# "Music Exists Only For Pleasure"



## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Last week cognitive scientist and Harvard professor Steven Pinker tweeted a podcast where he recently discussed the evolutionary significance of music with Dean Olsher.

http://trbq.org/topics/music/

Here is the transcript:

*DEAN OLSHER:* Today we want to know why humans make music. In 1997 the evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker ruffled a lot of feathers when he argued that music is not an evolutionary adaptation. Instead he used a metaphor that keeps coming up. Pinker said that music is not essential to survival. It's a confection that exists only for pleasure. In other words... 'auditory cheesecake'. And this seemed to insult a lot of people, right?

*STEVEN PINKER:* Yes, people think sentimentally about music, they don't think *rigorously about it*. And they want it not to be insulted or dissed. They want it to be elevated and esteemed. And so it seemed kind of disrespectful to music. You know I think there is nothing wrong with cheesecake. And I think there is nothing wrong with the idea that we listen to music because it gives us pleasure. But somehow this sticks in the craw of a lot of people who study music.

*OLSHER:* Why?

*PINKER:* Because they want to valorize music.

*OLSHER:* Why does evolutionary purpose do that?

*PINKER:* It doesn't. It shouldn't. Many things that are evolutionary adaptations are by no means desirable like genocide. Quite easily see why this could serve an evolutionary purpose. And many things that are among the things we value most in life are clearly not evolutionary adaptations like reading which only developed quite recently in human history and certainly is not wired into our genome. People think of evolutionary adaptations as what is closest to the human essence, what we are most proud of as a species, and that's just a mistake.

*OLSHER:* Did you foresee the firestorm that you were going to ignite when you wrote that line [in 1997].

*PINKER:* No. This was a couple of pages in a 500 page book [How The Mind Works] and if anything since there is such opposition to the idea that anything in the mind is a Darwinian adaptation, I thought saying that there are some things that are not Darwinian adaptations would go over well. People hate the idea that sexual jealousy or revenge or differences between men and women are evolutionary adaptations. The common cliche is that these are 'just so' stories, they can't be proven, they are just parlor games. EXCEPT when it comes to music. Then everyone is a Darwinian, everyone is an adaptationist. Everyone desperately wants music to be an adaptation.

*OLSHER:* Why do scientists speculate about the evolutionary purpose of this or that when it seems as if it's an unanswerable question?

*PINKER:* Oh, it's not an unanswerable question. Is it an unanswerable question that the evolutionary function of the eye is vision? Or that the evolutionary function of the heart is to pump blood?

*OLSHER:* But then can you bring it to the level of hypothesis and test it. Not really, right?

*PINKER:* Sure you can.

*OLSHER:* How can you test whether music serves a purpose or not?

*PINKER:* Well let's go back. How do you test whether the function of the heart is to pump blood? That's not a 'just so' story.

*OLSHER:* We observe it in action, right.

*PINKER:* We observe it in action. Well, more to the point, we know what a pump is. We can do the engineering analysis and say that if something is a pump it has to have valves, it has to have a pressure difference on opposite sides of a barrier.

*OLSHER:* Right, so we can observe a heart in action but we can't observe the origin of music among humans.

*PINKER:* We can observe music in action. None of us said anything about observing the origin of the heart when we did the engineering analysis that showed that its function is to pump blood. It's not like we studied cavemen hearts. We didn't need to. It's the goodness a fit between an engineering analysis done independently of knowing the details of the system you're studying. Then you turn to the system and say... "How good is the fit?"

*OLSHER:* Has your idea about music as auditory cheesecake evolved since 1997?

*PINKER:* Yes. There are a number of interesting findings. There are very few animals that will entrain their motions to a musical rhythm, that is basically dance in time to the music. It tends to be animals that engage in vocal learning that copy environmental sounds and incorporate them in their repertoire that tend to rock or dance in time to music. And a lot of animals that you might think would do that like cats and dogs do not. And that seems to kind of elevate language as possibly a necessary condition for music.

*OLSHER:* When I listen to a Beethoven string quartet and it goes on for 45 minutes I'm engaged with it as a thought process. I feel that even though I know not to think about words and specific imagery he is making an argument.

*PINKER:* Yes, there is certainly intense mental activity. Absolutely. That is why we enjoy music so much. But the interesting thing is that it's very hard to pin down what it is.

*OLSHER:* Well, this is why I like the idea of anticipation as the essence of musical language because music does play on our expectations and can either defy them or satisfy them and we know that dopamine is released through this expectation and anticipation.

