" }, { "id": "pmc-drive-instinct-reflex", "title": "Drive, instinct, reflex - Applications to treatment of anxiety, depressive and addictive disorders", "url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9549915/", "what_it_supports": "Clinical and psychoanalytic contrast: Instinkt as an inherited species-typical pattern versus Trieb/drive as internally sourced motivation versus reflex as sensory-nerve activation.", "url_status": "live" }, { "id": "wiki-tinbergen", "title": "Nikolaas Tinbergen", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolaas_Tinbergen", "what_it_supports": "The Study of Instinct (1951); innate behaviour as that not changed by learning; hierarchical model of motivational centres, blocks, and innate releasing mechanisms built on Lorenz's energy-reservoir picture.", "url_status": "live" }, { "id": "wiki-lorenz", "title": "Konrad Lorenz", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Lorenz", "what_it_supports": "Instinctive behaviour treated as an organ-like, largely innate pattern released by environmental stimuli; innate releasing mechanisms; supernormal stimuli; imprinting as a related but distinct process.", "url_status": "live" } ], "structure": { "bundles": [ { "id": "instinct-attribution", "name": "Instinct attribution", "description": "Defines the proposed disposition and the grounds for calling it instinctive.", "rationale": "Automatic behaviour, inherited predisposition, and colloquial gut feelings must not collapse into one attribution.", "layers": [ { "id": "attributed-disposition", "name": "Attributed disposition", "description": "Identifies whose tendency is being modelled and what expression would count.", "findings": [ { "id": "bearer-and-response-family", "name": "Bearer and response family", "description": "Record the bearer, reference population, and operational boundaries of the proposed action tendency.", "questions": [ { "text": "Which organism or population is said to have this instinct, and at which developmental stages?", "kind": "definition", "id": "bearer-and-response-family-q01" }, { "text": "Which observable actions count as expressions of this tendency, and which similar actions do not?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "bearer-and-response-family-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "attribution-evidence", "name": "Attribution evidence", "description": "Separates evidence for the behaviour from evidence for its proposed instinctive origin.", "findings": [ { "id": "origin-and-alternatives", "name": "Origin and alternatives", "description": "Record the attribution's source, evidential limits, and plausible competing explanations.", "questions": [ { "text": "Who attributed the tendency to instinct, using which observations and definition?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "origin-and-alternatives-q01" }, { "text": "What evidence distinguishes this attribution from habit, reflex, intuition, imitation, or deliberate strategy?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "origin-and-alternatives-q02" }, { "text": "Which observation would weaken or overturn the instinct attribution?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "origin-and-alternatives-q03" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "elicitation-and-readiness", "name": "Elicitation and readiness", "description": "Records conditions under which the proposed tendency becomes available or expressed.", "rationale": "A disposition cannot be assessed from its presence or absence without knowing whether relevant cues and internal conditions occurred.", "layers": [ { "id": "eliciting-cues", "name": "Eliciting cues", "description": "Identifies candidate signals and the limits of cue recognition.", "findings": [ { "id": "cue-specificity", "name": "Cue specificity", "description": "Record which features of an encounter are associated with expression and which distinctions remain untested.", "questions": [ { "text": "Which sensory or situational features precede expression, and how were they distinguished from background context?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "cue-specificity-q01" }, { "text": "Do similar but irrelevant cues elicit the same tendency, and under what conditions?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "cue-specificity-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "internal-readiness", "name": "Internal readiness", "description": "Records bodily and contextual conditions that may change responsiveness.", "findings": [ { "id": "readiness-and-competing-tendencies", "name": "Readiness and competing tendencies", "description": "Record associations between expression, internal state, and competing action tendencies without assuming causation.", "questions": [ { "text": "Which observed internal states or life-stage conditions accompany increased or reduced responsiveness?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "readiness-and-competing-tendencies-q01" }, { "text": "When another tendency competes for expression, what happens to this one?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "readiness-and-competing-tendencies-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "expression-and-nonexpression", "name": "Expression and non-expression", "description": "Characterises how the tendency unfolds and how absence of visible behaviour should be interpreted.", "rationale": "An instinct attribution concerns a disposition, so one action does not prove it and one missed response does not disprove it.", "layers": [ { "id": "expression-pattern", "name": "Expression pattern", "description": "Describes observable onset, progression, variation, and completion.", "findings": [ { "id": "action-sequence-and-variation", "name": "Action sequence and variation", "description": "Record the recurring response pattern while allowing alternative routes and incomplete expressions.", "questions": [ { "text": "What marks onset, progression, and termination of an expression episode?", "kind": "definition", "id": "action-sequence-and-variation-q01" }, { "text": "Which components recur across eligible observations, and which vary with context?