evolutionary psychology

i've done a little work in a related direction you can find
a brief description at the web site:

http://www.mis.atr.co.jp/~mlyons/vitalsigns.html

so there are body signals which are more straightforward to use which can be useful in this regard.

but i very much like the mis-appropriation here which seems to be more open ended and affirms that other forms of evolution are possible.

I'm not sure. I remember having seen some very interesting prediction to that effect but I don't remember where exactly at the moment.
Maybe it was
http://www.geocities.com/picturesref/scanning.jpgsomewhere on this page or maybe not... i'll search and get back here with the info when i'll get the time.

this is not to mention the fact that interpretation of the fMRI signal is still consdired to be controversial. there were some good review articles in nature neuroscience magazine last year on that. some feel that the signal doesn't really give us any useful picture of what the brain is actually doing.

there is a still more fundament

there's also the question of safety. you have to stick your head into a very huge rf electromagnetic field. not as bad as radioactive imaging methods, but we're still not sure whether or not it is completely safe. when i meet people who do fMRI i always ask them: do you think this technique is truly 100% safe and if i press them enough the answer i get is "we don't really know for sure yet what the long term effects are".

still it is definitely

meant to say that there are some fundamental questions about how to interpret this information - for example - do we really expect to understand complex human behaviour just by looking at brain activity and not the rest of the body as well as the environment in which the behaviour occurs.

still fMRI is definitely a fascinating technique.

my guess is that evolutionary thinking (reproductive fitness etc...) will lead one to something like the "peak shift hypothesis" which has been discussed by ramachandran & hirstein recently in the journal of conciousness studies. the basic idea is that aesthetic stimuli give sensory circuits particularly effective stimuli.

ramachandran claims to have been inspired by some ancient indian ideas about art, in particular the concept of rasa (roughly essence). by focusing on the rasa and exagerating (as for example through caricature) one creates a stimulus that has a strong effect on the nervous system. ramachandran's paper is worth looking up if you have a good library nearby, not only is the argument clearly and entertainingly presented but it is filled with pictures of classic indian nude statues.

seriously, though i find darwinian explanations of aesthetics circular and not very satisfying. i'm much more intrigued by the idea that the aesthetic strikes a special balance between order and disorder. this involves 'gestalt' processes. it is well discussed in r. arhneim's essay "entropy and art". if you are really interested in aesthetics i would highly recommend having a look at any and all of arnheim's books.

Quite possibly in the same (or similar) fashion that our drive to hunt and kill was transferred to gambling, entrepreneurship, video games and action films?

The most interesting aspect of evolutionary psychology to me is addiction. Does anybody else realize that addictions are one of the founding aspects of civilization e.g. whole societies are tied together by their drug of choice? Having an addictive personality is such a preponderant characteristic amongst humans (and one with such potentially dangerous consequences re: reproduction & health) one almost has to conclude that somewhere along the line (possibly quite a long time ago, but more likely even in the present day) having addictions was/is an evolutionary ADVANTAGE? WTF.

So much fun.

papaver somniferum certainly benefited from the fact that it secrets resin containing molecules very similar to certain human neurotransmiters.

but it would take a much longer stretch to see how addiction to these substances is in anyway beneficial to humans.

still many of these evolutionary arguments are somehow not very satisfying.

for example, how would one argue for the evolutionary advantage of nuclear weapons technology?

there is no need to shout. do you think humanity finished evolving? we are still a very young specie who just got sentient before reaching the point of biological perfection... or maybe sentience is part of the process of our evolution that will lead us to this

...

But how did our aeshetic drive re:reproduction get transferred to flowers, mountains vistas, etc?

the ae drive was born from the conjunction of a multiplicity of factors, it's anchoring in geneticis is just one of them.

the ae drive is an activity of discernment.
I think it is related to the necessity pay attention to the world around for our survival but it is different of it in the sense that ae activity is emotionally charged: there is satisfaction that is taken to this cognitive activity.
It is the attention that is satisfying, not necesairly it's object (who may cause displeasure or pleasure, evoke sadness etc).
looking at the animal world it is not a big stretch to think it was also related to the process of selecting a sexual partner. There is also an aspect of cultural transmission (even present in the animal world; within a same specie, bling-bling making craft to impress females diverging depending on their region).
etc.

it's not the (amateur)opus answer i first thought i'd write but hey, hope it was as fun for you as it was for me.

this is also fertile ground for evolutionary rationalizations as attentional processes involved both in reproduction and hunting & gathering.

http://www.unesco.org/courier/1999_06/photoshr/40.jpg

the artist creates a "peak shift" in the response of some neural circuit.

A prime example of this is a common moth. At night moths swarm around porch lights, banging into them repeatedly. This is a biological impulse the moth has to follow moonlight for mating (or something or other, I can't remember exactly). This is a behavior that was evolved over quite some time. But, the environmental evolution hasn't kept pace with the moth's perceptual evolution. Suddenly the environment has porch lights and the moth's perceptual evolution can't keep up.

Same thing with human beings and sugar. Sugar tastes sweet to us, because in our biological and perceptual evolution it made sense. Sugars were in short supply and they provided high dietary energy that was beneficial. Now the environment has changed and sugar is available everywhere in the supermarket. Our perceptual evolution can't make corrections fast enough. All the sweets are making people obese, giving them diabetes, ruining teeth, and is generally harmful. Sugar addiction isn't advantageous anymore.

The rift between these different types of evolution cause weird things to happen.

any creationists in your class? do you hassle you?

small correction:
(on the ae drive)"it is the attention itself that is satisfying, not necessairly the judgment on it's object (who may cause displeasure or pleasure, evoke sadness etc)."
would be closer to what I had in mind.