Music and Evolution

1
Music and Evolution

• View music from evolutionary perspective
• From an evolutionary perspective, ask question
  why is there music at all?
• Parallel with Chomskys analysis of language
• Problem of grammaticality
• All speakers can make distinctions implies
  operation of principles that define sentence
  structure
• Principles are unconscious knowledge of
  language
• Chomskys framework devoted to understanding
  principles
• Music is superficially similar to language
• Recognize musical from non-musical
• Idea of knowledge of music

2
Three main questions about music and evolution

• What is the initial, innate state of knowledge
  about music prior to experience?
• Idea of universal constraints
• Ex, Idea of scale structure
• How is this initial state of knowledge
  transformed by relevant experience into the
  mature state of knowledge?
• Is there a critical period for acquisition of
  musical knowledge?
• Is there a poverty of the stimulus problem?
• Problem of grammaticality
• What is the evolutionary history of the initial
  state and the acquisition processes that guide
  the development of musical knowledge?
• Question of music as an adaptation

3
The evolution of music

• Is music an adaptation?
• Adaptation a feature that becomes important for
  the survival and reproduction of the organism
• In what way is music adaptive

4
The evolution of music

• Steven Pinkers, How the mind works (1997)
• The arts have two functions instruction and
  entertainment
• Instruction may have adaptive value
• Music is primarily entertainment
• The arts respond to a biologically pointless
  challenge figuring out how to get at the
  pleasure circuits of the brain and deliver little
  jolts of enjoyment without the inconvenience of
  wringing bona fide fitness increments from the
  harsh world (p. 524)
• music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite
  confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots
  of at least six of our mental faculties (p. 534)
• Compared with language, vision, social
  reasoning, and physical know-how, music could
  vanish from our species and the rest of our
  lifestyle would be virtually unchanged. Music
  appears to be a pure pleasure technology, a
  cocktail of recreational drugs that we ingest
  through the ear to stimulate a mass of pleasure
  circuits at once" (p. 528).

5
The adaptive functions of music

• Music promotes group cohesion
• Music developed from mother-infant bonding
• Strengthens emotional bonds
• Music transmits emotional information to a group
  of people simultaneously
• Music is a product of group selection
• Individual interests often served by co-operating
  rather than competition with other individuals of
  species
• Thus, likelihood of individual surviving and
  procreating depends on cultural fitness, how
  they behave in relation to others in social group
• Music promotes sexual selection
• musical behaviors indicate sexual fitness on
  variety of levels (Miller, 2000a, 2000b)

6
Evidence for innate mechanisms in music

• Developmental evidence
• Difficulties with interpreting developmental
  evidence
• Issues with idea of lack of exposure
• Issues with methodology
• Developmental evidence of innate sensitivity to
  musical structure
• Sensitivity to basic musical parameters pitch,
  intervals, contour, rhythm
• Issue of rapid learning and experience in utero

7
Evidence for innate mechanisms in music

• Cross-cultural evidence
• Two lines of investigation
• Search for cross-cultural universals
• Music in ancient cultures
• Cross-cultural universals?
• Aspects of pitch
• The distinction between relative and absolute
  pitch
• Melody recognition
• Scale structure
• Musical intervals
• Lullabies

8
Evidence for innate mechanisms in music

• Comparative evidence
• Why study animals?
• See if trait is unique to humans
• Homology vs. Homoplasy
• Homology A trait thats inherited from a common
  ancestor
• Homoplasy A trait with distinct lineages,
  lacking a common ancestor
• Powerful tool for evolutionary arguments
• Can control exposure
• Animals do not naturally produce music, thus any
  perceptual effects cannot be part of adaptation
  for music
• Nature of the evidence?
• Production of musical passages by animals
• Birds, gibbons and whale songs
• Perception of musical structure in animals
• Pitch perception, consonance and dissonance,
  musical styles
• Concerns with overstating evidence

9
Evidence for innate mechanisms in music

• Neural evidence
• Neuropsychology and imagining techniques
• Evidence for distinct neural structures related
  to musical processing distinct mechanisms for
  music?
• Are these brain structures innate, or do they
  come about through experience?

10
Conclusions

• Suggestive evidence that structure of music
  constrained by innate features of brain
• Work on pitch
• Question of whether music is an adaptation or
  byproduct of auditory process still remains
• Octaves vs. musical intervals