>>644328>We have in-built archetypes for recognizing things like babies or snakes or fertile land that provokes responses that transcend culture. So how does the fertile land archetype play into recognizing and responding to fertile land? How much does this archetype contain regarding agricultural techniques? Really, this misunderstands "fertile" to begin with, since the word is supposed to bear some relation to an assessment of the land in relation to its ability to bear vegetation of some sort.
Humans also used to expose infants at birth semi-frequently, whether due to genetic defects, suspicions about the child's parentage by the father, or simply the desire of the mother (or household) to be rid of the child. Even leaving exposure aside, religious practices like child sacrifice and individual attitudes of disgust, indifference and hatred have all been "responses" to infants. To maintain the thesis of an "archetype" here dictating recognition and response, despite all contrary evidence, would be "a stretch," to say the least.
It's obvious there are capacities to recognize these things, in the sense that we have faculties by which we can single them out as such, but there are no innate ideas about them.
>Humans have instincts just like any other animal. Instincts don't identify snakes. I may react "by instinct" from seeing a snake, but this is only so far as a snake is or seems dangerous (i.e. so far as I've learned snakes are dangerous and react in fear), not because of innate ideas everyone has about snakes. But this is a good example of the sort of nonsense Locke was writing against.