An unhappy world: happiness, adaptation and determinism
Despite psychology to be a relatively recent science, we cannot understand its present without considering the elements that have historically contributed to its consolidation, as Hergenhahn, (2011) states, who understands today’s psychology as the legacy of discussions millenary, who involve the understanding of man in his various dimensions, hence the historical evolution is key to understanding the speech and many of the positions today. This is evidenced by reading and analyzing a text like Rafael Euba’s, which suggests answers to questions that have been persistent in psychology from their origins. Answers, which are made from positions that have taken centuries to consolidate and that even today do not find a single explanation, on the contrary, they configure various paradigms from which the psychologist’s work is understood, the object of study of psychology and its epistemology.
The scientific nature of psychology, which supposes, systematic knowledge, with its own methods (Sáiz Roca & Valldeneu Urpina, 2008), is an interdisciplinary product, the contribution of philosophy, of biology, has been crucial. Each era allowed new questions and ways of addressing them to emerge, as society is transformed and complex .
In this text I will address, five of the ten questions or subjects persistent in the psychology indicated by Hergenhahn, not because these have greater relevance, but because they are those who try to answer Euba in his text about the impossibility of being happy, of course, it is, It does not explicitly, nor is it its intentionality, but its consideration allows you to glimpse how the thinking of the contemporary psychologist is built: in a permanent dialogue with the past, taking up the concerns and rebuilding positions, hence, “the mission of the History is to show how things have always been the same although in each moment in a way ”(Cagigas, 2002, p. 14); with the rigor and coherence that implies assuming a position and on this structure methods, theories, and links with other sets of ideas; With a critical sense, which allows from a discursive logic to consider other points of view, other ways of thinking about the psychologist’s work; And finally, it could be said that with the interest of solving the complex entangled that the human being supposes.
Is reality subject to sensitive experience? Can an abstract idea be recognized as a reality?; This is the first issue that Euba considers, arguing that happiness cannot be possible as an abstraction, hence he sentenced that "happiness has no equivalent in real human experience" (Euba, 2019). His criteria to differentiate the real of what is not part of an millenary discussion, Sáiz Roca & Valldeneu Urpina, (2008), indicate to classical antiquity as a transcendental position manager in epistemology. Platonic spiritualism and Aristotelian naturalism gave opposite points to validate the "real". For Aristotle, reality was on the side of the observable, subject to natural laws, while in Plato, in the world of ideas whose imperfect copy was the material world. In the Renaissance figures such as Bacon and Descartes, allow to resume this concern, an empirical position would be associated with the need for experience to build the truth and generate knowledge of the world, while a rationalist posture would open field to reason and the possibility of abstraction as a way of reaching truths in the human mind (Sáiz Roca & Valldeneu Urpina, 2008). It is with the modernity that the empiricist ideas of Aristotelian tradition break the way to the configuration of science, says Cagigas, (2002), which is Aristotle who puts the foundations of scientific knowledge. Empiric sensationalism puts the sensation as fundamental to create mental content and produce ideas, having this repercussions on the methods to develop knowledge, inductive observation, would recognize experience as the basis of all knowledge (Sáiz Roca & Valldeneu Urpina, 2008). These approaches allow to recognize in Euba the intention of dismissing abstraction, and from an empiricist position, favoring the notion of reality associated with the "real" experience, would mean that, for this psychologist, the absence of happiness derives from its lack correspondence with a sensitive experience.
Is man an integral whole?, He is a compound entity: a soul and a body?, It is a necessary reflection when addressing Euba’s approaches, especially when you think about the idea of sadness, and in general of negative emotions as constituent elements of the human being, but happiness is dismissed for not having a physical or sensitive correlate. How is human nature constituted?, Monism and dualism responded to this issue, and allowed to think of the mind as their own entity, and their knowledge was associated with psychology. It is clear that elements are missing to elucidate Euba’s posture in this regard, but it is possible The notion of soul may not have a place, and mental facts do not have a parallel existence that work unison with the body, as Leibniz states when posing psychophysical parallelism (Cagigas, 2002), hence we can opt for more biological notions. Sáiz Roca & Valldeneu Urpina, (2008), indicate the important contribution of the Berlin physiological school, which since the nineteenth century, provides materialistic explanations in opposition to the vitalists, serving this to the consolidation of psychology as a science. This legacy, allowed the scientists of the time to recognize the human being as “a machine of transforming energy” (Sáiz Roca & Valldeneu Urpina, 2008)
What is the nature of human nature?, That makes us human, Euba, affirms that sadness, sadness in a broad sense, emotions. For Euba, emotions are an evolutionary product, transmitted and genetically configured, in particular it refers to negative emotions (depressive states, sadness) as a mechanism of defense and protection that guarantee the survival of man of man. So, we could conclude in relation to questioning about what makes humans different from other animals?, An response in coherence, stating that they are the adaptation mechanisms we use to survive. A biologicist thesis that is configured in the nineteenth century, when enlightened thought opens up to the idea of evolution (Leahey, 1999). From romantic positions such as Lamarck, the idea of change, improvement and transmission of this change becomes visible, attributing this process to the intelligence of matter (Leahey, 1999). It is with the contributions of Darwin, Huxley, Mendel, Wallace, which is possible Change, the struggle for subsistence and adaptation of species forces transformations, in terms of Spencer, only the most apotos survive, (Leahey, 1999), in this process genetics is responsible for maintaining and transmitting the changes. Under this perspective, Euba, considers man only from a biological dimension, a being destined for a natural world, where his only goal is survival, and reproduction, so that his physiological design is structured for that purpose, they will be therefore the Negative emotions mechanisms created to make the human a stronger species, a species always alert, better adapted and therefore suitable for surviving. Under this perspective, happiness has no place, it could even be affirmed that a happy individual is a weak individual, intended for extinction, although it is paradoxical because in the argument of Euba happiness is only a commercial product, a deception of the market economy , driven by a “American” society model, which imposes its mold on the rest of societies, against human nature itself, an unhappy nature.