*PINKER:* I completely agree that the motivational system driven by dopamine might be what music is tapping that gives music such a pleasurable quality.

*OLSHER:* Now often researchers will say then if that dopamine system is being tapped that is evidence that a biological drive is at play. That there is an evolutionary purpose.

*PINKER:* No, that is exactly backwards. You snort cocaine. You stick heroin into your veins. That engages the dopamine system and that's precisely not an adaptation. Certainly the motivational system driven by dopamine is an adaptation. It makes us seek food and water and sex and partners and stimulation. Once we have that system then there are backdoors into it. There are ways of 'picking the locks' and stimulating it by other means and I suspect that is what music is doing.

******


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

There was a pretty heated discussion about this very "controversial" topic in another thread, I hope the people that misunderstood or misinterpreted Pinker's single sentence "sound byte" would see this thread for a fuller context and background. *Nothing *about what Pinker says is controversial. The problem that usually follows is that people argue over it on two completely different pages. People bring up how it's useful to them and music has made a big difference in their lives, etc. etc. I get that and I agree with all of that but that's not even remotely addressing what Pinker is talking about. He's speaking strictly about music not mattering from an _evolutionary, gene-altering standpoint_. In that regard only, music is "pointless". What's the big deal? People seem to misguidedly take that as a personal affront to them and how music is important in their lives.

The same word in different contexts can have vastly different meanings. That's the case here, Pinker's usage of the word "pointless/meaningless" is different from what the everyday usage of the word "pointless/meaningless" connotes. A prime example of this is "theory", a theory in science is much different than how we use it on a daily basis.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Oh sorry, I didn't know. Time to throw out my Tchaikovsky 6, Mahler 6 and 9, Haydn's Seven Last Words and all my Shostakovich and Pettersson.

Whoops! I have to run after the garbage truck! Forgot to dump my six performances of Mendelssohn's f minor quartet! HEY WAIT!!!!

There! Done! Sorry. I didn't know.

Who could argue with a Harvard Professor?


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

hpowders said:


> Oh sorry, I didn't know. Time to throw out my Tchaikovsky 6, Mahler 6 and 9, Haydn's 7 Last Words and all my Shostakovich.


He is just reminding us that music makes its appeal solely in terms of pleasure... His point is that we need to take the entire musical enterprise, with its grandiose ideas about itself, down a notch.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

Xavier said:


> He is just reminding us that music makes its appeal solely in terms of pleasure... *His point is that we need to take the entire musical enterprise, with its grandiose ideas about itself, down a notch.*


Haha, what? How did you draw that from what he said?

He first says this:

_Yes, people think sentimentally about music, they don't think rigorously about it. And they want it not to be insulted or dissed. They want it to be elevated and esteemed. And so it seemed kind of disrespectful to music. You know I think there is nothing wrong with cheesecake. And I think there is nothing wrong with the idea that we listen to music because it gives us pleasure. But somehow this sticks in the craw of a lot of people who study music._

More importantly, he goes on to say this in the next paragraph, why would you ignore this part?

_Many things that are evolutionary adaptations are by no means desirable like genocide. Quite easily see why this could serve an evolutionary purpose. And many things that are among the things we value most in life are clearly not evolutionary adaptations like reading which only developed quite recently in human history and certainly is not wired into our genome. People think of evolutionary adaptations as what is closest to the human essence, what we are most proud of as a species, and that's just a mistake._

It's quite explicit in what he says, what we value doesn't necessarily mean it isn't "pointless" from an evolutionary standpoint. He is by no means belittling what we value. What we value is meaningful to us and he acknowledges that. I repeat, "meaningful to us" is _different _than "meaningful to evolution"?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Xavier said:


> He is just reminding us that music makes its appeal solely in terms of pleasure... His point is that we need to take the entire musical enterprise, with its grandiose ideas about itself, down a notch.


I got into it because it stimulated me in profound ways. I never thought of it as a "pleasure machine".


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

*Screed attacking Pinker and Harvard University deleted as a result of actually having read the interview, which seems boring and not at all inflammatory*


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## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

It seems to me that only in a Puritan-founded country like America could the assertion that music exists only for our pleasure provoke defensive reactions. As if it needed some greater justification!

I imagine that any French person presented with the same assertion would shrug, "Bien sur."


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Blan,



Blancrocher said:


> *Screed attacking Pinker and Harvard University deleted as a result of actually having read the interview, which seems boring and not at all inflammatory*


Let me repeat: I think his point is that we need to take the entire musical enterprise, with its grandiose ideas about itself, down a notch.

