Thanks, Itamar. I’m glad you found the framework useful, and thanks for laying out these concerns.
(1) On selection in life-or-death situations. I’m less convinced that life-or-death contexts should be treated as marginal for evolutionary explanation. Many such hazards (e.g. fire, severe injury, predation) recur across generations, and even small increases in the probability of rapid withdrawal and survival can be strongly selected for. In that sense, excruciating pain in these contexts looks like a straightforward case of ordinary evolutionary logic at work, rather than a special case where costs become irrelevant or selection effectively “switches off.”
(2) On alternative mechanisms (linear transduction, hormones, etc.). I’m very sympathetic to the idea of carefully considering non-adaptive explanations, since some features can indeed arise as byproducts of other selective pressures. I was an avid reader of Stephen Jay Gould, and The Spandrels of San Marco remains a classic reminder of this point. So I agree that high-intensity pain could arise largely as a byproduct of how damage signals scale at the sensory or cellular level, rather than because intensity itself was directly selected for. At the same time, this kind of “linear transduction” may itself carry adaptive value (i.e. function as an exaptation, again in Gould’s sense), since greater damage would naturally call for more urgent behavioral responses to stop it.
On the point about hormones or other system-wide mechanisms, I may be missing what you have in mind — I’d be very interested in a concrete example and in how you think it would change the cost–benefit picture.
Thanks, Itamar. I’m glad you found the framework useful, and thanks for laying out these concerns.
(1) On selection in life-or-death situations.
I’m less convinced that life-or-death contexts should be treated as marginal for evolutionary explanation. Many such hazards (e.g. fire, severe injury, predation) recur across generations, and even small increases in the probability of rapid withdrawal and survival can be strongly selected for. In that sense, excruciating pain in these contexts looks like a straightforward case of ordinary evolutionary logic at work, rather than a special case where costs become irrelevant or selection effectively “switches off.”
(2) On alternative mechanisms (linear transduction, hormones, etc.).
I’m very sympathetic to the idea of carefully considering non-adaptive explanations, since some features can indeed arise as byproducts of other selective pressures. I was an avid reader of Stephen Jay Gould, and The Spandrels of San Marco remains a classic reminder of this point. So I agree that high-intensity pain could arise largely as a byproduct of how damage signals scale at the sensory or cellular level, rather than because intensity itself was directly selected for. At the same time, this kind of “linear transduction” may itself carry adaptive value (i.e. function as an exaptation, again in Gould’s sense), since greater damage would naturally call for more urgent behavioral responses to stop it.
On the point about hormones or other system-wide mechanisms, I may be missing what you have in mind — I’d be very interested in a concrete example and in how you think it would change the cost–benefit picture.