Art and Adaptability

Gregory F. Tague, Ph.D. (1998), New York University, is Professor of English and founder and senior developer of The Evolutionary Studies Collaborative at St. Francis College, N.Y. Recent, relevant books include Evolution and Human Culture (Brill|Rodopi, 2016) and Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness (Rodopi, 2014).

Acknowledgements
Simplified Radiations of Select Primate Species
Simplified Radiations of Select Hominin Species
The Long Pleistocene
Introduction: Setting Boundaries
1 Intelligence: Communication and Theory of Mind
 Great Ape Intelligence and Communication
 Symbolic Communication and Consciousness
 Inter-Subjectivity and Evolution
 Great Ape Theory of Mind
 Human Theory of Mind
 Artificial Intelligence
 The Anthropocentric Attitude
 Chapter One Dovetail
2 Culture: The Adapted Mind
 Human Network: Scope and Scale
 Symbolic Culture
 Culture and the Adapted Mind
 Gene/Culture Co-Evolution
 Culture and Social Selection
 Culture and Epigenetics
 Mind Sharing
 Chapter Two Dovetail
3 Adaptive Functions: Selection and the Human Psyche
 Adaptation and Natural Selection Defined
 Phenomenal Consciousness
 Adaptive Problems and Questions
 Darwin and Natural Selection
 Darwin and Sexual Selection
 Selection and Tools
 Cognition, Cooperation, and Extended Evolution
 Making Special
 Pleistocene Landscape Preferences
 Can We Define Art?
 Neanderthals and Art
 Cave Painting and Superstition
 Art and Altered States of Consciousness
 Cave Art and Images
 Art and the Human Psyche
 Beauty, the Brain, and the Body
 Chapter Three Dovetail
4 Objections: Philosophy and Byproducts
 Philosophy and Art
 Pinker’s Cheesecake for the Mind
 An Art Instinct?
 Corrective to Art as Sexual Selection
 Humanology
 Social Selection Over Sexual Selection?
 The Biology of Art as Speculative?
 Two Hypotheses
 Explanatory Dilemma
 Chapter Four Dovetail
5 Neurobiology and Cognition: Consciousness and Representation
 Artistic Behavior and the Social Brain
 The Subject of Aesthetics
 Orienting Creative Cognition
 Art, Ambiguity, and Making Meaning
 Representation and Metarepresentation
 Bodily and Cultural Consciousness
 Line or Color?
 Seeing Reality Abstractly
 Knowledge, Beauty, and Neutrality
 From Discontinuity to Essence
 Brain Sight and Insight
 Beauty and Cognitive Emotions
 Ritual Art
 Chapter Five Dovetail
Conclusion: The Arts and Sciences
Bibliography
Index