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“ALL men by nature desire to know.

“ALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves...” Aristotle’s Metaphysics (350 BCE Bk I, pt 1; WD Ross trans).

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“ALL men by nature desire to know.

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  1. “ALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves...” Aristotle’s Metaphysics (350 BCE Bk I, pt 1; WD Ross trans)

  2. EMOTIONS are coordinated states, shaped by natural selection, that adjust physiological and behavioral responses to take advantage of opportunities and to cope with threats that have recurred over the course of evolution . Thus, the characteristics and regulation of basic emotions match the requirements of specific situations that have often influenced fitness.

  3. “NATURE has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.” (Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principal of Morals and Legislation, 1780/1789)

  4. “Emotional reactions typically involve extensive cognitive processing, but affective neuroscience is distinguishable from cognitive neuroscience in that emotional processes must also always involve an aspect of affect, the psychological quality of being good or bad.” (Kent Berridge, 2003)

  5. but PLEASURE and PAIN can be ambiguous “There is a pleasure in poetic pains / Which only poets know,”(Cowper, 1785) “A pleasure so exquisite as almost to amount to pain.”(Leigh Hunt, 1848) “And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain." (Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queen , 1596)

  6. In John Dewey's (1934) view, the fundamental --biological -- origin of aesthetic experience involves alternating equilibrium and tension ... --when, as Ellen Handler Spitz put it, the aesthetic ideal dissolves categories of time and space and absorbs into itself past memories and anticipation of the future; "encounters with the beautiful temporarily obliterate our sense of inner and outer separateness by drawing us into an orbit in which boundaries between self and other, and also categories into which we divide the world, dissolve" (1985:142).

  7. Sir Thomas Brown wrote in 1642, "I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity. I am more invulnerable than Achilles; fortune hath not one place to hit me."

  8. SYNTHETIC HAPPINESS Versus NATURAL HAPPINESS Dan Gilbert The resolution of COGNITIVE DISSONANCE At the levels of CORRESPONDENCE or COHERENCE

  9. BG FUNCTION

  10. From hand-held DVD players to hundred-inch plasma screens, much of today's technology is driven by the human appetite for pleasure through visual and auditory stimulation. What creates this appetite? Neuropsychologists have found that visual input activates receptors in the parts of the brain associated with pleasure and reward, and that the brain associates new images with old while also responding strongly to new ones. Using functional MRI imaging and other findings, they are exploring how human beings are "infovores" whose brains love to learn. Children may enjoy Sesame Street's fast pace because they get a "click of comprehension" from each brief scene. Perceptual Pleasure and the Brain (2006) 94 (3): 247 DOI:10.1511/2006.3.247

  11. Within the brain, the ventral visual pathway (top; red arrows) is involved in the recognition of an object or a scene. Early stages of visual processing (in areas V1 to V4) analyze an image's contours, colors and textures. Intermediate stages (the lateral occipital area and ventral occipito-temporal cortex, or VOT) integrate local information to detect surfaces, objects, faces and places. Within the VOT, a region within the collateral sulcus (CoS) responds strongly to images of places, such as buildings, houses and vistas. Later stages of recognition, in areas such as the parahippocampal cortex and rhinal cortex, are activated when the brain interprets the stimulus in the context of stored memories.

  12. Surprisingly, these visual areas also contain mu-opioid receptors (bottom; black dots), which are involved in the modulation of pain and pleasure in other parts of the brain. They are sparse in the earlier stages and grow increasingly dense in the later stages. According to the authors' hypothesis, visual stimuli that contain a great deal of interpretable information should activate many opioid receptors in the later stages and so provide the greatest pleasure. (At top, edges of ventral areas are projected onto the lateral surface and denoted by dashes. Exact locations of all areas may differ from one individual to another.) Perceptual Pleasure and the Brain (2006) 94 (3): 247 DOI:10.1511/2006.3.247

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