And here is a passage from his book:



> "As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless. It shows no signs of design for attaining a goal such as long life, grandchildren, or *accurate perception and prediction of the world*. Music appears to be a pure pleasure technology, a cocktail of drugs that we ingest through the ear to stimulate a mass of pleasure circuits at once. Compared with vision, language, social reasoning, and physical know-how, music could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged"


Have you ever read pompous men like Theodor Adorno who argued fiercely for the human and social importance of music?

It's embarrassing.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

hpowders,



hpowders said:


> I got into it because it stimulated me in profound ways. I never thought of it as a "pleasure machine".


For me, the most telling part was this...



> *PINKER:* No, that is exactly backwards. You snort cocaine. You stick heroin into your veins. That engages the dopamine system and that's precisely not an adaptation. Certainly the motivational system driven by dopamine is an adaptation. It makes us seek food and water and sex and partners and stimulation. Once we have that system then there are backdoors into it. There are ways of 'picking the locks' and stimulating it by other means and I suspect that is what music is doing.


-------------

All music does is stimulate dopamine, like drugs do. By that comparison he has a valid point.

I was thinking of it this way... Cheesecake isn't insulting, as a good chef makes wonderful cheesecake, and a composer may be thought of as a chef. It's only an analogy. But he's correct about how many music lovers respond to their favorite pieces, with dopamine being produced in higher quantity.

Music itself has evolved, but it's not an integral piece of human existence (despite what many may like to believe), it is not a part of humanity.... it's a *tool* constructed by humanity, but not part of our genome, so cannot be considered as part of our evolutionary process. Besides, it's not pleasure that causes us to evolve, but friction and dire circumstances that force adaptation and genetic features that would normally be disregarded to come to the fore when they enhance survival probability.

I adore music. But to think of it as affecting our evolutionary process is like suggesting that a hammer does the same just because the user loves constructing things out of wood. And if his love for carpentry is strong enough, then his dopamine levels would also rise. So, I believe Pinker's point is perfectly valid.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

Xavier said:


> Let me repeat: I think his point is that we need to take the entire musical enterprise, with its grandiose ideas about itself, down a notch.
> 
> And here is a passage from his book:
> 
> ...


You're taking something that is not at all controversial and inflammatory (when read in the proper context) and twisting it into something that actually _is_ controversial and inflammatory. I think your thread would have been better served had you just told us your personal opinions about how _"the entire musical enterprise, with its grandiose ideas about itself_" needs to be taken "_down a notch._" rather than attribute that to Pinker's words... Pinker's words do not validate your statements about musical enterprises needing to be dropped down a peg.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

No offense taken. We don't _need_ music to survive, like we don't need movies or art or board games.

Though I am kind of surprised, I thought whistling and "singing" were used by early humans to know their locations during a hunt, or running away from prey


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Blancrocher said:


> *Screed attacking Pinker and Harvard University deleted as a result of actually having read the interview, which seems boring and not at all inflammatory*


I think I could use an anti-inflammatory agent about now....like an aspirin....with some full-bodied Greek white wine as a chaser.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

"Music Exists Only for Pleasure" implies the audience. Music is also a technical, even scientific pursuit. Music is a "model" of gesture and thought and emotion, and as such, it is the "language of experience," like poetry. To say that music is "non-essential" might be true in a very literal sense, as if all Man needed were food and shelter. We all know there's more to life than that.

To say this also implies that music is not "serious," and I'm sure many would be offended if we put religion and philosophy in the same "non-essential" category.

I reaaly can't take such a premise seriously. The moment I saw the thread title, I was daunting.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> To say that music is "non-essential" might be true in a very literal sense


That's just it, though. That *is* all Pinker is trying to say, it doesn't need to be taken further than that because that would bring the discussion into a new topic for a different discussion/thread.

No need to be offended over something that was never said in the first place.
Essential (in the everyday connotation) ≠ Essential to Evolution


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

DiesIraeVIX said:


> That's just it, though. That *is* all Pinker is trying to say, it doesn't need to be taken further than that because that would bring the discussion into a new topic for a different discussion/thread.
> 
> No need to be offended over something that was never said in the first place.
> Essential (in the everyday connotation) ≠ Essential to Evolution


Well, then, I'd rather eat a ham sandwich than have to listen to Pinker talk.










 Essential to Man's survival: The Ham Sandwich


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

hpowders said:


> Who could argue with a Harvard Professor?


I imagine there are a few takers out of the same ranks from Princeton or Yale.

