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Consilience:
a jumping together
“Most of the issues that vex humanity daily—
ethnic conflict, arms escalation, overpopulation,
abortion, environment, endemic poverty, to cite
several most persistently before us—cannot be
solved without integrating knowledge from the
natural sciences with that of the social sciences
and the humanities. Only fluency across the
boundaries will provide a clear view of the
world as it really is, not as seen through the lens
of ideologies and religious dogmas or
commanded by myopic response to immediate
need.” (13-14)
The Evolution, Cognition, and
Culture Reading Group
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Larry Daily
Laura Renninger
Pete Vila
Ruth Conley
John Sheridan
Karen Austin
Heidi Dobish
Don Patchell
Laura Robertson
Mike Raubertas
Psychology
Music/Dean of Teaching and Learning
Environmental Science
Biology
Dean of Libraries
Academic Support
Psychology
Clinical Psychology, Martinsburg VA Center
Research Geneticist, Fish and Wildlife Center
Owner, Four Seasons Books
Why do human beings
enjoy fictional stories?
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Proximate Cause: The observable and immediate
cause of an effect.
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Stories give us pleasure; we like them
Stories teach us important lessons; we learn from them
Ultimate Cause: The deeper cause behind the
proximate cause
Why do human beings
enjoy sweet foods?
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Proximate Cause: Sweet stuff tastes good.
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Ultimate Cause: For 99% of the time that human beings have been
a species, sweetness has indicated ripe, edible, nutrient rich fruit.
Natural selection, therefore, favored those who found sweet foods
pleasurable.
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Selection tends to favor organisms who derive pleasure from
and commit resources to things that were once evolutionarily
beneficial. This does not mean that everything that we currently
derive pleasure from is adaptive.
The Pleasure of Stories
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All known human cultures have some form of storytelling or
literature
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Most people are capable of deriving enjoyment and pleasure
from a story that they fully understand to be fictional
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People from all cultures invest tremendous resources in the
production and consumption of fictional narratives
WHY?
Why do people find stories pleasurable?
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Narrative is a crucial component of cognition
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We literally think in stories
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Narrative cognition offers some very
important advantages in the way that we
process information
But Why Fiction?
Shouldn’t we like true stories instead?
Almost all of the phenomena that are central to the
humanities are puzzling anomalies from an
evolutionary perspective. Chief among these are
the human attraction to fictional experience (in all
media and genres) and other products of the
imagination.
—John Tooby and Leda Cosmides[i]
[i] John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, "Does Beauty Build Adapted Minds?
Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Aesthetics, Fiction and the Arts,"
SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism 30, no. 1-2 [94-95]
(2001): 7.
Useful Fiction
“A narrative whose adaptive
value is separate from its truth
value.”
Anxiety
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The most adaptive
negative emotion
Operates through the
limbic system and invokes
the “fight-or-flight”
response
Works on the “smokedetector principle” of
encouraging false-positives
because of the tremendous
consequences of false
negatives.
What should Thag do?
Assume that, in
Thag’s world:
99% of strange noises
behind rocks and trees are
made by mice, squirrels,
and other harmless animals
1% are made by large,
hungry tigers.
Predation narratives are selected to be
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Exaggerated (because the cost of
overstating the danger far outweighs the
cost of understating it)
Exciting (because exciting narratives
produce the adrenaline needed for both fight
and flight)
Speculative (because determining the truth
takes time that could be used for escape)
Self Deception
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Quixote wins the battle
against the stronger
man pretending to be a
knight
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The difference:
Carrasco only pretends
to be a knight; Quixote
actually believes that
he is a knight
Advantages to Self-delusion in combat
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Self-deluded people tend to have higher expectations
for their performance, which increases the likelihood of
victory by increasing the costs that they are willing to
pay in order to win.
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Self-delusion often allows one to project strength and
confidence, thereby causing others to avoid fighting or
make crucial mistakes. [i]
[i] Richard Wrangham, "Is Military Incompetence Adaptive?," Evolution and Human
Behavior 20, no. 1 (1999): 3-4.
The Mantis Shrimp
Just after molting, the mantis shrimp is completely helpless, yet this is
when its behavior is the most aggressive. 50% of potential predators
decline to attack a shrimp behaving this way, even though victory (and a
good meal) would be assured. (Robert Trivers, Social Evolution, p. 410)
Human Self-Delusion
The Lake Woebegone Effect
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A survey of one million high-school seniors found that
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70% thought they were above average in leadership ability
only 2% thought they were below average.
60% thought they were in the top 10% in ability to get along with others
25% thought they were in the top 1%!
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In a survey of university professors found that 94% thought they were
better at their jobs than their average colleague.” [i]
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[i] Thomas Gilovich, How We Know What Isn't So : The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life
(New York, N.Y.: Free Press, 1991), 77.
Self-narratives are selected to . . .
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Overestimate our importance or that of groups that we
belong to
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Exaggerate our accomplishments and abilities
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Underestimate our responsibility for failures or
weaknesses