Incidentally, I asked the question recently of a cognitive psychologist. How do you define happiness?

I was a bit disappointed by his response, that it was just a combination of endorphins, dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin. I then asked him the question. How can you be sure that the chemicals are not some kind of effect and not the cause. In other words, could a certain pattern of thought be the trigger for the release of these chemicals, or could it be that it's bigger than that?

Obviously, thought patterns and behavioural patterns lie at the heart of what we call happiness. The chemicals merely serve to prolong that series of thought patterns and behavioural patterns. You could think of the release of neurochemicals as a kind of reward for certain useful patterns of thought and that the whole experience is termed happiness.

I don't see that as any kind of reductionism. If anything, it adds to the experience, just as techniques such as neurolinguistic (self) programming can amplify happiness.

We're getting off topic, but there are certain very powerful reframing techniques that can be used to good effect. Maybe it's worth a new thread in Philosophy or something. Personally, I think that happiness exists.

Getting back on topic. I make a distinction. Mathematics can help to show that some things are possible through a process of logical deduction, not that they are necessarily true or valid.

In Science, we work with the "could be's" as opposed to the "could not be's"
You'll very rarely arrive at a position of absolute truth, but we constantly reject that which is false. 

The Price equation shows how altruism could evolve as a consequence of living in a society. It acts as the central portion of a hypothesis based on a "could be". I always think that hypotheses based on "could be's" are infinitely superior to hypotheses based on visceral judgement.

Soren wrote on Nov 17^th, 2012 at 9:42pm:


Always the most pretentious front bottom here, aren't you Soren?

Life_goes_on wrote on Nov 17^th, 2012 at 10:34pm:



huuuhhhahhahahahaaa   ( big laugh)

It does indeed go on. 

As Hanna Arendt contended in The Human Condition, the social sciences “[aimed] to reduce man as a whole, in all his activity, to the level of a conditioned and behaving animal” (p. 45). In so doing, they not only denied the existence of human freedom; they also reflected—and helped to perpetuate—the very mass societies they ostensibly explained. At the same time, the social sciences operated (in Arendt’s understanding) on the core assumption that “human conduct springs essentially from self-interested, instrumental, and utilitarian considerations” (Baehr, p. 14). This premise rendered the social sciences utterly incapable of coming to terms with the non- and even anti-utilitarian nature of totalitarianism.
http://www.hannaharendtcenter.org/?p=6640


Muso et al - I have made it pretty clear in all my posts that I was talking about science as it is applied to humans.

So less of the cvnty, 'I don't geddit' giggling and say why the social sciences are not tending towards the totalitarian - or indeed what scientific truth is in psychology or sociology or, god help us, political science.

As for evolution, you will see that I am not talking about the development of teeth or tails or what have you but about behaviour, motivation, and especially human behaviour that is linked up with freedom in our experience.

So you can address the points I am making or you can stick your incomprehending (pretend incomprehension in muso, wholly real, bewildered ignorance in case of the other bozos) totalitarian bend up yer jumpers.

Kytro wrote on Nov 18^th, 2012 at 10:57am:


Science isn't.
But remember, it is done by people. It is a form of human idealism. Science is not 'out there' any more than 'god' is out there.

And people do all sorts of things for/because of authority.