Colleen Herold
Selena Yribe
Pinker, Chapter 8
11/23/99
The Meaning Of Life
One of the questions that Pinker imposes upon the reader is why do people pursue the arts at all. One reason is that the arts engage not only the psychology of aesthetics but also the psychology of status. Pinker claims that the value of art is unrelated to aesthetics and that a master piece becomes of value if it is found to be a forgery, comic strips become a high art when the art world says they are, and then give out wasteful prices. Furthermore, modern and postmodern works are given not for pleasure but in order to confirm the theory critics. Pinker goes on to say that in order to understand the psychology of art minus the psychology of status, we need to begin with folk songs, pulp fiction, and paintings on black velvet. "It means asking a simple question: What is it about the mind that lets people take pleasure in shapes and colors and sounds and jokes and stories and myths?" (Pinker, 523). The problem is that this question can be answered but questions about art in general can not be.
Another reason the psychology of the arts is obscure is that they are not adaptive in the biologist's sense of the word. Pinker presents the example of the rats that have access to a lever that sends electrical impulses to an electrode implanted in the brain, it presses the lever until it drops forgoing the chance to eat, drink, and have sex. Humans do not have an electrode implanted in their pleasure centers but do have ways of stimulating the mind through other means. For example, people use recreational drugs, which seep into the chemical junctions of the pleasure circuits (Pinker, 524). Another way to get to the pleasure centers is via the senses, which stimulate the circuits when they are in environments that would have led to fitness in past generations. The environment gives off patterns of sounds, sight and smells that the senses are designed to pick up. "Now if the intellectual faculties could identify the pleasure patterns. . .the brain could stimulate itself without the messiness of electrodes or drugs" (Pinker, 525). Pinker mentions how we enjoy strawberry cheesecake because we evolved circuits that gives us a lot of enjoyment from the sweet taste of ripe fruit, the creamy mouth feels of fats and oils from nuts and meats, and the coolness of fresh water. Cheesecake is appealing to us unlike anything in this natural world because it is a " brew of megadoses of agreeable stimuli which we concocted for the express purpose of pressing our pleasure buttons" (Pinker, 525). Pornography and art are another pleasure technology.
Arts and Entertainment
"The visual arts are a perfect example of a technology designed to defeat the locks that safeguard our pleasure buttons and to press the buttons in various combinations" (Pinker, 526). Pinker mentions something called the lock-picking which are optical illusions give off patterns of light that pull our visual system into seeing scenes that are not there. The pleasure buttons are the content of the illusions. Pinker also mentions how we find abstract art such as circles, squares, spirals and splashes of color as pleasurable. We consider optimal geometric features as something pretty to look at. The question is why is the optimal feedstock for visual processing pretty to look at?
First, we seem to get pleasure out of looking at purified, concentrated versions of the geometric patterns that in dilute form give us pips of micro-satisfaction as we orient ourselves toward informative environments and fine-tune our vision to give us a clear picture of them (Pinker, 527). For example, the annoyance one feels when the picture on the movie is out of focus and the relief when the projectionist twiddles the lens to give a clear picture. The same applies for our own retinal image when you are not properly accommodating the lens of your eye. Bright and clear pictures stimulate the eyes because we know that unclear pictures can be annoying. Pinker mentions how if we were to scoop out the entire scene in front of us, put it in a giant blender set on liquefy, and pour it back in front of you. The scene will no longer contain any objects of interest. This goes to show that the dull picture with no objects comes from an environment with nothing to offer and its opposite, a picture with color and objects, comes from an environment that contains objects worth paying attention to. "Thus we are designed to be dissatisfied by bleak, featureless scenes and attracted to colorful, patterned ones" (Pinker, 528).
Music bonds the social groups and appears to be a pure pleasure technology, a stimulant drug that we ingest through the ear to stimulate our pleasure circuits. Musical sophistication varies across people, cultures, and historical periods. Musical idioms also vary greatly in complexity across time and culture. "Music is quite different from language and that it is a technology not an adaptation." Pinker discusses different concepts such as the human sense of pitch and frequency of vibration, the term octave and tonic, different notes, grouping structure and metrical structure. To define some of the terms Pinker mentions would be too lengthy so describing a couple will cut down on reading material. On term he defines is grouping structure which means the listener feels that groups of notes hang together in motifs, which in turn are grouped into phrases, which are grouped into lines or sections, which are grouped into stanzas, movements, and pieces (Pinker, pg. 532). Another term is metrical structure which is the repeating sequence of strong and weak beats that we count off as "ONE-two-THREE-four, ONE-two-THREE–four (Pinker, 532).
