Maybe of interest for some of you.
Roberto (Casati) reviewed Denis Dutton’s book, The Art Instict, showing his perplexities about this project. Here the link to the review. The author of the book posted a long reply (and see also the interesting comments).
All this on the interesting blog edited by people from the LSE and the Institut Nicod on Cognition and Culture.
According to Roberto (I am quoting from his review):
“The importance of Denis Dutton’s book lies in its frank endorsement of two very extreme and controversial theses. The theses are, first, that art is an adaptive cultural phenomenon, one that is rooted in an art instinct, and, second, that this rooting has not only, as one may expect, an explanatory import as to how artworks be or look like, but also normative import as to how artworks should be or look like. The boldness of the two claims is pretty clear.
…
Let me confess a general sympathy for an evolutionary approach to culture in general and to art in particular. I take it for likely that if there is a prospect of naturalizing culture, this will be in the framework of a theory of evolution. However, there are many nuances to be discussed and options to be assessed. I think there are various reasons to resist both of the book’s claims on the basis of evidence that contrasts with the evidence alleged in Dutton’s book, or reinterprets the latter differently.”
Diagram Based Reasoning 