Why the human mind evolved? Intelligence is not a by-product of surplus brain size, it actively evolved, like the peacock's tail, for courtship and mating, and thereby shaped human nature.
Why does our species tell jokes, build monuments, compose sonatas, give to charity, compete in sports, follow fashion? Our endless inventiveness, our elaborate culture, seem to defy Darwinian explanation. They are our sexual ornaments, our peacocks' tails, displaying our value to potential mates.
Consciousness, morality, creativity, language, and art: these are the traits that make us human. Scientists have traditionally explained these qualities as merely a side effect of surplus brain size, but they are rally sexual attractors, not side effects. This argument is based on Darwin's theory of sexual selection, which until now has played second fiddle to Darwin's theory of natural selection, and draws on ideas and research from a wide range of fields, including psychology, economics, history, and pop culture.
Sexual selection theory rather than natural selection-- is a theory about how the human mind has developed the sophistication of a peacock's tail to encourage sexual choice and the refining of art, morality, music, and literature. Mate choice, male or female may be the reason we have art and possibly even the (self).
Why human brains have so much capacity for creativity, language, and consciousness-- are not fully explained by Darwinian natural selection, but sexual selection by mate choices for and by breeding brutes. Sexual Selection, Darwin's 'other' theory, has finally come in from the cold and is now one of the hottest topics in modern Darwinism. The idea that the human mind evolved as a sort of software peacock's tail has been mooted before, usually to be dismissed in favor of some alternative theory.
That large personalities can be as sexually enticing as oversize breasts or biceps may indeed prove comforting, but denuding sexual chemistry can be a curiously unsexy business, akin to analyzing humor. As a courting display of my own arogent intellectual plumage, though, my ideas are an agent-provocateur an chest swelled with ideas and articulate conjecture. While occasionally my magpie instinct may loot fool's gold, overall it provides an accessible and attractive insight into modern Darwinism and the survival of the sexiest.
https://www.amazon.com/Mating-Mind-Sexual-Choice-Evolution/dp/038549517X
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/miller/miller_p2.html
A Mind for Mating
According to Miller (2000), the brain is a sexually selected signal sending system: “Sexual selection made our brains wasteful, if not wasted: it transformed a small, efficient ape-style brain into a huge, energy hungry handicap spewing out luxury behaviors like conversation, music, and art” (p. 134). From this perspective, hominin brain size increased dramatically because a larger, more elaborate brain can better signal its owner’s fitness than a smaller, less ornate one. Let us unpack this.
Miller contended that the brain evolved to display (signal) its owner’s underlying fitness. More precisely, the brain signals its owner’s mutation load, or number of deleterious genes that are carried by the owner’s genome. Evolution relies on genetic mutations. They are the grist for natural selection’s mill, so they might seem a good and necessary thing (Ridley, 1993). But most mutations are either neutral or deleterious--they often hinder not enhance an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce. But every genetic lineage inevitably accumulates harmful mutations (Agrawal & Whitlock, 2012). Sexually reproducing species, such as humans, can somewhat control the mutation loads of their offspring by reproducing with partners who evince low mutation loads. But how does one determine the mutation load of another person? People do not have mutation load displays on their foreheads.
According to Miller, the human brain is a brilliant indicator of one’s underlying mutation load because the brain is constructed from information from thousands of genes. With so many genes on display, mutations are bound to show up. Brains that are relatively mutation free are healthy, intelligent brains. Such brains can produce complicated artworks, clever jokes, insightful apercus, and engaging conversation. These features of the human cultural world might appear functional, but according to Miller, “from a biological viewpoint they might signify nothing more than our fitness, to those who might be considering merging their genes with ours” (p. 134). Brain expansion wasn’t a functional response to a hostile environment, dangerous predators, or competing humans; it was a wasteful response to choosy sexual partners.
From this perspective, many of the increasingly complicated cultural artifacts that appear in the archaeological record weren’t compelled by environmental exigencies; they were compelled by the mating decisions of the other sex. Although this argument might seem silly when applied to “obviously” functional tools such as hand axes, other scholars have suggested that the symmetrical design of such axes made them excellent sexually selected signals (Kohn & Mithen, 1999). More obviously ornamental displays seem to fit the CCM’s contention that many cultural displays and artifacts are signals. Dazzling cave paintings, sumptuous stone sculptures, and intricate bead necklaces seem more of a signal than a functional response to an environmental challenge. But what exactly do they signal?
The Status Competition Model of Cultural Production - February 2018
Authors: Bo Winegard, Benjamin Mark Winegard & David C Geary
