Revista Filosofía UIS

Vol. 23 No. 2 (2024): July - December
Articles

Adoption and Bonobos: An Analysis of the Conceptual Assumptions within Biological Cooperation

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Mateo Arias-Vélez
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18273/revfil.v23n2-2024012

Published 2024-08-13

Keywords

  • Bonobos,
  • cooperation,
  • adoption,
  • reckoning rationality,
  • genecentrism

How to Cite

Arias-Vélez, M. (2024). Adoption and Bonobos: An Analysis of the Conceptual Assumptions within Biological Cooperation. Revista Filosofía UIS, 23(2), 139–154. https://doi.org/10.18273/revfil.v23n2-2024012

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Abstract

Martin Nowak (2011; 2013) proposes five mechanisms for biological cooperation: kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, net reciprocity, and group selection, which should explain every altruistic behavior. To test this, this paper presents two cases of adoption and alloparental care from two bonobo mothers to orphans outside of the group (Tokuyama et al., 2021). These cases demonstrate that none of the mechanisms proposed by Nowak accomplishes to explain altruistic behavior altogether. Finally, this paper challenges the assumptions that underlie Nowak’s theory to conclude that the explicative insuffici e ncy of these assumptions prevents us from giving an account of biological cooperation in cases of animal adoption.

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