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PEACOCKS_IN_FIGHT

                                                     August   31, 2012
                                                     December 04, 2013     
There are many who've taken the                                           
bait of Pinker's bewildering
passive-aggressive attack on art.     STRAIGHT_PINKER

One of them is Dennis Dutton--
Julian Bell's review of his book
was my entry point into this
particular fight:

"Why Art?" by Julian Bell, from
the October 8, 2009, "New York
Review of Books"

   About Dutton's:

   "The Art Instinct: Beauty,
   Pleasure, and Human Evolution"

                                            STRAIGHT_PINKER
Dutton objects to Steven Pinker's
line on art for a few reasons:

"They come together in the phrase
'dubious adaptive value,' in which           Right: "we are not our genes".
Pinker slyly but typically manages to        Art may be useless for the
insinuate that if any spandrels--            business of propagating genes (or
nonadaptive features of life-- do exist,     it may not be), but art has a lot
they are in some way to be disparaged."      to do with what we are, and about
                                             transmitting what we are to later
                                             generations.
"Now naturally Dutton, as a devotee
of the arts, believes that the joy of               (Though if the idea is you
his encounters with Jane Austen,                    gotta be doing it for the
Chekhov, Beethoven, and Brahms-- to                 children or it ain't good
name some of his touchstones of                     for nothing, then I object
excellence-- is different in kind                   to that, too.)
from Pinker's Sunday afternoon binges
on cheesecake and porn."

     So that's the motive.  We're after
     a more ennobling theory of art,
     one that recognizes it's proper place.


"But aside from this ...  Dutton wants
to argue that Pinker is in error when
he claims that art lacks adaptive
value and is one of the mind's
optional extras. He wants to set art
into place as a structural component
in the timberwork of human evolution."

    A bold, interesting claim...

"While natural selection favors the
preservation of individuals with an eye for
nutritious green valleys and a talent for        So Dutton goes
lying, it is individuals who flaunt their        with art as a
fitness to potential mates by outstanding        peacock tail.
eloquence or by making things well who get
a best chance to breed and who thus pass           (The purpose of poetry
the test of sexual selection."                      is to "woo women".)

(" ...  though the idea dates from Darwin,         If this is supposed to be
he dramatically claims to rediscover it ")         less demeaning than being
                                                   a mere spandrel, I don't
                                                   get it, but that's okay.

   BELL_TOLLING



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