I agree that the concept is uselessly broad, and probably could be ditched altogether without too much information lost. All of the behaviours in that quote could reasonably fit Patrick’s criteria, which I guess goes to show that they’re pretty weak. I appreciate the effort come up with such criteria, though.
If we add to the criteria that signaling should be of evolutionary origin, shouldn’t it just constrain the concept even more?
I agree that the concept is broad and the phenomenon pervasive, and these siggest to me that the concept needs breaking down: we need words for costly-signalling, spam-signalling, practical-signalling and so on.
I agree that the concept is uselessly broad, and probably could be ditched altogether without too much information lost. All of the behaviours in that quote could reasonably fit Patrick’s criteria, which I guess goes to show that they’re pretty weak. I appreciate the effort come up with such criteria, though.
If we add to the criteria that signaling should be of evolutionary origin, shouldn’t it just constrain the concept even more?
I agree that the concept is broad and the phenomenon pervasive, and these siggest to me that the concept needs breaking down: we need words for costly-signalling, spam-signalling, practical-signalling and so on.