Interesting diavlog. Uplifting, even, in the summary at the end. Thanks to Denis for speaking in organized paragraphs and to John for letting him do so.

Great diavlog. I can't wait to read the book. Agree with Brendan on kudos to John for letting Denis speak at length. Not that John has issues with this usually, but it was extremely helpful with Denis because his points were complex and well worth the wait. My only two mits to pick: Denis never really spelled out from an EP perspective WHY we love watching virtuoso performers. But I'm guessing it's in the book. And I sincerely hope his dig at Billy Joel was based on Joel's less-than-stellar forays into classical composition, and not Joel's totally stellar early 70's songwriting. Movin'*Out, Honesty, Angry Young Man, Vienna, Streetlife Serenader etc., I hope Denis appreciates these great works of art. Uptown Girl, We Didn't Start the Fire (gag)...ok, not so much.

You've got your passion
you've got your pride
but don't you know that only fools are satisfied?
Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true.-- Joel

super good diavlog. really interesting.

Quoting uncle ebeneezer: And I sincerely hope his dig at Billy Joel was based on Joel's less-than-stellar forays into classical composition, and not Joel's totally stellar early 70's songwriting. Movin'*Out, Honesty, Angry Young Man, Vienna, Streetlife Serenader etc., I hope Denis appreciates these great works of art. Uptown Girl, We Didn't Start the Fire (gag)...ok, not so much.

Since arguing taste is rather endless, beyond identifying preferences, I offer a nod to BJ as a chronicler of Lawn Guyland life. Hal Hartley is the filmic equivalent, whom I much prefer. I wonder if you saw this hatchet job by a less than ardent listener:
http://www.slate.com/id/2209526/

Quoting graz: Since arguing taste is rather endless, beyond identifying preferences, I offer a nod to BJ as a chronicler of Lawn Guyland life. Hal Hartley is the filmic equivalent, whom I much prefer. I wonder if you saw this hatchet job by a less than ardent listener:

http://www.slate.com/id/2209526/

Heh. I saw that a couple of days ago, and speaking as someone who is decidedly not a Billy Joel fan, that article almost made me want to like him. I did have to laugh at one line, though: when he called Jeff Jarvis the Billy Joel of blog theorists.

http://www.aldaily.com/ Denis Dutton is the editor http://video.google.com/videosearch?...&oq=denis+dut# is like the diavlog without the dialogue, without John...

Interesting discussion. I've not read Dutton's book, but I've read some of his articles and reviews and have interacted with him on an evolutionary psych listserve. I'm ambivalent about the whole EP & art project. That art has some biological foundation doesn't bother me at all; I've been looking at that for over three decades. In his NYTimes review, Anthony Gottlieb says that "His discussion of the arts and of our responses to them is uniformly insightful and penetrating, and I doubt whether much of it really depends on the ideas of evolutionary psychology." That feels right to me. EP is a good way to toss out a certain range of older and extant ideas, but once that operation is over, it is short on new insights. The observation about preferences in landscape pictures is certainly interesting; it's the most interesting EP insight into art that I'm aware of. It's certainly useful for pounding a couple of nails into the coffin of doctrinaire cultural relativism and social constructivism. But, what does it actually explain? If indeed that preference harkens back to ancestral savannahs, then we really need to know just how that preference is

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-col...9/denis-dutton

Quoting bbenzon: The observation about preferences in landscape pictures is certainly interesting; it's the most interesting EP insight into art that I'm aware of. It's certainly useful for pounding a couple of nails into the coffin of doctrinaire cultural relativism and social constructivism. But, what does it actually explain? If indeed that preference harkens back to ancestral savannahs, then we really need to know just how that preference is carried in the genes consequently to be expressed, I presume, in the brain. As far as I know we aren't even close to understanding that.

