Art and evolution (con'td.) ...

... Art in Darwin's terms. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Dutton is most convincing when he is least programmatic. It is one thing to set out to “explain” the arts as Darwinian adaptations. That sets a very (impossibly?) high cognitive standard. It also raises the question whether the explanation that results is not also an explaining away. Dutton sometimes writes as if he is offering some such account of the arts. Often he is more relaxed. I like it when he says that the “art instinct” is not a single thing but “a complicated ensemble of impulses” involving responses to “the natural environment, to life’s likely threats and opportunities, the sheer appeal of colours and sounds, social status, intellectual puzzles, extreme technical difficulty, erotic interests, and even costliness”. Quite right: but haven’t we then wandered pretty far away from the idea of art having “survival value” as a Darwinian adaptation?