I’m just wondering why you structured your just-so story as though the hunter and friends had never felt the urge to vengeance, and therefore needed to invent the whole concept.
It’s easier to imagine something being consciously designed and informally tested than having it emerge randomly and become canonized in instinct over generations.
Easier to imagine, but more wrong? Reciprocal altruism evolved in lots of situations among animals which don’t have language or consciousness, eg “cleaner fish”, so vengeance is not that great a leap. It’s part of tit-for-tat, after all.
Can anyone cite a paper specifically reporting vengeance among animals? It seems like it ought to be a necessary component of reciprocal altruism.
I’m just wondering why you structured your just-so story as though the hunter and friends had never felt the urge to vengeance, and therefore needed to invent the whole concept.
It’s easier to imagine something being consciously designed and informally tested than having it emerge randomly and become canonized in instinct over generations.
Easier to imagine, but more wrong? Reciprocal altruism evolved in lots of situations among animals which don’t have language or consciousness, eg “cleaner fish”, so vengeance is not that great a leap. It’s part of tit-for-tat, after all.
Can anyone cite a paper specifically reporting vengeance among animals? It seems like it ought to be a necessary component of reciprocal altruism.