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 carrot and stick management approach consisting of rewards (e.g. sweet taste) and punishments (e.g. hunger). The likely reason why our bodies don’t use more enlightened management techniques is 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 many of our likes and dislikes that can’t be explained the same way: Music, truth, humour, stories and drama, beauty, and spirituality. For none of these it is obvious how liking them promotes survival or fitness.
Consider music. There isn’t any satisfactory answer why we like it. The question is not just why we like music, 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 find annoying. 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.
While there is cultural element to this, there are also 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. It seems unlikely to me that our brain is so inflexible that it couldn’t evolve one capacity without also accidentally evolving another, even though I’m a believer in antagonistic pleiotropy as an evolutionary force.
Another theory is that music appreciation is nothing but pattern recognition. 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 unlike listening to music, there are few people spend hours every day looking at abstract patterns 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.
Nehaveigur 