Pinker makes an argument about music that it does not confer to survival advantage but ask where does it come from and why does it work. Music is like auditory cheesecake that is crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of at lest six of our mental faculties. A standard piece tickles them all at once, but we can see the ingredients in various kinds of not-quite music that leaves one or more of then out (Pinker, 534).
The first one is language. Musical pieces convey complex messages and make statements by introducing topics and commenting on them. "Music has been called 'heightened speech,' and it can literally grade into speech" (Pinker, 535). For example, rap music expresses messages in a preacher form like and convey poetry.
The second one is auditory scene analysis. One principle of auditory scene analysis has shown how the brain strings together the notes of a melody as if it were a stream of sound coming from a single soundmaker. Pinker also mentions how melodies are pleasing to the ear for the same reason that, symmetrical and doodles are pleasing to the eye. "They exaggerate the experience of being in an environment that contains strong, clear, analyzable signals from interesting, potent objects" (pinker, 536). Like mentioned before about how it the environment is not colorful and filled wit objects the environment will not be pleasing to the eye. The same goes for an auditory environment that can not be heard clearly is not pleasing tot he ear.
The third one is emotional calls. Pinker thinks that melodies possibly evoke strong emotions are because their skeletons resemble digitized templates of our species' emotional call (Pinker, 537). In order to describe passages of music in words, they use these emotional calls as metaphors. For example, soul musicians mix their singing with growls, cries, moans, and whimpers.
The fourth is habitat selection. It is possible that we pay attention to features of the auditory world that signal safe, unsafe, or changing habitats. Composers use the technique of trying to evoke environmental sounds like thunder or birdsong in a melody. In movies, there are examples of emotional tug of music found in soundtracks. For example, in movies the purpose is to draw the viewers into the emotions of the character through the music. In the movie Jaws the suspenseful parts are featured alongside the famous two-note motif.
The fifth is motor control. "People dance, nod, shake, swing, stride, clap, and snap to music, and that is a strong hint that music taps into the system of motor control. The way a child feels relaxed going to the back and forth rhythmic motion of a swing can go the same for the music. "A constant rhythmic pattern is an optimal way to time these motions, and we get moderate pleasure from being able to stick to it, which athletes call getting in a groove or feeling the flow" (Pinker, 538). Music and dance can be a stimulus to pleasure. Music theorists believe that music recreates the motivational and emotional components of movement.
The last one is entitled something else. "Something that explains the whole is more than the sum of the parts" (Pinker, 538). Perhaps there is something in the brain that triggers a pleasure towards music?
In closing, Pinker claims that the reason he chose these topics was because they showed the clearest signs of being adaptations especially music because it shows the clearest signs of not being one.
A final point he discusses is the fact that people cannot distinguish fantasy from reality. Pinker says that people go to extremes to enhance the pleasure we all get from losing ourselves in fiction. The question is where does this motive come from? Technology of fiction brings a stimulation of life that an audience can enter in the comfort of their own homes. "Other technologies violate the assumptions of our perceptual apparatus and trick us with illusions that partly duplicate the experience of seeing and hearing real events" (Pinker, 539). This includes things such as costumes and makeup. In addition, fictional lifestyle of characters in a book or movie help us to escape for a while and live like the character getting to fall in love with a beautiful woman or handsome man. People do not mind paying money to escape reality for a short time. Although there are sad endings, it does not stop people from being sucked into the illusion of a real world. People like the tearjerker films because they stimulate a triumph over tragedy. And the viewer will identify with the struggling character(s) and the feelings of overcoming tragedies. Pinker goes on to discuss gossip and how it is a favorite pastime in all-human societies because knowledge is power (Pinker, 540). Knowing information about who is a liar and who is trustworthy or who has a jealous spouse or family gives people a thrill especially when a person knows something nobody else knows. Today, when we snoop into the private lives of fictitious characters, we are getting the same high or buzz.
Pinker mentions how characters in a fictitious world do exactly what our intelligence allows us to do in the real world. We watch what happens to them and mentally take notes on the outcomes of the strategies and tactics they use in pursing their goals (Pinker, 541). The goals according to Darwin are to survive and reproduce. One of the main differences between fiction for adults and fiction for children are sex and violence. No matter what the case is, fiction stimulates the mind like other things such as music.
