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CURIOUS_FICTIONS

                                             August   31, 2012
                                             December  9, 2013
Dutton writes about Joseph
Carroll's "Literary Darwinism:       http://denisdutton.com/carroll_review.htm
Evolution, Human Nature, and
Literature":


  "The universal fascination with fictions is a curious thing. If
   human beings were attracted only to true narratives, factual
   reports that describe the real world, the attraction could be
   attributed to utility. ...  Were that the case, there would be
   no 'problem of fiction,' because there would be no fiction: the
   only alternatives to desirable truth would be unintentional
   mistakes or intentional lies. Such Pleistocene Gradgrinds would
   be about as eager to waste linguistic effort creating fables and
   fictions as they would be to waste their manual skills laboring
   to produce dull adzes. We can speculate even that the enjoyment
   of fictions might have put them at an adaptive disadvantage
   against more Gradgrindish neighboring tribes: homo sapiens would
   in such a circumstance have evolved to react to untrue, made-up
   stories much as it reacts to the smell of rotting meat. Now as
   it happens, this speculation does not accord with facts: the
   human reaction to fictions, at least when they are properly
   understood to be fictions, is not aversion, but runs anywhere
   from boredom to amusement to intense pleasure."


       Dutton summarizes the argument between Pinker and Carroll:

       (1) agreement on the adaptive advantages of
       imaginative scenarios

       (2) disagreement on their evaluation of the
       pleasure of fiction-- where Pinker is dismissive
       classifying it as a "pleasure technology" like
       narcotics, an abuse of biological mechanisms
       evolved for other reasons.
                                                         STRAIGHT_PINKER

On  "the functional uses of fiction", Dutton says
the "evolutionary aestheticians agree":

"There is an enormous potential survival value
for a species in being able to hypothesize
non-obtaining states of affairs-- imagining,        Literature is the art
contrary to known facts, what it would be for       where it's easiest to
the neighboring tribe to attack the camp when       see some "practical
the men are out hunting, or what it would be        application". Everyone
to travel in an area where water is scarce."        sees immediately that
                                                    words are different.
   Dutton referrences:
                                                          CONCRETE_MUSIC
     "John Tooby and Leda Cosmides                        MAKING_WRITERS
     talk about the advantages of
     'decoupled' imaginative acts"

     "Michelle Sugiyama writes of
     fictions as a kind of imaginative
     preparation for dealing with
     real-world problems"

      "Pinker himself uses a games
     analogy in How the Mind Works
     (1997): 'Life is like chess, and
     plots [in fiction] are like those
     books of famous chess games that
     serious players study...'"

"Familiarity with fictional plots obviates the
need always in to learn things in first-hand life
experience; it can aid in the development of          As in "The World God
mental flexibility and adaptability to new social     Only Knows"...
problems and expanded physical environments."
                                                              KUSHI_DANKO




                               Against Pinker, Dutton
                               argues against a purely
                               functional view of art:

                                            MUSIC_AS_MUSIC



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