From the first study:
Rather than indicating fear in particular, the study says this shows an intense focus.
What if we don't cherry pick one sentence?
When the babies saw pictures of the snakes and spiders, they consistently reacted with larger pupils than when they were shown control images of flowers and fish. This finding, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, suggested that a fear of these creatures could be innate.
That's because dilated pupils are associated with activity in the noradrenergic system in the brain, the same system that processes stress. Closely measuring changes in pupil size has been used in previous studies to determine a variety of mental and emotional stress in adults.
"There was a definite stress response in the brain," said lead researcher Stefanie Hoehl. She noted that it's difficult to characterize the exact nature of the type of stress infants experienced, but dilated pupils show heightened states of arousal and mental processing. Rather than indicating fear in particular, the study says this shows an intense focus.
A second source cited by the article:
"The current work, and indeed no existing work, has provided evidence that fear of snakes or spiders is innate," said
David Rakison, a psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University who researches early infant development.
Again, look at the context if you want to know what it means (and the quote is grammatically difficult and probably contains a typo--either way it doesn't say what you claim it says):
"The current work, and indeed no existing work, has provided evidence that fear of snakes or spiders is innate," said David Rakison, a psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University who researches early infant development.
"Infants possess a specialized fear mechanism that means that they are 'prepared' to learn quickly that snakes and spiders are associated with a specific emotional or behavioral response," he noted.
Another study cited by the article:
Not all studies have concluded that fear of spiders and snakes is innate. A paper published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science found that seven-month-old infants noticed images of snakes more quickly but didn't show signs of fear. This indicated children may not have innate fears of these creatures but could identify them more readily.
And this is the one study that I already noted in my last post.
There's three different sources...
One, like I said. You cherry-picked the first two to try to avoid the obvious fact that they are talking about stress responses and fear mechanisms. The whole article is about fear, with a short blurb at the end regarding a counter-study. Hoehl points precisely "to a human evolution that has coincided with historically dangerous snakes and spiders" to explain the stress response. "Therefore, Hoehl's study claimed, humans' innate fear of these animals could serve as a defense mechanism..." etc.
I don't disagree. You haven't offered a counter to what I've said here. People sacrifice themselves for what they consider to be a higher good because they believe it will make them happy since they like the way they feel when they do things they believe are good. That feeling of happiness is a sensation of pleasure. Or they do it because they believe they will be unhappy if they don't. Which again, gives a feeling of relief. To counter my claim you've got to tell me why they do it. Not what they're doing.
Is it just because they believe they ought? Why do they believe that they ought?
I quoted Aquinas who says that good is what is sought or desired. You tried to explain that in terms of pleasure. I pointed out why pleasure fails. I haven't offered an alternative beyond the quote from Aquinas. It's fairly obvious to me, though, that humans sometimes do things regardless of the pleasure or lack of pleasure those acts will bring. Kant's Categorical Imperative would fall clearly into this category.
I'd say they are. If you don't come up with a reason, then you haven't reasoned. Non-rational seems like a good term for something you do without thinking about it. But you're saying that a thing you haven't thought about at all is rational...
Discursive reasoning very rarely precedes our actions, so I suppose if you think the vast majority of our actions are irrational then you can go with that.
For example, most people don't require discursive reasoning to eat when they are hungry.