tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2356665088551695982.post3578185101622163822..comments2024-01-25T08:52:28.661+01:00Comments on Music Matters | A blog on music cognition: Is music mere play?Henkjan Honinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09492535292861909192noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2356665088551695982.post-79637629547056533542010-04-03T18:41:58.747+02:002010-04-03T18:41:58.747+02:00Great post! It's no accident that we use the w...Great post! It's no accident that we use the word "play" to describe music. However, I take issue with the word "mere" in your title. Play is the major way social mammals learn. There's a mountain of neurobiological research showing how music literally wires the brain together. We undervalue music (and other social play) as a learning tool, not to mention its value for social bonding, as well as for regulating our emotions individually and collectively. The sexual selection theory plays a role, and there's no denying its cheesecake-like pleasures too, but thinking of music as a frivolity is a mistake. I find Stephen Mithen's theory of music as the precursor of language to be highly convincing as well.Ethan Heinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01302188185900843722noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2356665088551695982.post-18259494340199346442010-04-01T04:24:29.297+02:002010-04-01T04:24:29.297+02:00Newborn human babies have been shown to respond to...Newborn human babies have been shown to respond to music (beat and melody) in a way that other animals don't. This indicates that there is some built-in capacity for music in humans. "Play" can only occur if this mechanism exists, so the question remains what is the evolutionary value of the mechanism. The answers I've seen to this are the cheesecake hypothesis and Miller's sexual selection hypothesis. There's no clear deciding evidence between these two explanations. If either of these explanations turn out to be true the supporting evidence could be quite complex: like the discovery of music genes that are found to be necessary for language, or, music genes that aren't required for anything else. It seems likely to me that the capacity for music arose in pre-symbolic communication ("musi-language") and was coopted for sexual selection. Miller's point is that a small range of grunts is sufficient for communicating emotion but the additional capacity required to write or play a Bach cello suite is going to need an adaptive driver. Sexual selection is fairly easy to demonstrate in an otherwise maladaptive feature like the peacock tail, but extremely difficult to prove in the case of a complex behavioural trait like musicality.<br /><br />The notion of "play" requires having the capacity to do something and enjoying doing it without any obvious direct adaptive benefit, which doesn't exclude either the cheesecake or sexual selection hypotheses.Jim Birchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07415199338332642534noreply@blogger.com