The Happiness Hypothesis

[Telarus]

The Happiness Hypothesis

http://happinesshypothesis.com/chapters.html

I'm reading Chapter One for my English125 class @ school. This dude seems to get the BIP metaphor, using his own symbolism. Chapter One is a good read and actually mirrors a lot of the topics in such models as RAW/Leary's 8 circuit model. As a bonus, he actually drawn on recent medical research to describe various functions and divisions within the brain, and how they effect the mind/emotions.

Bonus: Good, but brief, overview of the Buddha Mind (I.E. the Gut/Hara and how it interfaces with the brain). Also good discussion on how the left/right brain division actually affects cognition (shades of the Thinker and the Prover).

Anyone else run across this? Opinions?

[Telarus]

The importance of the orbitofrontal cortex for emotion has been further
demonstrated by research on brain damage. The neurologist Antonio
Damasio has studied people who, because of a stroke, tumor, or blow to
the head, have lost various parts of their frontal cortex. In the 1990s,
Damasio found that when certain parts of the orbitofrontal cortex are damaged,
patients lose most of their emotional lives. They report that when
they ought to feel emotion, they feel nothing, and studies of their autonomic
reactions (such as those used in lie detector tests) confirm that they
lack the normal flashes of bodily reaction that the rest of us experience
when observing scenes of horror or beauty. Yet their reasoning and logical
abilities are intact. They perform normally on tests of intelligence and
knowledge of social rules and moral principles.

So what happens when these people go out into the world? Now that
they are free of the distractions of emotion, do they become hyperlogical,
able to see through the haze of feelings that blinds the rest of us to the
path of perfect rationality? Just the opposite. They find themselves unable
to make simple decisions or to set goals, and their lives fall apart. When
they look out at the world and think, "What should I do now?" they see
dozens of choices but lack immediate internal feelings of like or dislike.
They must examine the pros and cons of every choice with their reasoning,
but in the absence of feeling they see little reason to pick one or the
other. When the rest of us look out at the world, our emotional brains
have instantly and automatically appraised the possibilities. One possibility
usually jumps out at us as the obvious best one. We need only use reason
to weigh the pros and cons when two or three possibilities seem
equally good.

Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality. It is
only because our emotional brains works so well that our reasoning can
work at all. Plato's image of reason as charioteer controlling the dumb
beasts of passion may overstate not only the wisdom but also the power of
the charioteer. The metaphor of a rider on an elephant fits Damasio's findings
more closely: Reason and emotion must both work together to create
intelligent behavior, but emotion (a major part of the elephant) does most
of the work. When the neocortex came along, it made the rider possible,
but it made the elephant much smarter, too.

[Reginald Ret]

It sounds very interesting, i'll look into it later