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "action-sequence-and-variation-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "absence-and-interruption", "name": "Absence and interruption", "description": "Distinguishes unobserved expression from evidence that the disposition is absent.", "findings": [ { "id": "interpreting-missing-expression", "name": "Interpreting missing expression", "description": "Record whether non-expression could reflect missing cues, inhibition, physical inability, or inadequate observation.", "questions": [ { "text": "When expression is absent, were eliciting conditions present and observation sufficient to detect a response?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "interpreting-missing-expression-q01" }, { "text": "What evidence separates lack of the disposition from inhibition, interruption, or inability to act?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "interpreting-missing-expression-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "development-and-experience", "name": "Development and experience", "description": "Records emergence of the tendency and its relationship to maturation and learning.", "rationale": "The model must examine developmental origin without equating early appearance with innateness or later modification with absence of instinct.", "layers": [ { "id": "developmental-emergence", "name": "Developmental emergence", "description": "Locates first observed expression within a documented developmental and exposure history.", "findings": [ { "id": "onset-and-prior-exposure", "name": "Onset and prior exposure", "description": "Record when expression first appeared and what is actually known about preceding experience.", "questions": [ { "text": "When was the tendency first observed relative to maturation and opportunities to perform the action?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "onset-and-prior-exposure-q01" }, { "text": "Which relevant exposures, demonstrations, or reinforcements preceded that observation, and which histories are unknown?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "onset-and-prior-exposure-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "experience-related-change", "name": "Experience-related change", "description": "Tracks changes in cue selection, expression, and regulation associated with experience.", "findings": [ { "id": "persistence-and-modification", "name": "Persistence and modification", "description": "Record what remains stable and what changes after repeated encounters or learning opportunities.", "questions": [ { "text": "After relevant experience, do eliciting cues, response frequency, or action sequences change?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "persistence-and-modification-q01" }, { "text": "What evidence separates experience-related change from maturation, temporary state changes, or observation differences?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "persistence-and-modification-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "consequences-and-regulation", "name": "Consequences and regulation", "description": "Connects observed expression to outcomes and justified options for responding.", "rationale": "Calling a tendency instinctive establishes neither its benefit in the present setting nor permission to elicit, suppress, or follow it.", "layers": [ { "id": "contextual-consequences", "name": "Contextual consequences", "description": "Separates measured effects of expression from proposed explanations of its function.", "findings": [ { "id": "outcomes-and-function-claims", "name": "Outcomes and function claims", "description": "Record present consequences and identify claims about biological function as separately evidenced interpretations.", "questions": [ { "text": "What benefits, costs, or harms have been observed when this tendency is expressed in the current setting?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "outcomes-and-function-claims-q01" }, { "text": "Which proposed functions have supporting evidence, and which remain hypotheses inferred from the behaviour?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "outcomes-and-function-claims-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "regulatory-options", "name": "Regulatory options", "description": "Identifies supported ways to accommodate or alter expression and the authority needed to act.", "findings": [ { "id": "accommodation-and-intervention", "name": "Accommodation and intervention", "description": "Record evidence for cue changes, redirection, interruption, or accommodation, together with effects on the bearer.", "questions": [ { "text": "Which changes to cues, surroundings, or available actions have altered expression, with what duration and consequences?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "accommodation-and-intervention-q01" }, { "text": "What response is justified by the evidence, the bearer's welfare or consent where applicable, and the agent's authority?", "kind": "action", "id": "accommodation-and-intervention-q02" }, { "text": "What observation should cause the agent to stop or revise an attempted intervention?", "kind": "action", "id": "accommodation-and-intervention-q03" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "evidence-and-external-alignment", "name": "Evidence and external alignment", "description": "What the world already says about this thing, gathered so the model can be checked against it.", "rationale": "A model that cannot be lined up against existing standards, identifiers and practice cannot be adopted by anyone who already uses them.", "layers": [ { "id": "reported-evidence", "name": "Reported evidence", "description": "Findings from the breadth pass, kept separate from the structural claims.", "findings": [ { "id": "evidence-kinds", "name": "Kinds and