Gotta think big, stories are puny both in terms of explanation load and their total existence in evolutionary time. They are fun over the dinner table but that’s about as definitive as they get.
Isn't that also true for "Sapolsky’s Behave and linger" and what you're currently believing? Why does it work different for other stories than the one you happen to believe in?
are you anthropomorphizing quorum sensing? If so, that's ridiculous. It's an entirely chemical process. You may as well start anthropomorphizing the carbonation in soda.
Animal funerary ceremony isn't 'entrancement', it's either sequestration for simpler organisms like ants to avoid the spread of disease, or in the case of Corvids or other similarly intelligent species it seems to be a method of introspection and research towards the cause of death to be avoided.
We know this because studies have over-and-over again shown that animal cohorts perform worse when the funerary ceremonies are disallowed under study.
As for 'Behave', last I read it Sapolsky was very clear that the organism and behaviors are a grand tapestry painted by biology/society/culture -- not just a singular part of the three.
Far from anthropomorphising, the biochemical under punishment extends seamlessly into culture but remains unconnected to our awareness. Our culture is post hoc retrofitted on top of neurobiology. Culture explains things wholly disconnected from neurobiology, this was experimentally demonstrated by Wegener in 2003 and empirically proven in aphasia studies in 2016.
In terms of funerals vs murder, this is a distinctly different phase, and yes, I would call the affective neuro drive to observe funerals an evolutionary entrancement that serves some memory-grief cleansing, though this is very separate from the punishment murder cycles in discussion. I’d read Panksepp’s areas about grief loss for explanations of ours and Corvid funeral behaviors. What you’re describing in ants and Corvid’s are functional explanations, which are the after effects of evolutionary trial and error. Functionalist explanations don’t explain how the neurons achieved this.
I’d read the source citations in aberrant punishment in the punishment chapter carefully.
throwup238•3mo ago