Me, I'm wondering what monkeys thought that music would be due to a genome 

[_Coming up next framed in the same debate: Art, Literature, and Science._]


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

Use of 'music' is common in war going back to ancient times. Often as a communication aid in battle it would enable one side to beat another and the winning side would disseminate it's gene pool among the defeated with a bit of rape and pillage.
A bit too simple in my mind to simply look at music as a vehicle for pleasure, and it has certainly had an effect on human evolution when used as a tool to beat the other guy


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> "Music Exists Only for Pleasure" implies the audience.


When has there ever not been an audience for any piece of music?



millionrainbows said:


> Music is also a technical, even scientific pursuit.


No. When was the last time you tested a musical work to determine if it were wrong?



millionrainbows said:


> To say this also implies that music is not "serious," and I'm sure many would be offended if we put religion and philosophy in the same "non-essential" category.


Pinker's statement has nothing whatsoever to do with whether music is serious. He would make the same evolutionary argument about philosophy, science, other art, and his life's work - linguistics and evolutionary psychology.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Haydn man said:


> Use of 'music' is common in war going back to ancient times. Often as a communication aid in battle it would enable one side to beat another and the winning side would disseminate it's gene pool among the defeated with a bit of rape and pillage.
> A bit too simple in my mind to simply look at music as a vehicle for pleasure, and it has certainly had an effect on human evolution when used as a tool to beat the other guy


Yes indeed. I've read that in Biblical times, one army would often drive the other from the battlefield, screaming, by playing atonal music. In fact, this is how serialism developed. Can't remember exactly where I read that right now...


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Yes indeed. I've read that in Biblical times, one army would often drive the other from the battlefield, screaming, by playing atonal music. In fact, this is how serialism developed. Can't remember exactly where I read that right now...


The old testament, no doubt.

Or perhaps you've run across that grad dissertation / monograph, online, _The atonal ululations of the neolithic Semitic desert tribes of the ancient middle east; how they destroyed tonality and why you should care._


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Ladies and gentlemen, I've just come to my senses.... What was I thinking this morning when I started this thread? 

Surely the concept of 'pleasure' is an oversimplification. Pleasure takes many forms and significantly impacts related feelings and thoughts. Altogether I'd surely rate 'pleasure' as a highly integral and complex aspect of conscious existence. For one example it would be difficult to deny that music plays a large role in terms of catharsis, which is important not just for pleasure but for overall psychological health.

Apologies.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> To say that music is "non-essential" might be true in a very literal sense, as if all Man needed were food and shelter. We all know there's more to life than that.


From an evolutionary perspective, the main thing in life is not to survive but to reproduce. My personal pet suspicion is that much of what the brain can do evolved as a kind of mental peacock tail, to attract potential mates.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

brianvds said:


> From an evolutionary perspective, the main thing in life is not to survive but to reproduce. My personal pet suspicion is that much of what the brain can do evolved as a kind of mental peacock tail, to attract potential mates.


Probably right there. Stone-age groupies, aching to get impregnated by talented log-players? Who knew?


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## Posie (Aug 18, 2013)

Surely, Steven Pinker has heard of Art/Music Therapy.

There have been chefs who have devoted many hours to developing the perfect cheesecake, so that is not a strong argument. Even if it were true that music is only for pleasure, does that mean it that it is not worth the effort?


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## Guest (Aug 28, 2014)

Xavier said:


> Last week cognitive scientist and Harvard professor Steven Pinker tweeted a podcast where he recently discussed the evolutionary significance of music with Dean Olsher.
> 
> http://trbq.org/topics/music/
> 
> Here is the transcript:


Here is an _incomplete _transcript. Listen to the podcast and you'll hear, for example, one of the key pieces of Pinker's thinking hasn't been transcripted - the connection between language and music - as well as references to dancing cockatiels and how the French don't 'own' pop music.

Aside from that, nothing controversial here.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Probably right there. Stone-age groupies, aching to get impregnated by talented log-players? Who knew?


Or whoever would stand out in some way, whether it be by singing, tapping rhythms, drawing or painting well, telling clever stories, being creative with jewelry or other personal adornments, or whatever.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

marinasabina said:


> Surely, Steven Pinker has heard of Art/Music Therapy.
> 
> There have been chefs who have devoted many hours to developing the perfect cheesecake, so that is not a strong argument. Even if it were true that music is only for pleasure, does that mean it that it is not worth the effort?


Not at all. For one thing, Pinker is emphatically not making some sort of moral argument, or dismissing the arts as useless life pursuits. For another, who says "mere" pleasure is pointless? I cannot think of all that many people who would want to live at all if they could no longer derive any pleasure from anything.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Music exists mainly for pleasure today. That's why most people approach it.


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