The likely evolutionary path of the human race:
by David M. Petersen - Well-Being and Happiness Seminar - Second Paper
In the Anthropological Didactic, in the section "On Pleasure and Displeasure," Immanuel Kant states, "What else but a quick death from joy would follow a steady advancement of vitality, which cannot be increased beyond a certain point anyway. Also, no gratification can immediately follow another, but between one and another there must occur pain" (Kant 131-132). Additionally, in the essay by Daniel Kahneman entitled "Objective Happiness," Kahneman makes a serious attempt to address the many complex problems inherent in understanding the relationship between pleasure and pain in our minds. While he himself admits that he doesn't achieve his goal of an objective system for evaluating whether or not a person is happy, he does point out many interesting observations concerning how this would be accomplished. I think that both of these views are essentially valid and moving towards an accurate perspective of our internal landscape of emotional pleasure and pain, and I believe also that these two views can be synthesized. Ultimately, I think that this synthesis is achieved when one views consciousness as a phenomenon that normally exhibits a flowing balance between emotional pleasure and pain in time, and this balance is fundamentally maintained at a very deep level of its existence in reality; or in other words, it is a fundamental property of consciousness.
They've all got it wrong concerning how consciousness works; read this...
To begin with, consciousness is, of course, a phenomenon that is flowing in time. In other words, it is obviously characterized by a sequence of events or experiences that take place one after another. Kant obviously recognized this concept relative to our emotional pleasure and pain in his Anthropological Didactic when he stated that, "We are incessantly moved by the stream of time, and the change of sensations resultant from it" (Kant 131). Additionally, in the essay "Objective Happiness," we learn from Kahneman that this flowing sequence of good and bad experiences that make up our awareness' is extremely complex and more "bivalent" (meaning simultaneously occurring together) than "bipolar" (meaning occurring one at a time). However, Kahneman goes on to state, and I agree with him, that, "most moments can be usefully characterized by a single value on a bipolar Good/Bad dimension" (Kahneman 8). This of course means that even though consciousness is a complex, many-layered phenomenon, it can effectively be viewed as, and I would say really ultimately also exists as, a sequence that is made up of one good or bad moment at a time relative to the individual. In other words, it is logical that the multi-layered aspects of consciousness and the unifying good/bad quality of the 'one moment after another' aspect of consciousness simultaneously co-exist within the total phenomenon that we call consciousness. Of course, the strongest evidence for this 'one good or bad moment in time' model is our actual individual ability to say at any moment whether or not we feel good or bad.
However, another way to support this 'bivalence converging into bipolar' arrangement is by the use of a concept from the new science of Complexity. This science has made great progress in explaining complex systems (all systems that previously resisted mapping with just logic alone, from the weather, to biological evolution, and beyond) that are made up of seemingly disparate elements. These elements actually tend to 'spontaneously self-organize' into more advanced systems that can be named, and which function as one unit (Waldrop 11). Consciousness, then, is just another one of these complex systems that is made up of a convergence of lesser processes in the brain (at least connected to the brain) into a unified system that exhibits a good or bad (or anything in between) state at any given moment. Therefore, because of this convergence, each individual's consciousness corresponds to, on the most important level, a string of good or bad experiences. I also believe that within this sequence of events in time, each individual's consciousness actually normally displays a balance between these subjectively evaluated (from the individual's perspective) 'one after another' positive and negative emotional experiences of the individual, regardless of their circumstances. Kant was definitely aware of the beginnings of the balanced relationship between pleasure and pain as evidenced by his statement that "No gratification can immediately follow another, but between one and another there must occur pain" (Kant 132). However, while I believe that he was on the right track, I am not only suggesting that one must follow another, I'm saying that pleasure and pain also exist in a proportional relationship to each other. In other words, subjective evaluations on what Kahneman calls the "good/bad dimension" tend to fluctuate around zero, or feeling nothing, and this fluctuation is roughly like a pendulum; a swing to the positive side eventually results in an equal swing to the negative side. This would be a massively simplified analogy, of course. I think that it is more likely that one would have say, three positive experiences balanced by a longer string of just slightly negative experiences, for example. Some of the strongest evidence that I've seen to date for this balanced relationship is the study (referenced in the Kahneman essay) done by Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman in 1978 concerning paraplegics and lottery winners (Kahneman 13). They found that paraplegics were not nearly as unhappy as people would assume, and that lottery winners were not nearly as happy as we would assume, either. If fact, they both tended to gravitate towards the general emotional state they had before the big change. This research very clearly points to an intrinsic balance of good and bad experiences in people's lives regardless of their circumstances. More specifically, we can start to see that the incredibly positive experience of winning the lottery must, because of this balanced characteristic of consciousness, be offset by a corresponding set of negative experiences. This is why these people are ultimately no happier or sadder than they were before.
It also seems clear that this flowing emotional balance exhibited by consciousness is fundamentally maintained at deep level of its existence in reality, or in other words, in the way it is embodied in the universe. I think that this may have been what Kant was thinking of when he describes pleasure and pain not as opposites, but counterparts of each other, meaning they are intrinsically part of the same system (Kant 130). Also, his statement that "What else but a quick death from joy would follow a steady advancement of vitality, which cannot be increased beyond a certain point anyway" seems to head in this direction, because he seems to be saying that there is a deep fundamental limit on the pleasure we can experience (Kant 132). I would say that this fundamental limit has to do with the way consciousness exists inside our universe. It would seem to me to exist in a configuration that only allows a balance of emotional pleasure and pain, and doesn't allow a string of say, only positive experiences. Now, the standard objection to this idea is that it seems very much like some people really enjoy life, while some people seem to experience nothing but pain. I think that this is both an illusion and an assumption that ultimately stems from the fact that we do not have access to these people's actual internal subjective experiences over their whole lives, or even for the last week. In other words, a number of factors could easily be influencing our incorrect perceptions of these people, such as envy of, or vanity by, the person in the case of a positive perception, or the person just being a whiner in the case of a negative perception! This could very easily also be true in scientific studies of this sort, because all of these studies never really get around the fact that their data can ultimately only be based on subjectivity.
