Telling Advantages:Fiction as Adaptation

Brian BoydEnglish Department

University of Aucklandb.boyd@auckland.ac.nz

adaptation

• biological feature that shows design for some function

• ultimate function = advantage in terms of survival and/or reproduction

explaining fiction

• art in general– common features despite differences– music, dance, visual art precede story and

verse

• narrative– purportedly true report

• fiction– events acknowledged invented

art as adaptive?

• universal• thousands of generations• same major forms across cultures:

– music, dance, visual art, fiction, verse

• high costs in time, energy, resources• stirs emotions• develops reliably in childhood without

training

Pinker’s challenge

• art as byproduct (Pinker 1997, 2002, 2007)– except for scenario-building function of

narrative– byproduct of design capacity and human

cognitive preferences• cheesecake for mind• presses pleasure buttons by defeating locks

byproduct, sexual selection, adaptation

• if no benefits and high costs, would have been eliminated– cf. Dawkins 2004 on beaver dams

• sexual selection: Geoffrey Miller 2000

art and pattern• = cognitive play to engage human attention

through our preference for pattern

• pattern allows rich inference• human appetite for open-ended pattern• strong single pattern reduces need to attend• but unpredictable combinations of patterns repay

attention and yield rich especially inferences• art concentrates interrelated and intersecting patterns

Twiggy Tree man

play

• flexible behaviors cannot be entirely innate– need fine-tuning, wide options, context-sensitivity– especially urgent behaviors: flight, fight

• those with stronger motivations to practice and explore in low urgency will fare better in high urgency

• therefore evolution of pleasure in play• repeated and exuberant play hones skills, widens

repertoires, sharpens sensitivities– e.g. rat play drives genetic transcription in amygdala

and frontal cortex

art as play

• cognitive capacities benefit from – finer fine-tuning– wider repertoire– greater context-sensitivity – faster processing speed

• e.g. aural, visual, vocal, manual, social skills• art as cognitive play

– supernormal stimulus– rewards attention, repeat engagement

attention

• art needs to earn attention • attention to others unique in humans from birth• protoconversation, from c. 8 months

– “more like a song than a sentence”– “multimedia performances”:

• eyes, faces, hands, feet, voice, movement• rhythmic turn-taking, mutual imitation• elaboration, exaggeration, repetition, surprise

• joint attention, c. 12 mos• sharing attention ensures cognitive play does not

lead to private worlds

art: functions

• 1: cognitive fine-tuning in key modes• 2: social attunement

– attunement in sound and movement associated with close cooperation in parrots, duetting songbirds, dolphins, gibbons, humans

– in humans also in visual terms: group styles in body adornment, artifacts

– in humans also in fiction: empathy with characters, prosocial values, attunement with audience

art: functions

• 3: individual status– attention correlated with status– in spontaneous conversation, status earned by

relevance– art can hold attention in ways that override or

create own relevance

art: functions

• 4: religion• emergence of tradition

– imitate successful– imitate most common

• new initiatives become model, fashion, tradition, jealously guarded norm

• religion and art– spirits assumed to respond like humans– supernatural world dependent on fiction, in invented story– religion coopts art

• perhaps even becomes main function of art in traditional, small-scale societies

art: functions

• 5: creativity• art as Darwin machine (cf. immune system, neural

Dawinism)– 1: blind generation of variations: through neural randomness– 2: selective retention of external form (vs dream, reverie)– 3: self-motivating– 4: low-cost testing mechanism in makers’ minds– 5: status as incentive to refine– 6: further, more objective testing in minds of others– 7: human imitation: recycles existing design success– 8: traditions reduce invention costs and pose well-defined

problems

art: functions

• 5: creativity• art as Darwin machine (cont.)

– 9: traditions and forms reduce attention and comprehension costs

– 10: habituation ensures innovation (Martindale 1990)

• art well designed for creativity but not useful creativity• but even utilitarian effects

– materials, processes, products: e.g. in weaving and potterty– design tools: drawing, model-building

• confidence in creating parts of world on own terms

narrative

• comprehending events– animal and infant cognition: intuitive physics,

biology, psychology– human Theory of Mind: by age 5:

• beliefs as well as desires and intentions• metarepresentation

• communicating events– animal communication: present threats and

opportunities (vervet monkeys, honeybees)– human extras: joint attention, imitation, language

narrative

• inventing events– human pretend play– c. 12 months, manipulating objects as if something else– c. 24 months, pretense easy and fun– pretend play outstrips sophistication in understanding events– attention-engaging surprise more important than realism– fiction as internal pretend play, without props and actions

fiction as adaptation

• emerges after music, dance, visual arts• universal, spontaneous• we cannot suppress response:

– cannot not imagine characters in verbal or visual fictions

• cognitive defects:– Autism (vs Williams syndrome):

• poor Theory of Mind• poor story comprehension• no spontaneous pretend play

fiction: functions

• 1: social cognition– producing and processing social information – scenario construction or recall

• 2: storyteller status• 3: prosocial models

– audience resistance to selfish manipulation– but audience responsiveness to prosocial

manipulation, to shared values

• 4: perspectival shift– to make characters on both sides come to life

fiction: functions

• 5: thinking beyond here and now– cannot think sustainedly in abstract– but can think well in terms of agents and actions

• 6: Theory of Mind: explanation as problem, story as solution– Theory of Mind: awareness of false belief, of what we may

not know– agential (and especially unseen-agent) explanation

• 7: religion: supernatural fictions and social cohesion

varieties of fiction

• religion (myth) has commandeered much of force of fiction

• but non-religious or unserious fiction alongside religion’s serious fiction (Islam and Arabian Nights, Shakespeare, Kalibari)

• low cost, high long-term benefit: parables, fables• low cost, high immediate benefit: jokes• high cost, high immediate benefit: popular fiction• high cost, high long-term benefit: serious fiction

conclusion

• art entices minds to play hard and often so they can work harder– fine-tunes key perceptual and cognitive

modes– fosters creativity

• fiction – improves social cognition– thinking beyond here and now

conclusion

• need tests against alternatives (byproduct, sexual selection, other adaptive explanations)

• evolutionary approach to art and literature does not depend on art and fiction as adaptations– but a naturalistic account of art and fiction

needs to know!