varieties", "description": "Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.", "evidence": [ "Fixed action pattern (Lorenzian Instinkthandlung): a relatively invariant, whole-animal motor programme that, once released, runs toward completion", "Modal action pattern: the later ethological revision of the fixed action pattern, allowing measurable within-species variation while remaining species-typical", "Appetitive phase: variable searching or orienting behaviour that brings the animal into contact with the releaser", "Consummatory act: the terminal, more stereotyped act that ends an instinctive sequence", "Parental and nest-care instincts (egg retrieval, chick begging, hive hygiene)", "Courtship and sexual instincts", "Territorial and defensive instincts", "Foraging and predatory instincts" ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-kinds-q01", "text": "Which of these kinds and varieties hold for the sense of instinct this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-real-world-use", "name": "Real-world use", "description": "Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.", "evidence": [ "Field and lab ethology: dummy stimuli (red belly models, bill spots, giant eggs) are used to map sign stimuli and record whether a species-typical sequence is released.", "Classic demonstrations still taught and replicated: greylag goose egg-rolling, herring-gull chick pecking, three-spined stickleback territorial attack, honeybee corpse removal to oleic acid, toad/frog tongue-flick prey capture.", "Livestock, zoo, and laboratory husbandry: facilities are judged partly by whether animals can perform species-typical nesting, foraging, flocking, or courtship sequences.", "Brood-parasite and pest systems: hosts' parental sequences are exploited (for example by cuckoos) because the releaser, not a learned check of offspring identity, drives feeding.", "Clinical writing still uses instinct beside drive and reflex when discussing fear, attachment, and addiction, though the folk sense is looser than the ethological one." ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-real-world-use-q01", "text": "Which of these real-world use hold for the sense of instinct this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-measurements", "name": "Typical measurements", "description": "Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.", "evidence": [ { "quantity": "Latency from sign stimulus to onset of the motor sequence", "typical_range": "sub-second to a few seconds for classic releasers", "unit": "s" }, { "quantity": "Duration of a consummatory fixed or modal action pattern", "typical_range": "seconds to a few minutes (egg-rolling and bill-pecking bouts sit at the short end)", "unit": "s" }, { "quantity": "Sequence completion after the releasing object is removed mid-act", "typical_range": "typically continues to the end of the motor programme", "unit": "proportion of sequence completed" }, { "quantity": "Selectivity of the releaser", "typical_range": "often a simple feature (a red patch, oleic acid, a moving spot) is sufficient; supernormal dummies can outrank the natural object", "unit": "response rate to dummy versus natural stimulus" } ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-measurements-q01", "text": "Which of these typical measurements hold for the sense of instinct this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-failure-modes-and-hazards", "name": "Failure modes and hazards", "description": "Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.", "evidence": [ "The sequence continues after the object is gone (egg removed under the goose's bill), wasting time and exposing the animal.", "Supernormal stimuli hijack the releasing mechanism: oversized eggs, dummy beaks, or a red van triggering stickleback attack.", "Vacuum activity: the act fires with no adequate stimulus when internal readiness is high.", "Brood parasites and similar exploiters lock onto parental or feeding instincts that lack an identity check.", "Captivity blocks the appetitive search or the consummatory act, producing stereotypies and other abnormal behaviour.", "Imprinting on the wrong object channels later instinctive social and sexual behaviour toward an inappropriate target.", "Folk over-attribution of 'instinct' (especially 'maternal instinct') can hide learning, pathology, or cultural practice and block intervention." ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-failure-modes-and-hazards-q01", "text": "Which of these failure modes and hazards hold for the sense of instinct this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-regional-variation", "name": "Regional variation", "description": "Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.", "evidence": [ "German technical usage splits Instinkt (stereotyped, unlearned response close to a complex reflex) from Trieb (urge or drive); English translations of Freud rendered Trieb as 'instinct', which still confuses psychology with ethology.", "Mid-twentieth-century European ethology kept instinct as a research object (Lorenz, Tinbergen), while much North American comparative psychology treated the word as empty and explained the same acts by learning.", "Popular speech in many languages treats 'survival instinct' and 'maternal instinct' as inner feelings; research usage treats them as species-typical action patterns, or rejects the labels." ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-regional-variation-q01", "text": "Which of these regional variation hold for the sense of instinct this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-neighbours", "name": "Neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart", "description": "Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.", "evidence": [ { "name": "reflex", "difference": "A reflex is a short, local sensorimotor arc involving specific muscles; an instinct is a more complex, whole-animal sequence. Test: complexity and whether the entire body is recruited in a species-typical order." }, { "name": "drive (Trieb)", "difference": "Drive is an internal motivational push (onset often hormonal or homeostatic) whose object can vary; instinct in the ethological sense is the inherited pattern itself. Test: whether you are measuring an urge state or a stereotyped motor programme released by a sign stimulus." }, { "name": "learned behaviour / habit", "difference": "Learned acts depend on the individual's experience and vary within the species; instinctive sequences appear in typical form without that training, though experience can later modify them. Test: deprivation or isolation rearing - if the sequence is intact on first opportunity, it is not a habit." }, { "name": "taxis", "difference": "A taxis is oriented locomotion at a defined angle to a stimulus gradient, not a centrally patterned action sequence. Test: does the animal steer relative to a gradient, or run a fixed motor programme?" }, { "name": "innate releasing mechanism", "difference": "The IRM is the sensory filter that detects the sign stimulus; instinct names the behaviour that then occurs. Test: lesion or dummy-stimulus work that blocks detection while leaving the motor pattern executable, or the reverse." }, { "name": "imprinting", "difference": "Imprinting is rapid learning gated by a sensitive period, which then aims later instinctive social or sexual behaviour; it is not the instinctive act. Test: whether the phenomenon is an irreversible preference acquired in a brief window, or a motor sequence released by a current stimulus." }, { "name": "species-typical behaviour", "difference": "Broader: includes instinctive acts and also behaviours that are typical because they are socially transmitted. Test: whether isolation-reared animals still produce the act." } ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-neighbours-q01", "text": "Which of these neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart hold for the sense of instinct this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] } ] } ] } ] }, "openQuestions": [ "Which operational meaning of instinct should this registry entry adopt, given that no definition is recorded?", "Should the entry cover colloquial human gut feelings, or should those uses resolve to intuition or another neighbouring model?", "What evidence threshold should support an instinct attribution when inherited predisposition and early learning cannot be cleanly separated?", "How should population-level evidence constrain attribution to an individual whose developmental history is unknown?", "Which boundaries with reflex, drive, and species-typical behaviour remain useful across different organisms and research traditions?" ], "statistics": { "bundles": 6, "layers": 11, "findings": 16, "questions": 28 } }, "draft": { "generator": "vr.draft.v3", "status": "draft-generated", "researched": false, "archetype": "abstract concept", "method": "Written from the archetype playbook - what this kind of thing needs beyond identity and provenance - and from the structure that recurred across 6,333 models already researched by two engines. Applied to this entry by rule. No source was read for this thing and no claim here is researched. This entry carries no facets of its own, so they were inferred from its domain - a guess about a whole domain applied to one thing.", "facetsInferred": true, "nextPass": "A researcher replaces this draft with a sourced specification. Treat every sentence below as a proposal to argue with.", "purpose": "Give an agent a durable, checkable way to recognise a instinct, record what state it is in, and decide what may be done with it.", "whatItIs": "Enable an AI agent to recognise a proposed instinct, assess evidence for its origin and current expression, and identify justified responses without treating an instinctive impulse as an instruction.", "characteristics": { "substance": "activity", "origin": "conceptual", "agency": "inert" }, "whatYouCanDoWithIt": [ "observed and measured" ], "distinguishingFeatures": [ "Names folded into this entry, which a task may need to split apart again: sexual instinct, estrous cycle, parental instinct, nesting instinct.", "4 finer distinctions are held as aliases rather than separate entries, because telling them apart needs a task that asks for it.", "Described in 98 Wikipedia languages, which is a measure of how widely the thing is known, not of how important it is." ], "openQuestionsForResearch": [ "Which of the bundles below does a real task actually need, and which are ceremony?", "What does this thing have that the facets do not capture at all?", "Which neighbouring kind is most often confused with a instinct, and on what evidence are they told apart?" ], "whatItIsMadeOf": "something that happens over time", "physicalCharacter": [ "Does nothing on its own; everything it does, something else did to it.", "These come from the domain this entry sits in rather than from the entry itself, so treat them as a first guess about the whole domain applied to one thing." ], "whatCanBeDoneWithIt": [ "observe it, measure it, record its state" ], "howItIsRecognised": [ "Nothing to see. What is recognised is an instance of it, and which instances count is exactly what is argued about." ], "relatedModels": [ { "relation": "covers", "note": "Finer kinds folded into this entry because telling them apart needs a task that asks for it. Each is a model waiting to be split out when one does.", "targets": [ "sexual instinct", "estrous cycle", "parental instinct", "nesting instinct" ] } ], "standing": "Described in 98 Wikipedia languages, which measures how widely it is written about rather than how important or how common it is. 4 finer distinctions are held inside this entry as names rather than as separate models.", "structure": { "bundles": [ { "id": "identity-and-classification", "name": "Identity, naming and classification", "description": "How an agent tells one instinct from another, and a instinct from things that resemble it.", "rationale": "Recognition comes before every other claim. Without stable identity nothing else