Art and Adaptability

Art and Adaptability: Consciousness and Cognitive Culture

Brief Table of Contents

[graphic] Simplified Radiations of Select Primate Species

[graphic] Simplified Radiations of Select Hominin Species

[graphic] The Long Pleistocene

Introduction: Setting Boundaries

Chapter One, Intelligence: Communication and Theory of Mind

Chapter Two, Culture: The Adapted Mind

Chapter Three, Adaptive Functions: Selection and the Human Psyche           

Chapter Four, Objections: Philosophy and Byproducts           

Chapter Five, Neurobiology and Cognition: Consciousness and Representation

Conclusion: The Arts and Sciences

Bibliography

Index 

From the Introduction

Is art a free-riding frivolity with no biological or cognitive value? How, if at all, is art connected to health, pleasure, play, neural plasticity, sociality, and individual and group emotions? Those are big questions. While I might not have all of the answers, and since many evolutionary psychologists, biologists, anthropologists, and philosophers of art disagree, we might never know for sure if art behavior is an evolutionary adaptation. But material culture and art making are deeply embedded in our evolutionary history. And we continue to make art. Why? Consider some universal themes across art from all ages and countries: survival, internal conflict, mating, family, individual values, group identity, altruism and reciprocity, religious and spiritual beliefs, and warfare. This short list is indicative of behaviors that arose from selection pressures concerning the survival of our ancestors. In terms of biology, there clearly are striking benefits to making art over the costs, and the behavior is not only passed on by instruction and learning but the impulse is innate and heritable.

There is no single cause for our proclivity to make art. In fact, cause is not the appropriate word. Rather, there is a relation of adaptations that gave rise to how and why we make art. Here is a simplified sketch. Our hominin ancestors evolved a larger brain, due to a number of selection pressures, like tool manufacture, resource sharing, and group living. The larger brain responded to survival pressures and so produced hand tools and, much later, body paints and ornaments. With the rise of larger groups and their cultures, rituals, symbolic marks, and group identity with graphic communication appeared.

Building off the preceding, our brain adapted to a number of pressures simultaneously, like calculating in terms of space, objects, and events, and evolved to have intelligence modules communicate with each other. So a bone left over from hunting could be manipulated for use, like a tool. Perhaps the bone could be used for decoration or status, as in bodily ornament. Our evolved ability to re-engineer physical objects for a number of purposes, especially associating them with our beliefs, values, and practices, gave rise to symbolic culture. As in my other books which examine the arts and humanities in light of evolution (Making Mind and Evolution and Human Culture), I favor individual selection. In this argument for the adaptability of material/art culture, the individual is the innovator; the group is the imitator; but the group helps behaviors spread and change.

There are a number of broad topics I will consider, including but not limited to:

-          Evolution and adaptive functions

-          Material culture and art

-          Consciousness – individual and group

-          Intelligence, cognition, and emotions

-          Creativity and aesthetic response

-          Hominin species

-          Nonhuman primates

Essentially, my argument will consist of a series of claims:

1. The key adaptive mechanism for art behavior is social selection;

2. Cognitive functions related to form, shape, color, mental play, etc. are evolutionary adaptations;

3. While some adaptive mechanisms might hold sway over others, eventually they are nonetheless entwined;

4. The fluid modularity of human consciousness is a factor in art making;

5. Theory of mind plays a pivotal role in material culture and especially in abstract communication;

6. In hominins, theory of mind and material/art behavior co-evolved on a human scale of interpersonal exchange;

7. With theory of mind at its base, material/art culture is social strategy and manipulation.

While some authors have emphasized theory of mind or perspective taking in culture, I am not aware of any that have identified theory of mind as a key evolutionary adaptation in art behavior. In fact, some cognitive cultural theorists tend to minimize prehistory, evolution, and human/nonhuman continuities or are outright hostile to these ideas. Why don’t we always hide what we think? We want others to know our thoughts and feelings and have evolved emotions and facial expressions to do so. Theory of mind is part of an adaptation to mind share, which we especially achieve through material/art culture. My book provides an overview of the key thinkers regarding the adaptive function of art, offers a discussion of the principal theories concerning art behavior, and more particularly pinpoints the adaptive function of making art in theory of mind. I will, however, discuss the implications for art making as a result of a number of social adaptations stemming from material culture and theory of mind.

Although this book is segmented into chapters, it is really a sustained argument making a rather simple but novel claim about how our adaptability is connected to the feedback loop between theory of mind and art behavior. So I ask readers to be patient since I take my single subject and turn it up, down, and on the side for examination to emphasize key claims. Roy Baumeister et al. (2007) assert that many emotions exist to influence behavior indirectly through feedback. Similarly, I say that material/art culture is part of a predictive attempt to affect another’s emotional or cognitive outcome, often in subtle ways. The consequence is that one becomes reflective, a learning process and, therefore, a guide to the psychology of future responses. Why do we have art? Because we learned to anticipate certain emotional affects and so made material and artistic objects to produce these outcomes.

Content Copyright © Gregory F. Tague. All Rights Reserved.

PRESENTATION: Art and Adaptation.