Thus I feel that the value of adaptive explanation (and, in Dutton's case, sexual selection too) is oversold. So far, at least, it tells us very little about how art works.[/i]

Bbenzon - I am much more familiar with EP than with art theory. Thus, would you be willing to elaborate some on your comments above (the ones I have put in bold italics)? What is it that needs explaining and what does "how art works" mean? EP is not relevant to many questions, but its relevance can't be assessed without a very clear understanding of the question being asked. Whether EP is relevant to how art works depends on what you

FYI I just posted some mildly critical comments on The Art Instinct on my blog at Stevens: http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=221.

Now that is how it's done: what a great diavlog! Cheers to Denis for providing a riposte the cultural relativists that still call the shots within the social "sciences" in higher education. Within ten minutes of the start of diavlog, I was pumping my fist in delight.

Touche. Actually that was quite a funny article that's making me re-evaluate my stance on Joel. Chuck Klosterman wrote a flip-side essay explaining why Joel's music has been so succesfull over the years in his book "IV" which is pretty good. I guess my defense for my own opinion would be that I tend more towards music based on the chordal arrangements rather than lyrics. In this respect Joel's stuff (especially some of the non-hits) is very solid. Relatedly I love the "mood" of music, and frankly Joel's angst-driven piano bar sound, still has a vibe that I love. I admit his lyrics can get pretty sappy and I think one of the reasons I don't hang him on it is that I started listening to him when I was like 8 years old and wasn't nearly as sophisticated in my evaluation of "good" lyrics vs. "sappy" ones. And anyways, life is filled with sappy feelings, so while they sometimes annoy me, I understand why they appeal to people. As Jeff said there's no accounting for taste. I could (and have) made the same arguments of pretense against Dylan, Springsteen or the other guys mentioned in the Slate argument, while also adding in the fact

I do not remember whether it occurred in San Francisco
but the story about Ravi Shankar is NOT an 'urban legend'
because I witnessed it on my TV. He was tuning his sitar and when he finished
some people in the audience applauded.
Shankar sourly commented that he hoped they would like the music
as much as the tuning. (Likely this happened to him on more than one occasion)

Quoting Nogbad: I do not remember whether it occurred in San Francisco
but the story about Ravi Shankar is NOT an 'urban legend'
because I witnessed it on my TV.

He was tuning his sitar and when he finished
some people in the audience applauded.
Shankar sourly commented that he hoped they would like the music
as much as the tuning.

(Likely this happened to him on more than one occasion)

Maybe they were just applauding with relief (or in support) that he'd finally finished?

It's posiible it was also a light-hearted ribbing. Like giving a player a standing ovation for hitting a free-throw after he's missed 10 in a row. I've been in some concert crowds that did this sortof thing when our $30 ticket had thus far only bought us a reall lengthy "soundcheck."

Here's an extended example of an attempt to deal with how "art works in the mind," in this case, a poem by Coleridge, "Kubla Khan." The first part of the essay is descriptive and analytic in character while the second is a speculative attempt to relate the poem to psychological and neural mechanisms. Asserting the Coleridge was expressing an adaptive imagination hardly tells us anything interesting about the poem, nor does adding in the possibility that he was making a elaborate sexual display. Here's a longish post that takes the form of an open letter to Steven Pinker about literature in which I suggests that his recent book (The Stuff of Thought) contains the seeds of an account of why we value literature and that begins to get at the underlying mechanisms, rather than simply asserting (possibly) adaptive value. Pinker has posted a brief reply. Here's an extended critique of a collection of essays of Darwinian literary criticism. It doesn't really speak to the issue of mechanisms but it works its way around to a concluding observation about the rhetorical staging of a lot

denis dutton on High Art: http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/174...4:58&out=45:18

John, I've got a question about Dutton's book. Does he argue that "high" art is biologically adaptive while "popular art" is not? The question arises because he'd offered such a suggestion in a review he did of a book of essays by Joseph Carroll, the premier EP literary critic. As you know, in How the Mind Works Pinker had argued that art is not adaptive but, rather, is cheese cake of the mind, delicious but not particularly nutritious. Well, Carroll had argued that Pinker was wrong, that art really is biologically adaptive. Thus, in his review of Carroll, Dutton offered the suggestion that high art is adaptive, but low art is not. I'm not sure where I stand on the issue of the biological adaptiveness of art, though I argued in favor of the notion in my book on music, Beethoven's Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture. However, I suspect that high and low art come out the in the same place. Given Dutton's obvious relish for certain popular art ("The Simpsons" "Ren and Stimpy"), perhaps he's arrived at that position as well.

denis, i love your site.
wow, will anyone else finally agree that having new guests who are experts makes bheads "worth it," rather than having repeat bloggers 90% of the time? this is the first one i've watched all the way through in 3 months.

