Musical Quarks: The meaning of music comes from games, not evolution.

Geoffrey Hamilton

June 15, 2002

"Why is there music?" This is the question which began a recent Quirks and Quarks episode on CBC Radio. In it several points were made about how the answer must be a "guessing game" and how evolution explains music only through "speculation".

In response, I will dare to speculate that this typically strained use of evolutionary theory to explain everything, including music, is the by-product of an impoverished scientific repertoire. Meaning, if you only allow yourself to think within the evolution box, and only breed the false dichotomy of evolution vs. creationism, you may fail to see alternatives. In the case of music the alternative I mean is the game gene theory. Music is, according to the game gene theory, rightly seen as a game and the why is answered in its ability to supply one more kind of rewarding meaning to an existence where no meaning is inherent.

Several attributes within music show its kinship to other activities which are games, and to the shortcuts we call drugs. Drugs are an attempt to circumvent the need to play games in order to directly stimulate dopamine in the brain. Eating, sex, winning at sports, and not surprisingly, music can trigger the same pleasure centres of the brain.

Regarding all these methods for seeking pleasure, from music to food, it was interesting that this CBC program failed to make note of the fact that none of these pleasurable activities directly cause the pleasures we are seeking. We know this empirically because, for example, when we are given food we don't like, or too much of the food we love, there is no pleasure - or if we have sex involuntarily or under stress, there is no pleasure - or if we are forced to listen to music which we are bored with, there is no pleasure. Even drugs fail eventually. These activities need other components to be pleasurable (notably our own goals).

As these activities are not the cause of pleasures in themselves, and as all these activities when displeasurable can still be considered beneficial and adaptive in every way according to evolutionary theory, then music too cannot successfully be regarded as the cause of pleasure in evolutionary terms.

Additionally, since all these, and many more activates, do the same thing with the same chemicals in the same area of the brain, music fails to be significant in terms of evolutionary adaptation since destructive drugs have the same features as the less harmful activities. And, if they all cause the same reactions, there is no reason to vary your activities at all, since one is chemically the same as another. Varying one's activities can serve no function in any evolutionary theory.

If we use the sexual selection ideas to justify the varying of the activities and say that music was created as a by-product of a sexual selection processes, that music's relevance to survival is explained that way, I would posit that a sexy behavior or attribute used during courtship is not about sex or reproduction or adaptation, it is about itself. Any courtship traits passed on due to these rituals are not about adaptability to environment, but about games, about themselves and about the need for meaning.

Significantly, most of these irrelevant traits are made use of in non-sexual contexts and give meaning there too. If they get passed on sexually it enhances the game playing qualities in these new beings, only incidentally may it help survival.

Sexual selection evolutionists pretend that the better singer or costume must indicate to the selector that the selectee has a better chance at survival and so it is a round about way to make a survival of the fittest argument. Not only do they not have evidence and anthropomorphize themselves into the brain of their subject species and assume a survival motive, but the best singer may be missing legs, or have Parkinson's disease or any number of other irrelevant factors which singing will not give away. Think of the smooth talking rock star wanabee who has sex with untold numbers of women even though he's ugly, stupid, worthless and poor. Singing is about nothing, but gets you somewhere.

Music does not require any immediate knowledge or preparation, it can be played without interfering in other games and it improves its meaning-giving properties with some repetition. Music can be a thing in itself, unrelated and disconnected to reason and linguistic meaning. It is possible that music is a reliable source of meaning when intelligence becomes harmful to the game player's disposition. As such it is less assailable to attack from the forces of reason, and reason used in strict accordance with the evidence given by the world only gives someone a distinct lack of an absolute reason for existence.

If evolution could explain music it would need to prove it is essential to survival, or that it is related directly to survival, or it would need to be definable within a limited context in order to cause these effects. As it is, evolution can do none of these things. To 'evolution' music is peripheral and it's effects are simply inconsistent.

Once again evolution starves its followers of nourishment. Music never needs to be employed for humanity to feel the pleasure of music. It is the same pleasure which sex, food and drugs gives us only the meaning becomes different. Music is completely irrelevant to evolutionary theory except that it exists and evolution doesn't.

When biologists write papers they are expected to conclude with a tie-in to evolutionary theory. They are expected to push evolution and only the conventional brand at that. It is like a salesman told to push a slow moving item in the showroom. The result is the frequent use of after-sale patches like sexual selection.

To the game gene theory music is not an anomaly, but a novel part of the same picture. Life continues to exist because, however one does it, one plays the games that are available in order to create meaning, which in turn creates the motive to survive when there is no need to. The use of the same brain chemicals for all these varying activities is easily explained because they are all games.

GRH