When I studied psychology at university I was always amazed at the willingness of people to ascribe things to instinctive behaviour. I tended much more towards the nurture side of the "nature versus nurture" debate. That is, I believed that just about all behaviour was learnt.
However, I gradually realized that there was more to it, and finally came to the conclusion that there are not two but three forces that shape an individual, which is part of the source of the confusion in the the first place. I call these genetic, environmental and extra-genetic.
When we talk about "nature versus nurture", nature basically refers to genetics, and nurture refers an individual's particular environment. What I call "extra-genetic" is information passed from parent to child but not genetically. I guess you could think of it as something like culture and hence the debate could instead be decribed as "nature versus nurture versus culture".
This extra-genetic information is in many ways like genetic information and in other ways environmental which is why the whole debate is so difficult to resolve. I think I need to explain this in more depth.
Behaviour
In the first primitive organisms all behavior was passed genetically. This is called instinctive behavior. Of course, though the amount of genetic information that can be passed to an offspring is large it is limited. Hence, there is a limit to the amount of instinctive behavior.
As organisms became more advanced they developed larger brains for various reasons. One reason was that a large brain presented a way to bypass the limit on the amount of genetic information. Parents teach their children things, so that information is passed from generation to generation. The limit on the amount of information is now the size of the brain and the amount of time required to transfer it. Genes are still involved, of course, to endow the child with a large enough brain and the predisposition to learn from their parents.
Humans
Humans really have taken this to extremes. They have very large brains and it take many years after birth before they can even begin to function as a fully-fledged person. This is why children have to be involved and learning from their parents from day one. Their genetic programming means they are continually learning and processing information. They have a very strong inclination, especially at a young age, to try to copy their parents' behaviour.
This was brought home to me watching my nephew Alex on my brother's farm. He must have been about one year old at the time as he was barely walking and not yet talking. My brother had been using various hand tools and Alex had been watching. During a break in proceedings he gave a very impressive display of emulating his father using a hammer (though he could barely lift it) and other tools.
This whole process of passing extra-genetic information has been really muddied by humans. Since human societies are incredibly cooperative information is often not passed from an individual's genetic parents but from many other sources. With the advent of writing information can even be communicated from someone you have never met or who is long dead.
I will note at this point, though, that you can't learn everything from a book (or a blog). Many behaviours are only learnt by watching and copying. This is why young humans, to develop properly, need "role models", preferably their genetic parents.
This has all been evolving (in humans and other animals) and feeding back into itself over millions of years. Behaviours that were previously instinctive may have changed in some species to being learnt, freeing up genes for other purposes.
Is All Human Behaviour Learnt?
So, I return to my original thoughts. I still believe that most behaviour in humans is or can be learnt. However, I now believe that heredity plays a very important part. I believe genes give people a predisposition to some types of behaviour but that does not mean that if brought up in an atypical environment they will not behave in a completely different way. I'm trying to think of an example...
I would imagine that people of western European descent would find it easier to learn languages from western Europe than say an Australian aboriginal dialect. Conversely, an Australian aboriginal would find it harder to learn English than a local dialect. Obviously, this does not mean it is impossible, just that thousands of years of evolution mean that brains have evolved to be better at using local dialects.
So your genes do not determine your behaviour, which mainly depends on your upbringing, but they do give a tendency towards some types of behaviour. And I guess the stronger this tendency is the more likely it is to be called instinctive.
This gives rise to the question: Is any human behaviour truly instinctive? I would have to say yes. There are some things under the control of the brain that are almost impossible to override - for example, breathing. But the fact that people can feel so strongly about something to go on a hunger-strike and die from starvation, means that some of even the most basic behaviours can be "unlearnt".
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