The environment offers organisms certain constraints in which to operate. If an organism manages to procreate, then it has certain qualities that allow it to survive within the parameters set. Natural selection 101.

However, the nature of constraint seems to offer a varying amount of freedom within the constraint. So long as the minimum requirements to survive are met, then any additional qualities are purely icing on the cake.

This freedom can of course be limited by another constraint, most importantly that of scarcity. If space, nourishment, mates, etc are in a limited supply, then the satisfaction of these needs/desires is not guaranteed. From this initial constraint of scarcity comes the constraint of competition, and thus the cut-throat gladiator arena of life emerges.

However, life is not just one continuous desperate panic to escape death and get laid, at least not usually, or at least not when we scale up in intelligence.

Intelligence, or more specifically, reflective representation, would then be generally correlated to environmental manipulation, or the ability to change the environment (or yourself) to make your life easier. This ability offers organisms to refine the efficiency of their processes above and beyond the lower level of bare necessity. Can I sit down and program on a single small laptop, and thus get paid and survive? Sure. Can I do it better (defined as more efficient) with multiple monitors, and still get paid the same amount and survive? Yes. It's not necessary, but it allows me to minimize my effort and maximize my productivity.

Thus, there exist "pockets" of freedom, in which adaptations in organisms are not specifically derived from a need to survive, but instead derived from other concerns. These concerns may be derivative from a need to survive. But all this shows is that freedom can develop beyond the initial need to survive.

Because of this, I've been wondering how much evolutionary science can hope to explain in biological systems. In particular, I'm wondering about evolutionary psychology, which from what I have read in it tries to explain practically everything by appealing to the natural selection, or evolutionary "advantages". Religion, for example, is seen as evolutionary advantageous, and is somehow explained as a way of maximizing childbirth. Art and music, ditto.

But if we take into account these pockets of freedom, then we can see how certain adaptations are entirely causally inert in regards to survival. The structure keeping the organism has already been met - any extra fuel will thus be used in pursuit of goals outside of survival.

Of course, like said before, the existence of goals can be derivative from the need to survive, since goal processing would have been helpful in managing and implementing plans necessary for survival. This habit, then, is carried down from this initial need and "re-used" in processes outside of survival itself.

So, in one sense, it does seem correct to say that everything we have and do are due to natural selection - we wouldn't have these basic derivative processes without natural selection. But in another sense, this explanation is so broad as to become meaningless, and discounts the existence of freedoms that aren't focused on survival.

Therefore, appeals to evolution as an explanation for a phenomenon should be taken in caution. A phenomenon needs to be consistent with evolutionary theory, but it need not be entirely explained by evolutionary theory.