I have not read the book, and do not intend to, for the following reasons. Dutton, in his public appearances, seems to fail to understand foundations of what he is talking about. The populist art survey that he is referencing was a SATIRICAL interpretation of market research techniques, made by conceptual artists, Komar and Melamid. The link is here The artists themselves admitted that these were not scientific results. You can clearly see survey questions, and how they would direct participants towards landscapes. For example: "Which do you prefer, Modern Art, or Traditional Art?" or "Do you prefer indoor or outdoor scenes?" and then "What type of landscapes do you prefer?" Hopefully we are all aware that our pre-conceived thesis will always influence the outcome of experiments more than truth, through the form of our questions. Without understanding the concept of his source, Dutton continues to build his theories. There is nothing in the satirical survey about the types of trees that people prefer. This is an example of the surveyors' "poetic license" However, Dutton quickly (and strangely) attaches this re-occurrence as analogous to primitive preference for low-branched trees because they represent "Escape Routes." Same point for every analogy that Dutton

Quoting Nogbad: I do not remember whether it occurred in San Francisco
but the story about Ravi Shankar is NOT an 'urban legend'
because I witnessed it on my TV.

He was tuning his sitar and when he finished
some people in the audience applauded.
Shankar sourly commented that he hoped they would like the music
as much as the tuning.

(Likely this happened to him on more than one occasion)

I've just been replaying my copy of George Harrison's Concert for Bengladesh, Side One, where Ravi Shankar is tuning and the audience applauds. He does not tune for "ten minutes", nor does all the audience (in NYC) applaud. It's easy to see how the story, even if this was the only example, became exaggerated.

Quoting uncle ebeneezer: Denis never really spelled out from an EP perspective WHY we love watching virtuoso performers. But I'm guessing it's in the book.

The EP explanation that comes immediately to mind is that virtuosos are demonstrating their genetic fitness, and we find genetic fitness in others attractive. It's easy to see why we would find genetic fitness attractive in potential mates. Maybe it's less clear why we would find genetic fitness attractive in members of our own sex. Perhaps that can be explained by the fact that, as a social species, our own fitness depends on the fitness of those around us, even of those who aren't potential mates and who aren't related to us.

Quoting bbenzon: Here's an extended example of an attempt to deal with how "art works in the mind," in this case, a poem by Coleridge, "Kubla Khan." The first part of the essay is descriptive and analytic in character while the second is a speculative attempt to relate the poem to psychological and neural mechanisms. Asserting the Coleridge was expressing an adaptive imagination hardly tells us anything interesting about the poem, nor does adding in the possibility that he was making a elaborate sexual display.

Here's a longish post that takes the form of an open letter to Steven Pinker about literature in which I suggests that his recent book (The Stuff of Thought) contains the seeds of an account of why we value literature and that begins to get at the underlying mechanisms, rather than simply asserting (possibly) adaptive value. Pinker has posted a brief reply. Here's an extended critique of a collection of essays of Darwinian literary criticism. It doesn't really speak to the issue of mechanisms but it works its way around to a concluding observation about the rhetorical staging of a lot

Quoting thornybranch: I have not read the book, and do not intend to, for the following reasons.

Dutton, in his public appearances, seems to fail to understand foundations of what he is talking about.

The populist art survey that he is referencing was a SATIRICAL interpretation of market research techniques, made by conceptual artists, Komar and Melamid. The link is here

The artists themselves admitted that these were not scientific results. You can clearly see survey questions, and how they would direct participants towards landscapes.
...
Without understanding the concept of his source, Dutton continues to build his theories.

