My understanding is that happiness is a product of biochemistry and neuroanatomy, and doesn’t have to inherently correlate with any knowledge, experience, or heuristic.
First, it makes no sense to claim that there is no connection between experiences and biochemistry; clearly some experiences cause certain biochemical reactions. Eating or sleeping have clear neurochemical results. It doesn’t need to “inherently correlate,” it certainly does, however, correlate. The logic behind it could be obscured, but that does not imply that they cannot be used to test and establish causality. That’s why we attempt to better approximate rationality, to find how reality does and doesn’t work.
To answer the substantive point, knowledge, experience, and heuristics are emergent properties of biochemistry and neuroanatomy; of course there is a relationship between the substrate and the emergent properties. The precise nature of the interaction in a complex system can be deduced either through correlation of different systems and the behavior of the substrate, in the way gross neuroimaging locates the proximate location of whatever stimulus is being studied, or better, a full understanding of how the system works, which we do not have.
With a full understanding, we could discuss the necessary or inherent correlation, but until then, we can reasonably discuss only the actual behavior of the system. So the question of whether certain knowledge or experiences cause happiness is a reasonable one.
My understanding is that happiness is a product of biochemistry and neuroanatomy, and doesn’t have to inherently correlate with any knowledge, experience, or heuristic.
Hopefully Anonymous never claimed there was no connection between experiences and biochemistry, only that the two weren’t inherently linked.
If they were inherently linked, then you could not have happiness without certain experiences, and those same experiences would always increase your happiness. Personal experience and the fact that clinical depression exists tells me this cannot be true. The fact that a chemical imbalance alone can eliminate your happiness completely regardless of what your actual experience may be is proof that happiness is primarily a function of biochemistry.
The fact that certain experiences make us more happy shows that experiences can influence our biochemistry, but the two are most certainly not inherently linked.
My understanding is that happiness is a product of biochemistry and neuroanatomy, and doesn’t have to inherently correlate with any knowledge, experience, or heuristic.
First, it makes no sense to claim that there is no connection between experiences and biochemistry; clearly some experiences cause certain biochemical reactions. Eating or sleeping have clear neurochemical results. It doesn’t need to “inherently correlate,” it certainly does, however, correlate. The logic behind it could be obscured, but that does not imply that they cannot be used to test and establish causality. That’s why we attempt to better approximate rationality, to find how reality does and doesn’t work.
To answer the substantive point, knowledge, experience, and heuristics are emergent properties of biochemistry and neuroanatomy; of course there is a relationship between the substrate and the emergent properties. The precise nature of the interaction in a complex system can be deduced either through correlation of different systems and the behavior of the substrate, in the way gross neuroimaging locates the proximate location of whatever stimulus is being studied, or better, a full understanding of how the system works, which we do not have.
With a full understanding, we could discuss the necessary or inherent correlation, but until then, we can reasonably discuss only the actual behavior of the system. So the question of whether certain knowledge or experiences cause happiness is a reasonable one.
Hopefully Anonymous never claimed there was no connection between experiences and biochemistry, only that the two weren’t inherently linked.
If they were inherently linked, then you could not have happiness without certain experiences, and those same experiences would always increase your happiness. Personal experience and the fact that clinical depression exists tells me this cannot be true. The fact that a chemical imbalance alone can eliminate your happiness completely regardless of what your actual experience may be is proof that happiness is primarily a function of biochemistry.
The fact that certain experiences make us more happy shows that experiences can influence our biochemistry, but the two are most certainly not inherently linked.