Paul Bloom: Pleasure is a by-product

Many significant human pleasures are universal," Bloom writes. "But they are not biological adaptations. They are byproducts of mental systems that have evolved for other purposes." Evolutionary psychologists like Bloom are fond of explaining perplexing psychological attributes this way. These traits emerged, the argument goes, as accidental accompaniments to other traits that help us survive and reproduce.

Perhaps this is the adverse of depression as a spandrel.

Posted via email from David Dobbs's Somatic Marker

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