On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> quoted:
<<<<
>THE PLEASURE SEEKERS
>
>Hedonism makes our world go round, but it goes a lot deeper than our
>obsession with sex, drugs, rock'n' roll and chocolate. Neuroscientists
>are completely rethinking how our brains give us pleasure, and as a
>result are starting to believe that the quest for pleasure may underpin
>every decision we make. It may even have laid the foundations of
>consciousness
>
>Helen Phillips
>
The content of this article I find astounding in its disingenuousness.
On first reading, it leaves the impression that the researchers share
this bizarre lack of understanding of the function of pleasure in the
workings of the brain, but a careful rereading shows the incredulity
is all on the part of the reporter, who says such things as "Far from
being a heady, purely human pursuit, pleasure may be a very simple and
evolutionarily ancient invention." and "The fundamental role pleasure
plays in decision making is leading some researchers to see it as a basic
biological process that evolved long before humans did."
Yipes. What did she think - all lower animals are some sort of soulless
automotons?
However, the discoveries of the researchers themselves should be no
surprise if one takes a moment to reflect on the function of desire
and motivation (always a profitable pursuit for the diligent student
of the human condition). Creatures in the world persist because of
action, and action is precipitated by urges, which conspire to
ensure perpetuation of the organism and its germ line. Urges are
simply conditions where an absense is perceived which requires
correction in order to relieve agitation, and a route is clearly
indicated to facilitate that correction. Were that the whole story,
things could be quite chaotic for an organism which had evolved
multiple urges, which not only need to be prioritized for long
term payoff, but also for risk/benefit and short term security.
And the best strategies for satisfying these multiple urges can
become exceedingly long term and complex, which requires considerable
planning and foresight, and thus arises the need for an organ
of logic and prediction. So mammals have developed the neural cortex.
But also, for the logic organ to operate, it must generate tokens
- representative symbols - of the urge, the mechanism or route
for its resolution, and the expected reward. Thus we should only
expect that the planning centre in the frontal cortex should
contain representations of "desires" and the "pleasure" resulting
from their satiation. None of this shold be regarded as at all
revolutionary or earthshattering, but rather a simple confirmation
of the expected mechanisms.
There is one other thing that needs addressing here. In the concluding
paragraph, Laval University's Michel Cabanac says "Pleasure -- sensory
pleasure -- is not happiness, it is joy. The state of indifference is
what I call happiness." Well, I don't know about the validity of his
semantic ordering, in that I would say that joy and pleasure have
equally distinct connotations to joy and happiness, but it's the
last part that I have a problem with. Indifference is not happiness,
it is closer to depression. Happiness, true happiness, as distinct
from momentary relief from desire, involves a deep "heartfelt"
feeling that the world as a whole is worthy of general approval,
that life is worth living; that in fact, if there is a conscious
creative source for the world, it has done a good job. The exact
vocabulary is hard to find in a world where the experience is
sufficiently rare that all the possible candidate words have been
hijacked for more mercenary semantic notions, but I would try for
something like benign detachment, or better, unrestricted, universal
benevolence.
-Pete Vincent
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