[Buddha-l] buddhism and brain studies

[Jamie Hubbard]

jkirk wrote:
> Excuse my ignorance, but what is a  "happiness set-point" ??
> Joanna K. 
>   
The basic idea is that we all have a normal range of happiness, 
contentment, satisfaction or whatever we want to call it (and however 
falsely we might report it). This is very dependent on genetics, but of 
course also influenced by environment (nature and nurture working 
together). When bad/stressful/unpleasant things happen to us, we get 
sad/depressed/unhappy as a result, but within a more-or-less regular 
period of time we "bounce back" to the level of contentment that we 
normally carry. The same thing is true about good/pleasant/joyful 
things-- after a bit of heightened spirits, we return to our usual "set 
point." Really good things-- finding a loving partner, getting tenure, 
whatever-- have a longer lasting "up" effect than lesser events 
--finding a parking space, winning the lottery, getting a good grade-- 
but in the end we "even out" to our usual state of well-being (or the 
lack thereof). The "set point" varies for individuals and groups, of 
course. What is interesting is how even really traumatic events (losing 
a limb, for example), don't seem to change the set-point.

This all seems quite reasonable according to my personal experience as 
well as what I observe among those around me, and of course is very well 
attested in all the "empirical" studies.

The big deal in the Buddhist-Psycho dialogs, of course, are the various 
technologies from both sides that promise to actually *change* your 
set-point, and the notion that in doing so what is really happening is 
that the "hard wiring" in your brain is actually changing-- that is, 
neuro-plasticity. The recent Mind and Life Institute book by Sharon 
Begley ("Train your Mind, Change your Brain") is all about this, as are 
countless other tomes in this series and elsewhere.

Again, this all seems common-sense to me, and what the Buddhist 
tradition has long taught. At the same time, fun questions continue to 
pop up-- for example, if  you have a relatively high set-point-- that 
is, most of the time you feel pretty good about things and are able to 
rebound pretty well from unpleasant stuff-- why bother chasing the whole 
enchilada, that is, "awakening" or the "cessation of dukkha"? Why  
should I let somebody convince me that, contrary to my 
(incontrovertible) feeling, I really am suffering most of the time? 
Besides you in opposition to your own "experience" of things (reputable 
the best source of knowledge, according to the Buddhist camp) *and* 
putting you on that slippery slope to the monastic life, it just seems 
like a lot of hard work for relatively little return, especially if 
things are pretty good for you already. What, you are happy but you want 
more? You aren't satisfied with a reasonable amount of satisfaction in 
your life? You want to eliminate *all* unpleasant experience? You can 
see where this goes. . . to me, the only possible reason for chasing 
"complete cessation of suffering" or the "final elimination of all 
afflictive mental states (klesa)" would be the reality of rebirth 
forever until you do accomplish this task. Not finding this compelling, 
I am content to be lazy and remain how I am (at least vis-a-vis 
"happiness/suffering"), and leave my set-point alone.

And that, of course, leads to the other interesting problem (which much 
of this cross-conversation politely steps around), and that is that for 
the complete cessation argument to be a reasonable motivation, rebirth 
needs to work, and for rebirth to work some sort of disembodied 
consciousness must be accepted. In other words, physicalism in all of 
its varieties must be denied.Otherwise Buddhism as therapy or therapy as 
Buddhism prevails--which, as you can imagine, I find quite OK (unlike 
some, I often agree with Richard--except when he refuses to be 
disagreeable, which he only does in person-- and so see Richard's page 
on "Psychotherapy and Religion: 
http://home.comcast.net/~dayamati/therapy.html#therapy; re. "set point," 
note his comments on resilience).

Practically speaking, it seems to me that the more they figure out the 
brain/meat side of the happiness equation before long we will be able to 
tweak our minds by physically tweaking our brains (pharmaceutically 
and/or otherwise). Here I agree with Alberto Todeschini (and all of the 
neuroscience literature that I have been reading for this course) and 
his ideas about the possibilities of a physical (brain-level) 
reductionism, at least to some level.  Actually, I think it has already 
come along quite a ways.

Jamie