Rat-ional pleasures
Comienza un blog Norman Holland en la columna sobre blogs de neurociencia de Psychology Today, con el artículo "Culture, Happiness, and a Laboratory Rat" —y anuncia que se va a plantear el problema de la felicidad que proporciona la cultura. Felicidad entendida desde un punto de vista psicológico, no filosófico… pone el ejemplo de una rata de laboratorio, que también tiene sensación de felicidad, como la tenemos nosotros con nuestras actividades culturales.
How do we know this is a happy rat? Because it keeps on. It spins the treadmill and pushes the lever five times and gets the sugar water and it spins the treadmill and pushes-it keeps on doing it.
It keeps on doing it-that’s exactly what we do with Culture-with-a-big-C. We keep on going to theaters, reading books, taking photographs, going to galleries and museums and concerts. We must be getting the same spritz of pleasure as the laboratory rat. For both of us mammals, that spritz of pleasure is something that occurs in our brains. And that will be my focus in this blog, the role that Culture-with-a-big-C plays in our brains and brains in our Culture-with-a-big-C. (Creo que aquí al final quería decir Norman Holland "our culture-with-a-small-c).
It keeps on doing it-that’s exactly what we do with Culture-with-a-big-C. We keep on going to theaters, reading books, taking photographs, going to galleries and museums and concerts. We must be getting the same spritz of pleasure as the laboratory rat. For both of us mammals, that spritz of pleasure is something that occurs in our brains. And that will be my focus in this blog, the role that Culture-with-a-big-C plays in our brains and brains in our Culture-with-a-big-C. (Creo que aquí al final quería decir Norman Holland "our culture-with-a-small-c).
Le pongo este comentario:
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.
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.
En suma, que no hay un enfoque psicológico correcto de la cuestión de la felicidad humana, al margen de las consideraciones filosóficas de la felicidad.
2 comentarios
JoseAngel -
Maite -
Creo que la felicidad que se deriva de los ejemplos que Holland tiene mucho que ver con el entretenimiento o la curiosidad o la aceptación social en ciertos ambientes. Ese tipo de actividades felices podrían estar marcadas tanto por la Cultura como por formas de cultura más populares (eventos deportivos, revistas, música pop por ejemplo) u otros tipos de eventos sociales (una excursión, una comida familiar )