in the model can be trusted to be about the same thing twice.", "layers": [ { "id": "naming-and-identifiers", "name": "Names and identifiers", "description": "The names this thing goes by and the identifiers that survive translation and time.", "findings": [ { "id": "preferred-name-and-aliases", "name": "Preferred name, aliases and local names", "description": "Which name to use, which names mean the same thing, and which merely sound similar.", "questions": [ { "id": "preferred-name-and-aliases-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes the name of a instinct, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "preferred-name-and-aliases-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about the name of a instinct, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "preferred-name-and-aliases-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once the name of a instinct is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] }, { "id": "stable-identifiers", "name": "Stable identifiers and external keys", "description": "Identifiers that keep pointing at this kind of thing across systems and languages.", "questions": [ { "id": "stable-identifiers-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes an identifier for a instinct, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "stable-identifiers-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about an identifier for a instinct, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "stable-identifiers-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once an identifier for a instinct is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "classification-and-granularity", "name": "Classification and granularity", "description": "Where a instinct sits among kinds, and how finely a task needs to cut it.", "findings": [ { "id": "kind-and-parents", "name": "Kind, parents and neighbouring kinds", "description": "The classes this thing belongs to and the ones it is next to.", "questions": [ { "id": "kind-and-parents-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes the kind of a instinct, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "kind-and-parents-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about the kind of a instinct, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "kind-and-parents-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once the kind of a instinct is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] }, { "id": "distinguishing-features", "name": "Distinguishing features", "description": "What separates a instinct from the things most often confused with it.", "questions": [ { "id": "distinguishing-features-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes what distinguishes a instinct, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "distinguishing-features-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about what distinguishes a instinct, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "distinguishing-features-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once what distinguishes a instinct is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "state-and-lifecycle", "name": "State and lifecycle", "description": "The states a instinct passes through and the events that move it between them.", "rationale": "Most decisions about a thing depend on what state it is in now, which is a claim with a time on it, not a property.", "layers": [ { "id": "lifecycle-stages", "name": "Lifecycle stages", "description": "From coming into existence to ceasing to be one of these.", "findings": [ { "id": "stages-and-transitions", "name": "Stages and transitions", "description": "The stages worth naming and what moves a instinct between them.", "questions": [ { "id": "stages-and-transitions-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes the lifecycle of a instinct, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "stages-and-transitions-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about the lifecycle of a instinct, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "stages-and-transitions-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once the lifecycle of a instinct is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "observations-and-status", "name": "Observations and current status", "description": "What is observed about a instinct, how often and by whom.", "findings": [ { "id": "observation-record", "name": "Observation record", "description": "How an observation of a instinct is recorded so that it can be superseded rather than overwritten.", "questions": [ { "id": "observation-record-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes an observation of a instinct, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "observation-record-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about an observation of a instinct, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "observation-record-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once an observation of a instinct is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "process-and-outcome", "name": "Process, inputs and outcome", "description": "How a instinct proceeds, what it needs and what it leaves behind.", "rationale": "An activity is known by its steps and its results, and both have to be recordable while it is still running.", "layers": [ { "id": "steps-and-sequence", "name": "Steps and sequence", "description": "The steps of a instinct, their order and what may run in parallel.", "findings": [ { "id": "steps-and-preconditions", "name": "Steps, preconditions and completion", "description": "What has to be true before each step of a instinct and what marks it done.", "questions": [ { "id": "steps-and-preconditions-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes a step of a instinct, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "steps-and-preconditions-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about a step of a