In the essay by Kahneman, there is also some strong evidence for this fundamental balanced relationship. This would be the so-called hedonic treadmill, specifically the version of this idea put forward by Headey and Wearing in 1992. They argued that "overall well-being [is] subject to homeostatic processes that tend to restore a similar distribution of good/bad values" (Kahneman 14). I agree with this statement, and consequently, since these "processes" exist within us physically and we in turn physically exist inside the universe, it follows that this "homeostatic" (self-returning to the same state after a change) existence is a fundamental property of the way consciousness exists in the universe. Finally, another idea that supports this deep need for balanced consciousness ties in with Kant's statement that "Pain is the incentive to activity, and above all, in activity we feel that we are alive" (Kant 132). This is very true, and since pain is a part of consciousness and consciousness is obviously necessary for our lives, if follows that this balanced phenomenon of consciousness is in a fundamental necessary configuration to work for us within our place in the universe.
Now, while I believe most people exhibit the daily or weekly balancing characteristic of consciousness discussed in this essay, there is one question that is left unanswered by this perspective on consciousness. Why then, are some people depressed for long periods of time? In the essay entitled "Disturbances in Emotion," by Berenbaum, Raghavan, Le, Vernon, and Gomez, for example, there are many examples of people who have experienced prolonged emotional pain in their lives. For instance they state that "50 percent of the general population" will have a psychiatric disturbance at some point in their life" (Kahneman 276). However, the key idea here is that these events happen "at some point in their life," not every minute of every day of their whole lives. I believe the answer to this depression question is that our conscious experiences balance in four dimensions over the total span of our lives. This idea ties in very well with the idea of block time, or the universe being a simultaneous four-dimensional object, that follows from the General Theory of Relativity. Einstein himself said that "The world in which we live is a four dimensional space-time continuum." This is why time is completely relative in physics (Einstein 61). Consequently, because the universe has this property, people, being completely inside this four-dimensional object, are thus like four-dimensional 'nodes' inside it. Depressed people, then, because of the balanced property of consciousness, will have or have had a corresponding balance of positive experiences to counterbalance their depression some time in their life. While this perspective obviously can't be proven, I wish to stress the point that it cannot be disproven either. To either prove or disprove it, we would have to have complete access to every person's individual subjective sequence of good and bad experiences for their whole life. Incidentally, this would be a good application for Kahneman's attempt at a system for the objective evaluation of happiness! Anyway, in the end, which is the more beautiful image inside our balanced universe, people living lives of nothing but terrible pain, or everyone experiencing a balance of positive and negative experiences? The atom is balanced; the energy between mass and gravity is balanced, why not consciousness, I say. Now, the standard criticism of this idea is that our minds are not physical; but our universe is an interconnected space-time, the alternative to which is absolute nothing. So, I ask you then, where do our minds exist? In absolute nothing??
Ultimately I believe that, while this essay cannot prove, but only suggest this perspective, consciousness is a phenomenon that is characterized by a flowing balance between emotional pleasure and pain for each individual within a sequence of emotional events in time (in three dimensions), and that this balance is fundamentally maintained at a very deep level of its existence in reality. Also, interestingly, this is a relationship that could be counted on by an individual, possibly providing insight into how to live one's life. For example, one could take on an extremely difficult undertaking because he knows that there will be a corresponding positive rush of experiences that are the counterpart to the pain he endured. Or, one could be experiencing something terrible, but would know that it is only temporary based on this characteristic of consciousness. Again, while I believe most people exhibit the daily or weekly balancing characteristic of consciousness discussed in this essay, I also believe that our conscious experiences balance in four dimensions over the total span of our lives. Depressed people, then, will have or have had a corresponding balance of positive experiences to counterbalance their depression some time in their life. But, you will say, what about the infant that is born with a painful pathology, lives for a few weeks, and dies? Again, not having access to the infant's actual internal mental state, it cannot be disproven that it had a series of beautiful transcendent experiences surrounded by it's pain, and when it died, it was a beautiful experience that made it all worth while. Kant's assertion that pleasure must be followed by pain, if reversed, would support this idea, also. Incidentally, I have believed this for some time; for further discussion of this perspective, please go to: http://philosophy.dmpetersen.net
Work Cited
Einstein, Albert. Relativity - The Special and General Theory. Robert W. Lawson, Trans. New York: Crown. 1961. Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology - From a Pragmatic Point of View. Translated by Victor Lyle Dowdell. Hans H. Rudnick, ed. Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press.
Kahneman, Daniel. "Objective Happiness." Well-being - The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology. Daniel Kahneman, Ed Diener, and Norman Schwarz, eds. New York, Russell Sage Foundation. 1999.
Berenbaum, Raghavan, Le, Vernon, and Gomez. "Disturbances in Emotion." Well-being - The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology. Daniel Kahneman, Ed Diener, and Norman Schwarz, eds. New York, Russell Sage Foundation. 1999.
Waldrop, M. Mitchell. Complexity - The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos. New York: Touchstone. 1992.
Other Works by David M. Petersen