Dutton seemed perfectly aware that that survey wasn't scientific. He said something about how they'd basically conned their way into getting funding. However, he used their survey as a springboard to talk about some earlier German literature on the subject. That literature was the source on which he built his theories.

There is nothing in the satirical survey about the types of trees that people prefer. This is an example of the surveyors' "poetic license" However, Dutton quickly (and strangely) attaches this re-occurrence as analogous to primitive preference for low-branched trees because they represent "Escape Routes." Same point for every analogy that

Quoting thornybranch:
The populist art survey that he is referencing was a SATIRICAL interpretation of market research techniques, made by conceptual artists, Komar and Melamid. The link is here

Yup. Brutal. This part was painful to listen to. Dutton put on his best passionate voice for his soliloquy on roads, and his grave tones at this moment simply inched his pants down farther, exposing more and more of his ass. I'd feel bad for the guy, if he weren't so given to indulging the most professorial sententiousness.

Quoting Ray: Yup. Brutal. This part was painful to listen to. Dutton put on his best passionate voice for his soliloquy on roads, and his grave tones at this moment simply inched his pants down farther, exposing more and more of his ass.

I'd feel bad for the guy, if he weren't so given to indulging the most professorial sententiousness.

You too seemed to have missed how he dismissed the Komar--Melamid survey as a "hornswaggle".

Maybe the correct perspective is to appreciate Dutton's work as a piece of "Art" that some will like and others won't. This thread has brought that infamous concept "Reality", to the forefront. If more than one person witnessed the "tuning" incident, then we should question all the statements. We could also interpret the work as "philosophical fiction", I remember another pseudological story: Humans can dream of falling from great heights but don't dream of hitting the ground because our primitive ancestors were the ones that were able to grab a limb and thus prevent a fatal injury. If some statements follow a logical, coherent order does not make them real. Freud yarned some coherent tales that are entertaining and culturally stimulating but have been largely discredited in Psychiatry, but there are still groups of "Freudian Psychoanalysts" that still meet and congratulate each other, as long as there will be clients that will pay, the performers will go on with the show.

Fascinating discussion, amply justifying the existence the BHTV. Dutton throws off so many interesting ideas that I hesitate to make any critical remarks, but then why comment at all if you agree with everything a speaker says? First of all, I agree entirely that "social constructivism" and "cultural determinism-relativism" have come to their inevitable dead-ends. Even if the leading cultural "theorists" could write decent English, the meager results of their endeavors would make one wonder whether they were ever justified in appropriating the noble word "theory" for their slapdash explanations of everything human in terms of "culture." But the fault lies more with the concept of culture than with the cultural theorists themselves. The concept was irremediably damaged in the late 19th century when sociologists and anthropologists began using it to designate everything distinctly human. Originally, though, the concept had two antonyms, as it were: nature on the one hand, and barbarism and stupidity on the other (I will leave "barbarism" and "stupidity" undefined, but I think we all have an inkling at least of what they mean...). If cultural theorists had paid more attention to the second opposition, they might actually have done something to halt the

Quoting Francoamerican: [...] My question then is this: In thinking about art, as in thinking about any distinctly human creation that involves thought and reasoning and freedom (science, philosophy, law, politics etc.) don't we have to free ourselves from the straitjacket of Darwinism?

Sure. But as you observed earlier, there's a lot to be thankful for in this new perspective offered by Denis, if for no other reason than as a foil to cultural theorists and relativists run amok (or run dry). It does seem to me (and here's where I follow your lead of commenting when I agree with what was just said) that some art appeals to us purely or at least mostly on the very highest of intellectual planes, which would seem to have little to do with our ancestral origins. One example might be the music of guys like Bach, which is frequently pitched to me as worthy of making an effort to appreciate because of its mathematical structure. Another might be any form of "modern" art where there is a clear intent to jolt the viewer, or to criticize or satirize some aspect of conventional thinking. There has to

Quoting Tyrrell McAllister: [...]