(a) Three main points made by the author that the panel found especially interesting or informative were: a) music is not for survival but for mere pleasure b) people have a hard time distinguishing fantasy from reality c) why art are considered beautiful and as a stimulant to the mind.
(b) Three arguments that the panel disagreed with or in which I think the author made a weak case: a) get pleasure out looking at geometrical shapes because shapes do not stimulate our minds and seems strange b) I think that the acquired taste for cheesecake is more than a stimuli but also the enjoyment is due to the belief that its suppose to be appealing
(c) I had questions concerning the importance of the notes and the terms octave and tonic. I would have liked the author to has explained more about how music is not adaptive because the article talks a great deal about how music is a pleasure to the ear. I would like to hear more about the other side.
Jeff Glass
Selena Yribe
November 23, 1999
In chapter 8 of Pinker’s book How the Mind Works, he discusses many different parts of life and its meaning. In the last section of chapter 8 beginning with “What’s so funny?” Pinker explains the many theories on laughter and humor.
Pinker begins by discussing why we have laughter. There is not a survival value to the ability to laugh. It is just an involuntary reaction to a stimulus. This section of the chapter starts off with the opinion of Koestler. He believes, “laughter is a reflex, but unique in that it serves no apparent biological purpose; one might call it a luxury reflex.” (Pinker, 545) Through evolution, humans have many different defense mechanisms that aid in their survival or reproductive success. However, evolutionists, psychologists, and philosophers are puzzled by the motor response of laughter as a reflex.
Another puzzling part of laughter is that it seems to be contagious. Pinker explains, “the psychologist Robert Provine, who has documented the ethology of laughter in humans, found that people laugh thirty times more often when they are with other people than when they are alone.” (546) Even when someone laughs alone, it is usually a result of someone else’s words on a page or someone’s behavior on television or a memory of something that happened earlier in the day. Hearing others laugh naturally encourages us to laugh. It is interesting to think about how we are often upset or feeling down and if someone laughs around us, it is very difficult to resist the urge to laugh. All of this suggests that, one, laughter is audible because it can be a form of communication, and two it is involuntary because it is honest and unfakable.
Pinker also discusses laughter in other species. A human ehtologist claims that he hears a form of laughter in a monkey’s call when they are approaching an enemy. He also says, “Chimps ‘laugh’ when they tickle each other, just as children do.” (546) It is interesting to think about the purpose of laughter in humans and primates, because they produce it in some similar situations. If it is a form of communication, what is it communicating that words in the human language cannot?
Pinker also says that humor is a form of aggression. It is painful to be laughed at, and we all have been. Children and even adults laugh at people when they are injured or in pain. It seems that laughter is used at these inappropriate times in other cultures as well. “When the anthropologist Raymond Hames was living with the Ye’Kwana in the Amazon rainforest, he once smacked his head on the crossbar of the entrance to a hut and crumpled to the ground, bleeding profusely and writhing in pain. The onlookers were doubled over in laughter.” (547) It also seems that laughter targets people of high stature. Pinker says, “the most inviting targets of ridicule are teachers, preachers, kings, politicians, military officers, and other members of the high and mighty.” (548) What is the survival nature of laugher if in so many circumstances it is a result of someone else’s pain or ridicule?
Pinker explains that Koestler has four types of humor that he feels exists in the world. They are: slapstick, scatological, sexual, and verbal. Slapstick is a form of physical comedy, scatological humor focuses on the body’s production of disgusting substances, sexual humor is pretty self explanatory…we all possess sexual organs which result in sex drives and reproduction, and last there is verbal humor which “hinges on a clash between two meanings of one word, the second one unexpected, sensible, and insulting.” (550)
In order for us to answer the question “What, if anything, is humor for?” Pinker says that we need to look at three new points. First, humor may be a type of weapon for humans when faced with someone of a higher stature than us. Second, dominance in a situation is essential. Pinker gives the example, “A man with a single bullet in his gun can hold a dozen hostages if they have no way to signal a single moment at which to overpower him.” (551) It is important to remember that humor is often used at the expense of another so if you possess something over someone else then you are the one with the dominance. The third idea is similar to the “principle of relevance.” Our minds want to make sense of everything we see or hear. So, laughter is a form of making sense out of something that maybe should not because it is mean or contradictory.
