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Old 11-20-2004, 09:21 AM   #8 (permalink)
CSflim
Sky Piercer
 
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Location: Ireland
Well certainly you are using the hardware provided to you by your genes. The real question is, why does this hardware do as it does?
Is it an adaption, like most of our other features? What 'survival value' could an appreciation of beauty have?
If it is not an adaption, then where did it come from? Is it a spandrel?
How did that arise. (Despite what some people appear to think, shouting 'spandrel!' and leaving it at that is not a sufficient explaination!)
Are we barking up a wrong tree looking at it from an 'evolutionary psychology' point of view? Should we be lookign at nurture and environment? Is beauty merely "socially defined"?

These are big questions, and I certainly don't claim to have the answers, but I don't expect a simple all-in-one answer.

Perhaps at a first approximation, my answer might be "all of the above".
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