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IMAGINARY_MIND

                                             August   31, 2012
                                             December  6, 2013

                                               Carroll's review of Pinker
                                               has a lightweight, dashed-off
    "The Adaptive Function                     quality to it.
    of Literature and the
    Other Arts"                                      BLEAK_DINER
    by Joseph Carroll                                100_MILLENNIUM_MIND

Carroll leads with the statement               This article seems
that "evolutionists in both the                more like the real deal.
sciences and the humanities" now
argue "that the imagination is a               http://onthehuman.org/2009/06/the-adaptive-function-of-literature-and-the-other-arts/
functional part of the adapted
mind."

He makes the strong claim:

"Developing the power of creating imaginative
virtual worlds must have had adaptive value
for our ancestors."  Because otherwise:

  o  "capacities for imaginative culture
      would not now be human universals"

  o  "artistic behavior would not spontaneously
      appear in all normally developing children

  o  "humans would not display cognitive aptitudes
      specifically geared toward the production and
      reception of art-dispositions

I have a feeling the aggressively skeptical
could pick some holes in all three points,        Note: he leads off claiming
but if you give him his data, it *is* at          that this is proof positive,
least suggestive, and check-it-out, he's          then softens it a little:
got references:
                                                         "These three factors ...
  Boyd, On the Origin;                                   all suggest that
  Brown;                                                 dispositions for the
  Dissanayake, Art;                                      arts were adaptive."
  Dutton;
  Scalise-Sugiyama;
  Tooby and Cosmides, 'Does Beauty Build';
  Salmon and Symons

And later he adds:

  Carroll, "Literary Darwinism" 65-69
  Carroll, Gottschall, Johnson, and Kruger
  Dissanayake, "Art"


But here's the good stuff, I think:

   "Consider the reality of our experience. We live in
   the imagination. For us, humans, no action or event
   is ever just itself. It is always a component in
   mental representations of the natural and social
   order, extending over time. All our actions take
   place within imaginative structures that include our
   vision of the world and our place in the world-- our
   internal conflicts and concerns, our relations to
   other people, our relations to nature, and our
   relations to whatever spiritual forces we imagine
   might exist. We live in communities that consist not
   just of the people with whom we come directly into
   contact but with memories of the dead, traditions of
   our ancestors, our sense of connection with
   generations yet unborn, and with every person,
   living or dead, who joins with us in imaginative
   structures-- social, ideological, religious, or
   philosophical-- that subordinate our individual selves
   to some collective body. Our sense of our selves
   derives from our myths and artistic traditions, from
   the stories we tell, the songs we sing, and the
   visual images that surround us."

   "We have all had moments in which some song, story,
   or play, some film, piece of music, or painting, has
   transfigured our vision of the world, broadened our
   minds, deepened our emotional understanding, or
   given us new insight into human experience."

   "Working out from this common observation to a
   hypothesis about the adaptive function of
   literature requires no great speculative
   leap. Literature and the other arts help us live
   our lives."


   "That is why the arts are human
   universals (Brown)."

   "In all known cultures, the arts
   enter profoundly into normal childhood development,
   connect individuals to their culture, and help
   people get oriented to the world, emotionally,
   morally, and conceptually (Boyd, On the Origin;
   Carroll, Literary Darwinism 65-69; Carroll,
   Gottschall, Johnson, and Kruger; Dissanayake, Art;
   Dutton; Tooby and Cosmides, 'Does Beauty Build?')."



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