"Scientists argue that it would be difficult to genetically code for feeling empathy exclusively towards your own child and much easier to code for feeling empathy towards all children."
Aren't there several species that do in fact shun the offspring of other parents?
I think that the different feelings toward different families are based on pheremones, not sight, so it wouldn't really come into play with just a photo.
Those are very, very logically distinct, species and tribe, I mean. You can conceivably have people doing things for the good of the tribe because in a natural environment they're probably related to the other members of the tribe so if the behaviour helps teh sponsoring gene spread, on average it will propagate. "It's good for the species" is never a good explanation for anything, ever. The other members of of a species (of one's own sex) are the competition, the ones you want to fail in comparision to you. Group selection works fine if there's a guiding intelligence behind it, but there are no examples in nature, ttbomk.
Aren't there several species that do in fact shun the offspring of other parents?