杏吧原创

IT IS an exciting time for pleasure research. Many disciplines now recognise that pleasure is at the heart of human nature. The so-called fundamental pleasures are linked to the evolutionary imperatives of survival and reproduction, and can be elicited by food, sex and social interactions. We know more about the brain networks mediating pleasure, and this offers new strategies for remedying and stalling their breakdown in addiction, depression and other mental illnesses.

acknowledges the importance of fundamental pleasures, but ignores much of existing research. He focuses instead on higher pleasures, such as paintings and stories. For Bloom, the pleasure we get from these is not primarily linked to their appearance but 鈥渋s grounded in our beliefs about the deeper nature or essence of a given thing鈥�.

Bloom is a cognitive developmental psychologist who, in a series of elegant experiments, has shown that children appear to believe from an early age that things have invisible essences. We are, in his words, 鈥渘atural-born essentialists鈥�: we attribute to animals, artefacts and people hidden natures, histories and identities. That is why someone was willing to pay nearly $50,000 for a tape measure owned by John F. Kennedy, or why most people cringe at the idea of wearing a serial killer鈥檚 sweater.

In How Pleasure Works, Bloom combines his essentialist perspective with evolutionary psychology to address the apparent evolutionary conundrum of how we get pleasure from activities and objects ranging from cannibalism to celebrity memorabilia to abstract art. These don鈥檛 directly confer survival benefits to our species, yet continue to provide a source of pleasure.

鈥淐annibalism, celebrity memorabilia and abstract art seem to be evolutionary conundrums鈥�

Bloom鈥檚 contention is that 鈥渢he pleasure humans get from these activities is substantially different from that of other creatures鈥�. Yet elsewhere he states that 鈥渉umans start off with a fixed list of pleasures and we can鈥檛 add to that list鈥�. Thus higher pleasures work by utilising already available fundamental pleasures. For Bloom鈥檚 contention to hold, there have to be species-specific differences in fundamental pleasure networks.

This is not well supported by current brain research, which shows fundamental pleasure networks across mammalian brains to be remarkably similar. Other species also have curious pleasure behaviours, with cannibalism, for example, found throughout the animal kingdom. And while monkeys may not have celebrities as such, they have been shown to be willing to pay good money (or fruit juice) to watch images of dominant males.

Art, on the other hand, appears uniquely human and it remains an exciting puzzle why it gives us so much joy. Bloom contends that 鈥渕uch of the pleasure we get from art is rooted in an appreciation underlying its creation. This is its essence.鈥�

While this helps him explain why someone might part with good money for abstract art, or why that person would be upset to find out their painting is a forgery, it is less obvious how music fits in. Some evolutionary psychologists choose to ignore this important problem. Steven Pinker stated that music 鈥渃ould vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged鈥�.

Bloom tries his best to use his evolutionary essentialist scheme to explain musical pleasure, but it is not convincing. The pleasure of music is not just linked to its creation: music speaks directly to our emotions by playing with anticipation. How Pleasure Works contributes interesting new angles to our understanding of pleasure, but we have yet to understand just how it works.