Moving away from the maliciousness of humor, Pinker discusses the importance of laughter among friends. We all can agree that a time spent with friends laughing is one of the greatest experiences in life. However, much of the laughter friends experience together stems from insulting others that are outside of your circle of friends. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” (553) Also, friends are susceptible to each other’s status and dominance. As a result, friendship is a commitment of mutual unlimited help. We all want dominance and stature in the world but we want friends even more. This is why friends tease each other in good fun. But this is also why we only seem to joke with friends and not supervisors or strangers. If someone does tease a boss or person they do not know very well and the joke is taken well, one knows that the ice is breaking and a friendship is forming.
In the very last part of Chapter 8, Pinker discusses theology and the miracles that exist in the world. “According to polls, more than a quarter of today’s Americans believe in witches, almost half believe in ghosts, half believe in the devil, half believe that the book of Genesis is literally true, 69% believe in angels, 87% believe in a God or universal spirit.” (554) Pinker discusses these phenomena because if our mind was designed to not believe what cannot be proven then, why do we have such beliefs that are not provable? Pinker says that people’s belief in these things only raises questions regarding why we find comfort in beliefs that we do not know are true or not. So if people find a natural comfort in these things that are not proven, why are so many evils in the world a result of religion? Pinker says, “religions have given us stonings, witch-burnings, crusades, inquisitions, jihads, fatwas, suicide bombers, abortion-clinic gunmen, and mothers who drown their sons so they can be happily reunited in heaven. As Blaise Pascal wrote, ‘Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.’” (555) Pinker’s point is difficult to digest for most religious people who probably do not want to think of their religious affiliation playing apart in the many evils of the world. On the positive side, religions have brought our world wonderful art, philosophy, and law.
Another aspect of religion that Pinker discusses is prayer. Ambrose Bierce said that “to pray is ‘to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.’ People everywhere beseech gods and spirits for recovery from illness, for success in love or on the battlefield, and for good weather. Religion is a desperate measure that people resort to when the stakes are high and they have exhausted the usual techniques for the causation of success—medicines, strategies, courtship.” (556) Prayer is something that is an interesting phenomenon if one thinks about it. Pinker is right in saying that when all else fails…we tend to pray! When there is nothing left to do, give it to a higher power. This is why prayer gives people a sense of hope. Hope for a better outcome then if people had control over everything that happens.
In regards to priests, Pinker says they have a market that people want: miracles and expertise. Just like we trust dentists and doctors with our bodies and lives, we trust priests to be experts with our souls and destiny. Pinker says, “the demand for miracles creates a market that would-be priests compete in, and they can succeed by exploiting people’s dependence on experts.” (557)
In regards to finding out the answers to life’s unanswered questions, modern philosophers have three different ways. 1) “to say that the mysterious entities are an irreducible part of the universe and to leave it at that.” (560) However, this solution leaves us hanging with no satisfaction or insight into the details of our mind. 2) “to deny that there is a problem” (560) If they cannot be answered through science, research or quantitative methods then they are not worth figuring out. 3) “to domesticate the problem by collapsing it with one we can solve.” (561) These are some great attempts at solving the problem of not having answers to life’s unknowns. However, Pinker has another solution. He says, “maybe philosophical problems are hard not because they are divine or irreducible or meaningless or workaday science, but because the mind of Homo sapiens lacks the cognitive equipment to solve them. We are organisms, not angels, and our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth.” (561) This seems to be a reasonable and strong argument. He also says, “our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness or to answer any question we are capable of asking. We cannot hold ten thousand words in short-term memory. We cannot see in ultraviolet light. We cannot mentally rotate an object in the fourth dimension. And perhaps we cannot solve conundrums like free will and science.” (561) Pinker does go on to explain that this hypothesis does not mean that we have hit the end of science or hit a barrier. It just means that we will constantly be working to figuring out things more and more and will always be searching for complete understanding of life’s questions. “The set of thinkable thoughts may be infinite nonetheless.” (563)
The chapter ends with a very enlightening and optimistic thought on why we do not know all. Pinker explains, “our bafflement at the mysteries of the ages may have been the price we paid for a combinatorial mind that opened up a world of words and sentences, of theories and equations, of poems and melodies, of jokes and stories, the very things that make a mind worth having.” (565)
Critical Review
1. His opinion on why we do not have answers to all of life’s questions was very interesting. He makes a very good point that through natural selection we know things that were adaptive for our ancestors’ life-and-death situations and knowing everything in the world would be impossible. The end of the chapter is very optimistic when he says that our minds may not know all but it has been capable of complex things such as poetry and song, and words and sentences and that those are reasons for being appreciative of our minds.
