This is a post on
why there is a lack of good explanations for the things that make life worth living.
Why do we like the
things we like? For some, such as food or sex, the answer is obvious. Without them, we wouldn't survive or
reproduce. In order to make sure we comply with its wishes, our body uses a
primitive carrot and stick management approach consisting of
rewards (e.g. sweet taste) and punishments (e.g. hunger). Why our body can't treat us like adults I don't know. Maybe it's so that we don't end up like people
who have a mutation that prevents them from feeling pain and
therefore are prone to self-inflicted injuries.
There are however
plenty of things we like that can't easily be explained this way. For
example: Music, truth, humour, stories and drama, beauty, and spirituality. For none of these it is obvious how liking them promotes
survival or fitness.
Let's consider
music. Nobody I've talked
to about this has been able to satisfactorily answer the question of why we
like it. The question is not just why we like it, but also why we don't like
other noise that is very much like music. There are certain tones and combination of tones
we find harmonious and like to listen to, whilst others we just
find annoying. This preference is somewhat related to things like frequency. For example, tones that have a multiple of the frequency of
others appear to be harmonious, and why that should be so is not clear.
There is of course a cultural
element to music, but there also seem to be universals. People are divided on
whether they like techno, but I assume nobody finds waltzes unpleasant. Another observation is that music is somehow connected to dance and language, but what
exactly these connections are and whether they are essential is unclear as
well.
One possibility is
that music appreciation is a by-product of some other capacity that our
ancestors evolved, such as language. This explanation is advanced by some people
working in the field of neuroaesthetics.
To me it seems unlikely that our brain is so inflexible that it couldn't evolve
one capacity without also accidentally evolving another.
I
have also come across the theory that music appreciation is nothing but pattern recognition.
To me, this is not satisfactory either, as it does not explain why we find
music more pleasant than other instances of pattern recognition. For
example, contemplating visual patterns can be nice, but I don't know anyone who spend hours every day doing it for recreational purposes.
Evolutionary
psychology could explain our like of music and similar phenomena through sexual
selection. According to this theory, music is like a peacock's tail: Potential
partners of the opposite sex like a nice tail (or good musical sense), which
means that having that tail (or sense) increases our chances of reproduction. Over time, the tails (and musical sense) get more and more elaborate. Whilst
this is a valid explanation, and I admit that it seems to apply to music, it's not satisfying either. Why? Because
absolutely every trait could be explained this way.
If this were a
well-considered blog post, this would be the point where I advance a hypothesis
that may provide an answer, or at least a proposal how an answer could be
found. Unfortunately, it isn't and I can't. All I can do is to lament the fact that there is a lack of good explanations and leave it at that.