On 2014 Sep 21, Bernard Baars commented:

Dear Leonard, --- I admire your range of interesting papers on fundamental questions.

In regard to esthetic pleasure and behavior, I would call your attention to a sizable evolutionary anthropology literature on the cost of social display of primary and secondary sexual signals --- the classical case being the male peacock.

Dan Zahavi called this the Handicap Principle in 1975, and the idea is essentially that sexual selection for mating with the fittest available other-gender mates is so important as an evolutionary driver (only comparable to individual survival itself) that hominins like us, and all of our ancestors among primates, mammals and vertebrates, dedicated a great percentage of biological resources to it. The male peacock posing for sexual selection (by the well-camouflaged females) is endangering his life by attracting predators (by blatant visual, auditory, and presumably olfactory signaling.) The female peahen takes no such chances. Thus the male handicaps himself to look beautiful, and interestingly, humans have used peacock feathers historically to decorate themselves as well.

It is precisely the apparently inutility of esthetic enjoyment that is evolutionarily important, along the lines of Thorstein Veblen's "conspicuous consumption." Biologically, the male peacock is signaling "looking how strong and fertile I am!!!" I can even afford to waste immense personal risk of predation, great metabolic energy, attacks from competing males in heat, the strength to shiver my tail feathers and preen for hours, simply to attract the best female! What healthy offspring we shall have! The easy analogy would be to men who buy muscle cars or Cadillacs when they could drive a mini-car instead. Among recent entertainment stars, Kim Kardashian and her many imitators among women spending hugely on breast and buttocks enlargements imitates varieties of H sapiens sapiens morphology among peoples who evolved large breasts, steatopigous buttocks, and large stomachs in evolutionarily recent times. Fat storage is a great advantage in certain climates (Siberian-descended Inuits and Amerindians are a good example), but encounter handicaps to survival in the face of massive droughts and famine conditions. Since human ancestors are known to have encountered massive drought conditions in the desertification of the Sahara in the millennia prior to the "African Exodus," when the Hss population is thought to have collapsed to 5,000 individuals in North East Africa, famine-adaptibility is plausibly a major Darwinian constraint on human survival.

(Note that the term "African Exodus" does not apply to African humans who escaped the desertification of the Sahara by migrating southwards, and who never left Africa. Nor does it apply to the peoples who remained sub-Saharan, such as plausibly the Khoi San of the Kalahari Desert. Khoi San body morphology is gracile rather than robust, as befits a desert-dwelling people, and their cultural and personal knowledge of semi-arid survival tactics is vast.)

Nicholas Wade has also pointed out the fact that tribal peoples very often perform frequent, vigorous and long-lasting community dancing, and universally harbor other-worldly religious beliefs, which are thought to enhance group harmony and therefore survival. (Mating in tribal peoples tends to obey strict kinship rules, either within the birth group, or between allied groups). The very wide distribution of these human cultural habits has been very well studied since the publication of Stephen Brown's Human Universals (1992) (also called Cultural Universals today).

In human evolution the earliest evidence for artificial body decoration comes from human-related diggings in South Africa of ancient colored clay deposits, thought to have been used for spectacular body decoration by men and women, especially during and after puberty. (At least 200KYA) Personal jewelry involving trading over sizable distances, such as seashells found far from their origins in North Africa, are also ancient. In more recent years mating-related body decoration, hair styles, special clothing, vigorous dancing, music-making, singing and use of instruments (!), seductive movements and gestures, open competition within genders, verbal facility, display of cooking and hunting skills, and an essentially unlimited number of novel attention-catching behaviors can be related to sexual display. Among the American Sioux the male warriors showed their physical size (often 6' or taller), and created new clothing fashions each year (while the women took a more modest role). "Counting coup" --- rushing into an enemy village, physically touching a fierce enemy warrior, and rushing out again to safety was a quantitative measure of masculine heroics. Precisely analogous behavior can be seen today in ever-changing female fashions, in male body building, and in military uniforms for men, including medals and honor ribbons displayed on the left chest, reflecting both combat experience, military skills, and rank in the male hierarchy. The bodily posture of "pride" is also on display (see palace guards throughout Europe, including the Kremlin in Russia). Mammalian positions of pride are anti-gravity postures (head back, body erect, goose-stepping high) which require great physical training, and which oppose the body posures of social defeat, depression and surrender (head down, bowing low, slow non-threatening approach to the victors, etc.) Notice that we instantly recognize those body postures in lions, horses, and humans --- the standard Napoleonic pride statue in European capitals is a proud-looking man on a horse, bearing a sword. The upward direction of the sword, spear or rifle in heroic sculptures may hark back in evolution to the upward-pointing position of the penis during courtship display in our primate relatives. In classical art this is highly visible in 19th century paintings of Napoleon on a white horse, surrounded by battle. The link between male heroics, female fashions, secondary and primary sexual signals, music and the arts is unavoidable in the art of the Romantic period in Europe.

Notice that this bio-anthropological hypothesis accounts for a number of features of esthetics you have raised in your interesting article.