instinct, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "steps-and-preconditions-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once a step of a instinct is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "inputs-and-results", "name": "Inputs, resources and results", "description": "What a instinct consumes and what it produces.", "findings": [ { "id": "inputs-and-outputs", "name": "Inputs, outputs and side effects", "description": "The resources a instinct takes and the results it leaves, wanted or not.", "questions": [ { "id": "inputs-and-outputs-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes the inputs and results of a instinct, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "inputs-and-outputs-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about the inputs and results of a instinct, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "inputs-and-outputs-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once the inputs and results of a instinct is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "definitions-in-contest", "name": "Definitions and who holds them", "description": "What instinct is taken to mean, and by whom.", "rationale": "When a field disagrees about a concept, the disagreement is the content. A model that picks one definition silently destroys the information.", "layers": [ { "id": "competing-definitions", "name": "Competing definitions", "description": "The main readings and the traditions behind them.", "findings": [ { "id": "definition-map", "name": "Definitions and their holders", "description": "Each definition with the school or body that holds it.", "questions": [ { "id": "definition-map-q01", "text": "Which definitions of instinct are in use, and which tradition or body holds each?", "kind": "definition" }, { "id": "definition-map-q02", "text": "What turns on the difference between them in practice?", "kind": "boundary" } ] } ] }, { "id": "operationalisation", "name": "Operationalisation", "description": "How it is measured or applied when it has to be.", "findings": [ { "id": "operational-record", "name": "Measures and proxies", "description": "Instruments and indicators used to stand in for it.", "questions": [ { "id": "operational-record-q01", "text": "How is instinct operationalised or measured in practice, and by what instrument?", "kind": "measurement" }, { "id": "operational-record-q02", "text": "What does that operationalisation leave out, and when does that matter?", "kind": "boundary" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "instances-and-use", "name": "Instances, use and consequence", "description": "What counts as an instance of instinct and what follows from calling something that.", "rationale": "Applying a concept is an act with consequences, so a model must say what the label licenses and what it does not.", "layers": [ { "id": "instances", "name": "What counts as an instance", "description": "Clear cases, borderline cases and non-cases.", "findings": [ { "id": "instance-tests", "name": "Tests for an instance", "description": "What would settle whether something falls under it.", "questions": [ { "id": "instance-tests-q01", "text": "What would settle whether something is an instance of instinct?", "kind": "boundary" }, { "id": "instance-tests-q02", "text": "Which borderline cases are argued about, and on what grounds?", "kind": "definition" } ] } ] }, { "id": "consequence", "name": "Consequence of application", "description": "Rights, duties or decisions that follow from the label.", "findings": [ { "id": "consequence-record", "name": "What the label licenses", "description": "What an agent may do once something is classified this way.", "questions": [ { "id": "consequence-record-q01", "text": "What follows practically once something is treated as instinct?", "kind": "action" }, { "id": "consequence-record-q02", "text": "What must an agent not infer from the label alone?", "kind": "action" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "provenance-and-evidence", "name": "Provenance, evidence and time", "description": "Where every claim about a instinct came from and when it held.", "rationale": "A claim without a source and a time cannot be superseded, only overwritten, and an agent that overwrites loses the ability to explain itself.", "layers": [ { "id": "source-and-authority", "name": "Source and authority", "description": "Who said it, on what evidence, and how strongly.", "findings": [ { "id": "claim-provenance", "name": "Claim provenance and confidence", "description": "The authority behind each claim about a instinct and how confident it is.", "questions": [ { "id": "claim-provenance-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes a claim about a instinct, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "claim-provenance-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about a claim about a instinct, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "claim-provenance-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once a claim about a instinct is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "time-and-versions", "name": "Time, versions and supersession", "description": "When a claim was true, when it was learnt, and what replaced it.", "findings": [ { "id": "validity-and-supersession", "name": "Validity period and supersession", "description": "How an old claim about a instinct is retired without being erased.", "questions": [ { "id": "validity-and-supersession-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes the validity of a claim about a instinct, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "validity-and-supersession-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about the validity of a claim about a instinct, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "validity-and-supersession-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once the validity of a claim about a instinct is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] } ] } ] }, "statistics": { "bundles": 6, "layers": 12, "findings": 14, "questions": 38 } } } }