Evolutionary psychologists explain human motivation in the same ways that evolutionary biologists explain human anatomy and physiology, but it goes much further.
Evolutionary biologists explain human anatomy in terms of adaptive physical structures that became progressively more complex over time. Evolutionary psychologists explain motivation and emotion in terms of adaptive mental structures that have become progressively more complex over time. Every human motivation and emotion exists because it served an adaptive function that increased the chances of survival and reproduction.
Love, art, faith, sacrifice, determination, envy, anger, and more,from a naturalistic psychology perspective, are not transcendent,supernatural, or even special. They are illusions – ways of understanding and interpreting innate patterns of behaviors and mental processes that themselves are no more than biochemical processes which exist solely to help us pass along our genes to the next generation.
I think you're mistaken. They are two of those things (transcendent and special) and one more... interesting subjects of inquiry that can occupy a happy lifetime with their contemplation. Every day, science brings us new understandings of how we got to be the way we are - for better and for worse. I have a deep and abiding love for poetry, music, sunsets, sunrises, and art of many kinds. And for people. Looking behind the curtain to see how it came to be this way is yet another (and boundless) source of enjoyment.
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