On 2014 Sep 21, Bernard Baars commented:

Dear Leonard, --- I admire your range of interesting papers on fundamental questions.

In regard to esthetic pleasure and behavior, I would call your attention to a sizable evolutionary anthropology literature on the cost of social display of primary and secondary sexual signals --- the classical case being the male peacock.

Dan Zahavi called this the Handicap Principle in 1975, and the idea is essentially that sexual selection for mating with the fittest available other-gender mates is so important as an evolutionary driver (only comparable to individual survival itself) that hominins like us, and all of our ancestors among primates, mammals and vertebrates, dedicated a great percentage of biological resources to it. The male peacock posing for sexual selection (by the well-camouflaged females) is endangering his life by attracting predators (by blatant visual, auditory, and presumably olfactory signaling.) The female peahen takes no such chances. Thus the male handicaps himself to look beautiful, and interestingly, humans have used peacock feathers historically to decorate themselves as well.

It is precisely the apparently inutility of esthetic enjoyment that is evolutionarily important, along the lines of Thorstein Veblen's "conspicuous consumption." Biologically, the male peacock is signaling "looking how strong and fertile I am!!!" I can even afford to waste immense personal risk of predation, great metabolic energy, attacks from competing males in heat, the strength to shiver my tail feathers and preen for hours, simply to attract the best female! What healthy offspring we shall have! The easy analogy would be to men who buy muscle cars or Cadillacs when they could drive a mini-car instead. Among recent entertainment stars, Kim Kardashian and her many imitators among women spending hugely on breast and buttocks enlargements imitates varieties of H sapiens sapiens morphology among peoples who evolved large breasts, steatopigous buttocks, and large stomachs in evolutionarily recent times. Fat storage is a great advantage in certain climates (Siberian-descended Inuits and Amerindians are a good example), but encounter handicaps to survival in the face of massive droughts and famine conditions. Since human ancestors are known to have encountered massive drought conditions in the desertification of the Sahara in the millennia prior to the "African Exodus," when the Hss population is thought to have collapsed to 5,000 individuals in North East Africa, famine-adaptibility is plausibly a major Darwinian constraint on human survival.

(Note that the term "African Exodus" does not apply to African humans who escaped the desertification of the Sahara by migrating southwards, and who never left Africa. Nor does it apply to the peoples who remained sub-Saharan, such as plausibly the Khoi San of the Kalahari Desert. Khoi San body morphology is gracile rather than robust, as befits a desert-dwelling people, and their cultural and personal knowledge of semi-arid survival tactics is vast.)

Nicholas Wade has also pointed out the fact that tribal peoples very often perform frequent, vigorous and long-lasting community dancing, and universally harbor other-worldly religious beliefs, which are thought to enhance group harmony and therefore survival. (Mating in tribal peoples tends to obey strict kinship rules, either within the birth group, or between allied groups). The very wide distribution of these human cultural habits has been very well studied since the publication of Stephen Brown's Human Universals (1992) (also called Cultural Universals today).

In human evolution the earliest evidence for artificial body decoration comes from human-related diggings in South Africa of ancient colored clay deposits, thought to have been used for spectacular body decoration by men and women, especially during and after puberty. (At least 200KYA) Personal jewelry involving trading over sizable distances, such as seashells found far from their origins in North Africa, are also ancient. In more recent years mating-related body decoration, hair styles, special clothing, vigorous dancing, music-making, singing and use of instruments (!), seductive movements and gestures, open competition within genders, verbal facility, display of cooking and hunting skills, and an essentially unlimited number of novel attention-catching behaviors can be related to sexual display. Among the American Sioux the male warriors showed their physical size (often 6' or taller), and created new clothing fashions each year (while the women took a more modest role). "Counting coup" --- rushing into an enemy village, physically touching a fierce enemy warrior, and rushing out again to safety was a quantitative measure of masculine heroics. Precisely analogous behavior can be seen today in ever-changing female fashions, in male body building, and in military uniforms for men, including medals and honor ribbons displayed on the left chest, reflecting both combat experience, military skills, and rank in the male hierarchy. The bodily posture of "pride" is also on display (see palace guards throughout Europe, including the Kremlin in Russia). Mammalian positions of pride are anti-gravity postures (head back, body erect, goose-stepping high) which require great physical training, and which oppose the body posures of social defeat, depression and surrender (head down, bowing low, slow non-threatening approach to the victors, etc.) Notice that we instantly recognize those body postures in lions, horses, and humans --- the standard Napoleonic pride statue in European capitals is a proud-looking man on a horse, bearing a sword. The upward direction of the sword, spear or rifle in heroic sculptures may hark back in evolution to the upward-pointing position of the penis during courtship display in our primate relatives. In classical art this is highly visible in 19th century paintings of Napoleon on a white horse, surrounded by battle. The link between male heroics, female fashions, secondary and primary sexual signals, music and the arts is unavoidable in the art of the Romantic period in Europe.

Notice that this bio-anthropological hypothesis accounts for a number of features of esthetics you have raised in your interesting article.