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Culture, not the anthropologists' culture, but Culture-with-a-big-C, paintings, poetry, opera, literature, music, drama, and sculpture--what is their relation to human happiness? No doubt we are happy when we enjoy these things, but what is happiness? Historically, happiness has meant two quite different things. Read More
Norman Holland Check out my
Norman Holland Check out my latest book, on teaching relationally, at knowthyselfdelphiseminars.com .
I agreee that happiness is a
I agreee that happiness is a state of mind. However, It can not be measured and it is not a lasting feeling. I think happy people are the ones who have love in their lives.
"love in their lives"
yes and the greatist they say is requited self love.
Rats.. only from a distance
Well, it's good not to lose sight of basics, and at some basic level human happiness and rat happiness must have something in common. But don't let's lose sight of the frills and laces of culture and consciousness either, because that's where real essentials lie in this case. Evaluation of the rat's happiness can be done in much simpler terms (and I simplify!) but an account of human happiness must take into account many elements that are missing there, such as reflective consciousness (among the many meanings of being happy, surely an important ingredient is knowing that you are happy, and being able to represent oneself as happy - we don't know much about the self-representation of rats). Or: human paradigms for the determination of happiness must be taken into account, as you do indeed here, historically changing conceptions, etc. That is, the cultural dialogue around happiness is much more complex in the case of humans, and I am confident it will be the case here too.
Do Rats Know They Are Happy?
Thanks, Jose Angel, for reminding us that an important part of happiness is knowing that you are happy. Whether rats know they are happy is, you point out, an open and interesting question.
If we look just at behavior, however, the fact that the rat repeatedly pushes the bar tells us that some relatively lower feedback network is telling some relatively higher network that this is pleasurable. Whether this kind of knowing is conscious or not--good question!
Warmly, Norm
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