1. Paleoanthropsychobiological refers to a perspective or view of art that is is historical, societal, psychological/emotional, and a genetic inherited trait of the human species. Art can be all of these things together. This term was created by the author of the assigned text, Ellen Dissanayake.
2. Dissanayake means by the phrase “making special” that every human has a genetic evolutionary personality trait to want to make things that they care about and have “strong personal significance” special. What she means by special is something extraordinary and not usual or every day. I think the fact that diamonds are valued is similar to this concept. Diamonds are shiny and pretty and they were made special because they are rare. Things can be more special when they are rare and unusual.
3. One theory of art is that is for religious purposes: “In medieval times, the arts were in the service of religion…but were not regarded ‘aesthetically,’ if this means separately from their revelation of the Divine. Another theory she brings up is modernism in the 18th century where “a startling and influential idea took hold that, like the concept of ‘art,’ was unprecedented. This was that there is a special frame of mind for appreciating works of art — a ‘disinterested’ attitude that is separate from one’s own personal interest in the object, its utility, or its social or religious ramifications” (Dissanayake, 3). Another theory is postmodernism which is what we think of today is “rather than assuming that art reflects a unique and privelaged kind of knowledge, postmodernists point out that any ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ is only a point of view — a ‘representation’ that comes to us mediated and conditioned by our language, our social institutions, the assumptions that characterize individuals as members of a nation, a race, a gender, a class, a profession, a religious body, a particular historical period” (Dissanayake, 5).

What makes art valuable, good, or beautiful? Is it based on the message it portrays or based on a set of standards that society put in place that says if art is good or bad? The reading states that in the nineteenth century, “aspiring artists…learned what standards were acceptable from newly-established national academies and collections in national museums…Professional critics who wrote for newspapers and newly-established magazines of art contributed to the new milieu” (Dissanayake, 3). By this time, how good artwork was became whether or not the piece contained certain techniques and standards that were put into place by these national art academies. I feel that a lot of people would agree with me that not everyone would agree with this. Many people would say that how “good” artwork is depends on an individual’s tastes, likes and dislikes. A piece of artwork can be very valuable because it has all of the proper techniques that the art institute requires, but it may not necessarily be considered good by a lot of people because “never in question was the ‘high’ art assumption that works of art – no matter how strange they looked or unskilled they seemed to be – were conduits of transcendent meaning” (Dissanayake, 4). Although the value of art may depend on a person’s taste, it is important for everyone to appreciate artwork. The reading says that, “’disinterest’ implied that viewers could appreciate any art, even the artwork of eras or cultures far removed from their own, whether or not they understood the meaning the works had for the people who made and used them. In this sense, art was ‘univeral’ (Dissanayake, 4). I do agree that it is important to appreciate artwork, but looking at it with disinterest may not be the right approach because in order to appreciate artwork one would need to understand the context, eras, cultures, and meaning that the artist was trying to portray.