I don't know the truth here, not having read Denis's book nor any of the other references that you and Thorny cite, but I did want to compliment you on the quality of your rebuttal.

Quoting Tyrrell McAllister: Dutton seemed perfectly aware that that survey wasn't scientific. He said something about how they'd basically conned their way into getting funding.

The hornswaggle link that you provided proves that Dutton considers this to be "very serious scientific research." The hornswaggling was in reference to Dutton's amazement that they were able to acquire funding for such an ambitious project.

However, he used their survey as a springboard to talk about some earlier German literature on the subject. That literature was the source on which he built his theories.

I can't seem to find a citation for the "Early German Literature." Do you mind providing it, (If it is relevant)? Wasn't Dutton using this fake survey as proof that artistic preferences, and artistic values for that matter, were objective?

He doesn't "dismiss" Duchamp. He just argues for addressing things in their proper order. Deal with the simple cases first, then move to the hard cases. Learn algebra before you try to understand calculus.

First of all, I agree that one person should learn algebra before understanding calculus. But drawing from this parallel, would you then say that Calculus is Bad for math? Should people that study

This seems to be a common critique of EP explanations. I recently read a book called "The Triumph of Sociobiology" by John Alcock. He talks at great length about there being basically two kinds of questions, which he calls "proximate" and "ultimate". Proximate questions about behavior would examine the neurological and hormonal mechanisms that influence how humans act, and "ultimate" questions attempt to puzzle out how the actions of animals effect adaptive fitness. It's true that saying language is "adaptive" isn't saying much, but there are situations where adaptive questions are extremely useful when examining certain kinds of darwinian puzzles (especially behaviors like altruism, especially when it is of the life-threatening variety), because they open up avenues of inquiry that might not otherwise be considered. As far as art goes, I can't say I know just how useful an evolutionary framework is in assigning theoretical relevance to artistic endeavor, but it can have uses-there is a particularly interesting example in the Alcock book where a researcher, following a line of inquiry dependent on sociobiological assumptions, discovered that an island bird species could affect the gender ratio of its offspring, something that might not

Denis Dutton prefers dramatic art to the subtle and realistic art to the abstract or impressionist. Yet he seeks a broader platform for his likes and dislikes: evolution. I don't buy it.

Quoting bjkeefe: It does seem to me (and here's where I follow your lead of commenting when I agree with what was just said) that some art appeals to us purely or at least mostly on the very highest of intellectual planes, which would seem to have little to do with our ancestral origins.

I think all art involves the emotions in some way, so in that sense there must be an evolutionary basis for it. But the basis is only the beginning of analysis. Just as our taste buds like and dislike certain basic flavors, but great chefs can refine and combine those flavors in such a way that our taste buds are refined and educated in the process, so our emotions are educated by great works of art. In other words, I doubt that evolutionary explanations of emotions can go very far in explaining the specific emotional tonality of specific works of art.

Quoting thornybranch: The hornswaggle link that you provided proves that Dutton considers this to be "very serious scientific research." The hornswaggling was in reference to Dutton's amazement that they were able to acquire funding for such an ambitious project.

On your reading, you have Dutton thinking that they (1) asked for funding for "very serious scientific research" and that they (2) really did perform "very serious scientific research". If that were what he thought happened, it wouldn't make sense for him to call it a "hornswaggle". It's not hornswaggling to get funding for an ambitious project if you in fact do what the funder expected. On my reading, when Dutton referred to "very serious scientific research" he was talking about what they said they'd do to get the funding. But, instead of doing scientific research, they took the funding and did something that was, as you said, not scientific. On that reading, it makes perfect sense for him to call it a hornswaggle.

I can't seem to find a citation for the "Early German Literature." Do you mind providing it, (If it is relevant)? Wasn't Dutton using this fake survey as proof that artistic preferences, and artistic

Quoting jhorgan@highlands.co: FYI I just posted some mildly critical comments on The Art Instinct on my blog at Stevens: http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=221.

