Psychology

 2012 09 07

Morality develops directly from perception and the distillation of perception that we recognize as “consciousness”. Further, morality blossoms from a recognition of what feels good to me, physically and emotionally and the further recognition that you look a lot like me and therefore probably feel roughly the same as me.

 2012 09 13

Meaning, like morality must be linked to “what feels good” or that which engages our emotional centers positively. (Of course “what feels good” must be constrained at some level by ethics and morality but that's a subject for another essay.)

If it “feels good” to help the poor, that's how meaning is infused; if it “feels good” to build bridges, there lies meaning; and if it “feels good” to meditate on the impossibility of infinity, then that too inculcates meaning.

 2011 09 25

Why are humans inclined to take drugs or drink alcohol? The obvious answer is that they do so to mitigate and anesthetize the pain of existence. The more profound question is, why is existence painful? Instead of a “War on Drugs” why don't we we have a “War on Unhappiness”? I suppose that the argument can be made that the irritation of discontent instigates ambition but it seems to me that an awful lot of misery is minted as the coin of such ambition.

 2012 09 13

When Marian encourages her dog Prince to say “want a bone” so as to get a reward, not only is he rewarded with his treat, he “feels good” in having accomplished something. He experiences a sense of satisfaction in having gone beyond his normal dogness to say (so ta speak) the English phrase, “want a bone”. How far down the animate scale we can take this version of anthropomorphism is an interesting question. Do I know that Prince “feels” satisfaction? Of course not - but I can't “know” that another human being feels anything. I can listen to what they tell me and equate that to my own feelings and experience, but I have no way to profoundly “know” what that person “feels”.