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When fishing for happiness, catch and release. Remember these seven words—they are the keys to being happy. So says Shimon Edelman, an expert on psychology and the mind.
In The Happiness of Pursuit, Edelman offers a fundamental understanding of pleasure and joy via the brain. Using the concept of the mind as a computing device, he unpacks how the human brain is highly active, involved in patterned networks, and constantly learning from experience. As our brains predict the future through pursuit of experience, we are rewarded both in real time and in the long run. Essentially, as Edelman discovers, it’s the journey, rather than the destination, that matters.
The idea that cognition is computation—the brain is a machine—is nothing new of course. But, as Edelman argues, the mind is actually a bundle of ongoing computations, essentially, the brain being one of many possible substrates that can support them. Edelman makes the case for these claims by constructing a conceptual toolbox that offers readers a glimpse of the computations underlying the mind’s faculties: perception, motivation and emotions, action, memory, thinking, social cognition, learning and language. It is this collection of tools that enables us to discover how and why happiness happens.
An informative, accessible, and witty tour of the mind, The Happiness of Pursuit offers insights to a thorough understanding of what minds are, how they relate to each other and to the world, and how we can make the best of it all.
Author's Note ix
1 Home Is Where the Mind Is 1
No justice, no peace. A journey is mapped out.
2 Computing the Mind 7
A great metaphor that isn't. Concerning computation. No cognition without representation. Three things everyone should know about life, the universe, and everything. Promethean probabilities and amazing Bayes. Minds within brains. Minds without brains.
3 The Republic of Soul 35
A discourse on method. Faster than a speeding marmot. A treatise of human nature. Perception by numbers. Representation space: the final frontier. Being in the world. The instruments of change. The value of everything. Things get interesting.
4 Learning to Think for Yourself 71
Ulysses ascendant. Remembrance of things past and future. Why everything important that you know you must have learned for yourself. Mirroring the world, mustache and all, one step at a time. Where was I? A moveable feast.
5 You Can Talk to Me 95
Preeminence above a vole. Replicants abroad. The digital revolution. Reduce, reuse, recycle. A garden of forking paths. Dependencies all the way down. It takes a village.
6 Nobody, at Home 131
The web of cause and effect. Through a scanner, darkly. Because it's there. Connecting the dots. Plow. Soul music. Being and time and zombies. That which we are.
7 An Irresistible Call to Depart 159
Prometheus goes on parole. Alexander meets Diogenes in Corinth. History is made in Bishopsgate. Peace is struck in the republic of soul. Ulysses leaves Ithaca again.
Always Coming Home 177
Acknowledgments 183
Notes 185
Further Reading 211
Index 231
Overview
When fishing for happiness, catch and release. Remember these seven words—they are the keys to being happy. So says Shimon Edelman, an expert on psychology and the mind.
In The Happiness of Pursuit, Edelman offers a fundamental understanding of pleasure and joy via the brain. Using the concept of the mind as a computing device, he unpacks how the human brain is highly active, involved in patterned networks, and constantly learning from experience. As our brains predict the ...