What evolutionary purpose is appreciation of beauty?

[JaredJames]

beauty will use different in different place like, in dessert water is the main beauty, in summer time rain will give the amazing beauty. etc

Huh?

 

[fuzzyfelt]

yes, I knew about he bowerbird (and peacocks and cuttle fish) when I posted. I don't mind including music in art (it's the only art I can do, after all) but it seemed to me like this thread was about visual art.

I don't think the bowerbird or the peacock or the cuttle fish have a very similar thing happening as when we see a piece of an art in a museum (or even sitting at home, on the internet, or listening in our car to music).

Quite simply, unless we have good reason or evidence, trying to come up with evolutionary reasons for human traits leads to (as you are demonstrating) very human-centric predictions. That your fat, ugly friend can score because he's a musician has no basis in evolutionary science: it's an anecdote, a novelty. It's not surprising, but it's also clearly not the norm.

You need really good evidence to talk about evolutionary purpose (which really has nothing to do with 'purpose' and is actually a postdictive statement about what traits were successful, as you said yourself). You can't claim a trait is successful just because it developed and is still around, the chin isn't "successful" as far as we know. It just is.

Now when you start talking about the mind in the context of evolution, you're talking about the wobbly portion of evolutionary psychology, which has a lot of reasonable criticisms launched at it from people like Gary Marcus (see Kluge).

If you think about an experiment you can do to prove the claim in the first place (or know of an experiment already done) I'd like to hear about it. It's easy to figure out what genes code for a particular functional protein but even pondering the genetics of mental events is already extremely difficult and requires at least some experience with the indirect approach of bioinformatics to even playfully bat at.

What about this sort of thing? It could be drawing a longbow :).

The meaning of “beauty” adds to the difficulties here. These instead are about creativity rather than beauty, however successful divergent thinking here might be judged on some notion of beauty. I referred to this and others like it before, here, which suggest that despite possible negatives related to an inclination towards the arts, genes remain in the gene pool, possibly due to benefits derived from divergent thinking.

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/273/1586/611.short

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WM0-4HDX6J2-2&_user=10&_coverDate=12%2F31%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1742875997&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=1eb285022704bdf1560011b070ab476e&searchtype=a

 

[Pythagorean]

As for the bower bird I am unsure why you are mentioning peacocks and cuddlefish. I bring up bower birds, and they are brought up in the paper, because they actually create the object which attracts their mate.

the article you cited also mentions peacocks. Remember the comparison people were making in this thread was to sexual selection. Peacocks are an example of visual sexual selection.

also, we're talking about appreciation of beauty, not just the making of beauty (see thread title).

If your issue is a lack of sexual context when you are in a museum or your living room looking at a painting I would say that the sexual context is irrelevant. I noted earlier that nice hair, teeth, and skin are common sexual selection characteristics. We are attracted to these things though the average person does not sexualize teeth and hair and skin. The average person (and animal) is attracted to these things in any context. They are also gender neutral. We are attracted to these things regardless of the gender of the person who possesses them. So it seems that sexual context is irrelevant to a sexual selection characteristic.

But you're narrowing your focus to facial characteristics (which aren't sexual selection-specific. It's a multi-faceted aspect. The goal isn't always reproduction. We have innate circuitry for facial recognition that allows us to empathize with each other).

I am unsure how my "predictions" are "human-centric". And my note about my friend was an aside. I found it funny in the context of the discussion. I also am not sure that it is "clearly not the norm". Though there has not been a scientific study that I am aware of the bulk of anecdotal evidence supports the idea that persons are highly attracted to singers and musicians.

It just appears mildly deceptive when you include an anecdote that is irrelevant but appear relevant. It's human-centric to try an attach purpose to every aspect of humanity (there may very well be no purpose for our ability to appreciate art).

The evidence is primarily in the correlation of data. Of course correlation is not causation but that is pretty much all we have. In the case of sexual selection characteristics high correlation of a trait with reproductive success and fitness is what it is all about.

No that's not all we have. The molecular story is how we confirm these kinds of claims, tracing mRNA especially. But the larger and larger the molecular networks get, the more convoluted the answer is. The biological networks that mediate social behavior are vastly complex.

Did you read the paper I linked?

I skimmed (that's after all, why I brought up peacocks) Did you read it? Did you miss the peacock section?

Anyway, you are fully capable of representing the logical argument in the paper and the evidence. I shouldn't have to read it myself.

But so far, this:

Not all 34 predictions need be supported for the hypothesis to hold true, but the more the better

Reminds me of fishing. Bigger net catch more fish. Science ought to be a bit more succinct.