Quoting from John Horgan’s article on his web site (http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=221), “First, I worry that evolutionary art theory and lit crit will be excessively reductionist, unimaginative, uninteresting.…… Art theory is an imaginative exercise, like literature itself, and it will be impoverished if theorists all feel the need to conform to some adaptationist ideology.” The idea that the validity of a theory is legitimately undermined by its potential for disappointing implications strikes me as a form of romanticism we are better off without. People can and do use this line of thinking to object to scientific theories about the age and origin of the earth, to perpetuate misanthropic religious beliefs and practices, to remain ignorant about horrific realities, to block access to birth control and sex education, to protect their delusions and ideologies. To quote Steven Pinker quoting Anton Chekov, “Man will become better when you show him what he is like”. To the degree that EP can help show man what he is like, and to the degree that man can use that knowledge to become

He only said that there was a German literature out there. That was what he used as proof, not the fake survey, at least as I heard him. I assume it's in the book. Like I said last post, if it's not in there, then you have a valid critique

Unless you have a citation, then you have no rebuttle to my critique. I would actually really like to know what this mysterious "Early German Literature" is. Dutton, is other public appearances, like this Radio Interview and even in the first chapter of his book! makes no other citation besides Komar and Melamid (<-- I urge you to check out the actual Survey, it's hilarious!) Using this reference as a foundation, in addition to personal experiences in another country in which he was amazed at his ability to actually communicate with people. Imagine! He developed his idea that culture and aesthetic values were universal, and any kind of relativity or culture-oriented theories to be bullshit. "Cultural Relativity is a 'colonization.'" Huh? Wasn't the motivation behind cultural relativity the belief that core human relationships were universal (in their value), so one should take care not to forcefully impose dogmatic evolutionary philosophies

http://http://www.sciencedaily.com/r...0119210614.htm denis might be a little too sure of himself on the language issue.

Unless you have a citation, then you have no rebuttle to my critique. I would actually really like to know what this mysterious "Early German Literature" is.

I don't know about that German literature, but there are two papers in Barkow, Cosmides, and Tooby, The Adapted Mind (Oxford UP 1992), pp. 551-598.

fascinating - two comments: 1) Visual art requires no time frame - Michelangelo's David is just waiting there and you can begin and end your viewing of it at any point. Your experience still takes place over time and you view different parts of the sculpture from different angles. Music has a strict timeframe and the artist has to control not only when sounds begin, but when they end. If you hold the sustain pedal down on a piano, the notes keeping adding together, creating a cacophony unless controlled artisticallly. A symphony of smell would require the artist to be able to control the way a smell fades away, abruptly ends, or transitions to the next smell. This has only recently moved within the realm of possibility - we could do it with a small dome placed over the head of each audience member. But this seems like a good explanation for why the smell art form doesn't have the long history of the other two types. 2) since much of what we call "taste" is strongly affected by smell, the culinary arts could be considered a smell art form

Interesting points. One quibble:

Music has a strict timeframe ...

In some senses, I disagree. A good (or horrendously bad) piece of music sticks in the listener's mind and replays itself. It's also true that subjective time seems highly plastic when I'm listening to a piece of music that I know and like.

since much of what we call "taste" is strongly affected by smell, the culinary arts could be considered a smell art form

Yes, you're right about that.

A rather unconvincing (and uncharitable!) pan of Dutton's book from this week's Weekly Standard: http://weeklystandard.com/content/pu...6/185uyimw.asp

Quoting nikkibong: A rather unconvincing (and uncharitable!) pan of Dutton's book from this week's Weekly Standard:

http://weeklystandard.com/content/pu...6/185uyimw.asp

What an unfortunate name for the reviewer. BTW, your link didn't work for me. Looks like the article is only available to subscribers. I was able to find the first few paragraphs at this link: http://www.theweeklystandard.com/Che...=16185&r=uyimw

Another (more favorable) review of Dutton's book from one of my favorite magazines, the British online journal, Sp!ked: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.p..._article/6301/ (is this comment substantive enough, bob?)