Auditory Cheesecake

[supernova]

Since so many of us post our appreciation of all types of music and our favorite artists, I thought you might enjoy this discussion over at http://www.plastic.com about an article in the NYT asking why we humans have the capacity to enjoy music so much. Is it for survival? Reproduction? Or just a happy confluence of other, necessary neural events, i.e. "auditory cheesecake?"

I enjoy reading plastic because of some of the very intelligent posters over there, and they do occasionally go silly on the meta-discussions.

From the article:

Yet the ability to enjoy music has long puzzled biologists because it does nothing evident to help survival. Why, therefore, should evolution have built into the human brain this soul-stirring source of pleasure? Man's faculties for enjoying and producing music, Darwin wrote, "must be ranked among the most mysterious with which he is endowed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/16/science/16MUSI.html?ex=1064289600&en=1ecd0bcccb0659e3&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

Selected comments from the discussion:

A better question would be... Why does some music "tickle my brain" and other music make me pray for Armageddon to come?
*************************************************************

Perhaps the RIAA has/had a time machine and went back, way back to tinker with the genes of proto-humans. By making us music lovers they guaranteed themselves a market.
*************************************************************

I don't see why music appreciation would have to present a reproductive advantage. To be passed down through the generations, it would only not have to constitute a reproductive disadvantage.

The scientists would be better served trying to determine how my enjoyment of Science Fiction/Fantasy has survived. I mean, that actually reduces my chance of passing my genes on.


more: http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=03/09/20/21191512;cmt=24

edit: spelling. I is a college gradiate. :dunce:

[short bus president]

1. <singing> "I gave my love a cherry,

that had no stone.
I gave my love a chicken,
that had no bone."

<SMASH!>

Some music definitely constitutes a reproductive disadvantage.

[supernova]

3. LOL!

Listening to Pat Boone is enough to make me want to beat senseless the nearest living thing!

[Friar]

5. you listen to Pat Boone?

:silly:

[supernova]

6. Noooooo!!!

Non! Nyet! Nein!! Absolutely not! That's why you don't see me beating senseless very many people! I'm able to step away from the Boone's Farm! :silly:

[Friar]

2. I've always thought our species makes music

because our brains are too big. Our feeble armament (fingernails instead of claws etc.) was countered by the development of smarts. We got so smart in fact we no longer needed to be smart. We eliminated predation by other species we got so smart. We began agriculture and animal domestication, defeating even nature to a great extent.

So then our smarts had nothing to do and we get bored, which created art. "I'm not hungry, I'm not being attacked. Just got laid. Ho, hum. I think I'll take my knife and carve. Maybe I'll hit this hollow log while the old man blows on that hollow reed. Hmm, I bet I can make these sandals better."

Some people carved really well and some people hit the log or blew on the reed better than others just as some of the tribe made better arrowheads and could chip flint into sharper knives and shit like that.

But why should music have an emotional effect? During our formative years (80 to 100 thousand years ago) sounds must have been important to our survival. Listening for both prey and predators. I'm sure we got hard wired to interpret certain sounds as dangerous (the hissing of a large cat through tall grass, for example), informative (the thrashing of the wounded deer you sank four spears into yesterday) or calming (chirping birds who are general silent when danger approaches)etc. This is obvious I would think.

So, now we create sounds (such as a symphony) not because they inform us of danger or opportunity but because the subconscious responds to those ancient interpretations of particular pitches and tempos and stuff.

Maybe?

[Bossy Monkey]

4. If music doesn't confer a reproductive advantage...

how come Ric Ocasek is married to Paulina Porizkova?

[supernova]

7. LMAO!!

True enough.

But do you suppose it's the guitar alone? I mean, he might have other qualities we don't know about that she likes.

[Bossy Monkey]

8. They're both very, very, very smart. I was just making a funny (n/t)