2. Pinker did not seem to make a strong enough case for the reason for religion. He was not convincing enough as to why he thinks we believe in things that we know cannot be proven.
3. Pinker did not answer all regarding laughter and why it exists. He says that one idea is that it is a form of communication and ridicule but why does that serve necessary in humans and possibly in primates?
OUTLINE
The Meaning of Life
Chapter 8
I. Why do people pursue the arts at all?
A. Arts engage psychology of aesthetics and status
a. Art becomes of value when world says so
b. We need to begin with folk songs, pulp fiction in
order to understand the psychology of art.
B. Psychology of art is obscure and not adaptive in
biologist's sense
a. People use recreational drugs for pleasure
1. Example of the rats and the electrical impulses
b. A way to get to pleasure circuits is via the senses
c. The way to stimulate the mind without drugs
1. Example of the strawberry cheesecake and how we
evolved circuits that give off enjoyment
d. Art and pornography are another pleasure
technology
II. Visual Arts presses our different pleasure buttons
A. Lock-picking: illusions that make us see scenes that
Are not there
B. We find abstract art pleasurable
a. Example: optimal geometric shapes
C. People want clear pictures instead of unclear
pictures
D. We are dissatisfied with bleak scenes and attracted
To colorful ones
a. Prefer the objets and color not the what comes
what comes out of a blender, which is a scene lacking objects of interest
III. Music as a stimulant drug
A. Music bonds social groups and a pleasure
technology
B. Musical idioms vary across cultures
C. It is a technology not an adaptation
D. It is like auditory cheesecake because it tickles
the sensitive spots
a. Music can stimulate the mind
IV. Six ingredients of music
A. Language
a. Music makes statements and complex messages
1. Example of rap music
B. Auditory scene analysis
a. Melodies are pleasing to the ear
b. Brain strings notes of a melody like a single
soundmaker
C. Emotional calls
a. Music evoke emotions due to species emotional
call
1. Example of the way soul musicians sing with
moans and whimpers
D. Habitat selection
a. Composers evoke environmental sounds
1. Example of the emotional tug of music in
soundtracks
2. Example: the two-note motif in the movie Jaws
E. Motor control
a. When people dance is a hint that music taps into
the system of motor control
b. Pleasure in being able to stick to the rhythm
c. Music recreates the motivational and emotional
components of movement
F. Something else
V. Fantasy versus reality
A. Fiction stimulates our lives
a. Create illusions that duplicate the experience
of seeing and hearing real events
b. Helps us to escape from reality
B. Tearjerkers stimulate the mind because it’s a story
Of triumph over tragedy
C. People feed off on gossip because knowledge is power
a. People get a high of snooping into the private
lives of fictitious characters
D. Fictitious characters do what our intelligence allows
us to do in the real world
a. We take notes on the strategies and tactics in
pursing their goals
b. Darwin says the goal is to reproduce and survive
c. Sex and violence is distinguished between adult
and children fiction
d. Fiction stimulates the mind
Outline
A. Laughter is not a survival value.
B. Laughter is contagious.
C. Laughter is a form of communication.
D. Laughter is involuntary.
E. Laughter exists in primates.
1. monkeys
2. chimpanzees
F. Laughter is a form of aggression.
1. ridicule
a. Ye’Kwana tribe in the Amazon rainforest
G. Different forms of humor
1. slapstick
2. scatological
3. sexual
4. verbal
H. Laughter among friends
II. The inquisitive in pursuit of the inconceivable.
A. Why does the mind find comfort in beliefs that we can plainly see are not provable?
B. Prayer
1. “to pray is ‘to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.’” (556)
2. Provides people with a sense of hope.
C. Solutions to why we do not know all in the world
1. Three possible solutions by modern philosophers
a. “mysterious entities are an irreducible part of the universe and to leave it at that.” (560)
b. “they are meaningless” (561) if they cannot be answered quantitatively.
c. “domesticate the problem by collapsing it with one we can solve.” (561)
2. Pinker’s opinion
a. We lack the cognitive ability to solve all problems.
D. Be appreciative of the mind that has been given.