Finally, the analysis of Euba’s arguments lead me to think about the question about free will, is the man who owns his actions? Is his behavior determined? It is clear that, from a biologicist orientation, which limits the human condition to its natural contingency, and where only an understanding of behaviors and emotions in correspondence with the satisfaction of basic needs, that the theme of free will not considerate , because man under this prism is conditioned to act with a predesigned functionality by his brain. Unhappiness will then be the cause of the physiology of our brain, and this in turn, the product of a long evolutionary process that has allowed us to subsist as a species, if we want to continue with that evolutionary legacy, we must genetically transmit unhappiness, sadness, sadness and depression. While it is true that the deterministic argument is a causal criterion, which from Aristotle helps to configure scientific thinking (Cagigas, 2002), and that is considered as an element without equanom for current science, Hergenhahn, (2011), Euba’s biological determinism can be quite controversial, since the predominance of biological and genetic elements as causes of human behavior prevents recognizing human complexity.
In this way, Euba addresses the issue of happiness vs. Unfelt, framing his thesis within a materialistic approach, realities are physical and measurable, dismissing the notion of happiness because, according to this, "happiness is an idea without a biological basis" (Euba, 2019), and it is only possible Empiricists, and its principle of causality is biological, derived from an evolutionary formulation, therefore for Euba, there is coherence by sentencing that "we are not designed to be happy, but to survive and reproduce, like all the other creatures of the world" (Euba , 2019).
Finally, it is necessary to ask about the concept and idea of happiness that Euba has, and from there question a little about the intentionality of the text, because on the one hand it is undeniable to take the position and radicalization of a biological determinism, it is also clear The critical sense that assumes before current psychology positions that tend to assume happiness in a sense of permanent hedonism, where happiness is instrumentalized by believing in it as a possible ideal for all, therefore we are faced with two opposite poles, by a side postures such as Euba that denies its possibility or approaches such as Seligman and positive psychology, which conceive it as a reality at the hands of all those who wish to work to achieve it.
Thus, the capitalist economy is the context in which positive psychology finds and boom On the side of social and historical considerations, Cabanas and Sánchez, (2012). It is also possible to highlight these two trends find their causality in biological and genetic parameters. Seligman, like Euba, refers to human brain and interhemispheric relations as the cause of the positive states that lead to happiness, in the same way indicates the possibility of attributing happiness by 50 percent to genetic causes (Seligman, 2004).
Positions such as Euba’s, overlook important considerations about the nature of man, limiting human needs to basic, reproduction and food that are located as the basis of motivations, so it would be necessary to review their approaches from a broader spectrum, consider the contributions of motivational psychology and see that beyond being a biological being, man is a social being, which as his way of life is complex, also does his being, in search not so much of the Happiness as an abstract, hedonic and romantic notion linked to permanent pleasure, but more as a life construct linked to well -being and personal projection, as new forms of human needs.
Maybe there we find happiness and we can associate it with positive emotional states, when is a person happy? When oriented to an end, and that end is not biologically determined as Seligman or Euba can affirm, the end is contextual, it is social, cultural and historical, and tells us about the interaction of the person with their social environment, of the Intimate and personal relationship with others and with themselves within a medium, in a world of specific beliefs and values, not assuming this, as Euba states, that happiness is attributed to morality in a mercantilized way, but is the product of A personal configuration and construction. Thus, it would be necessary to accommodate a form of social and cultural determinism, more flexible, understanding how Hergenhahn, (2011), raises, which is impossible to know all the causes of human behavior, therefore, all prediction about it tends to be more like.
Bibliography
- Cagigas, a. (202). Background of Psychology. In travel guide for a history of psychology (pages. 14-36). Jaén: The Lunar.
- Sáiz Roca, M., & Valldeneu Urpina, A. (2008). The thresholds of scientific psychology. In m. (. Sáiz Roca, History of Psychology. Barcelona: Fuoc.
- Cabanas, e., & Sánchez, J. (s.F.). The roots of positive psychology. . Psychologist’s papers, 3 (33), 172-182. Obtained from www.PapelesDelpsicologist.is/pdf/2136.PDF
- Euba, r. (13 of 08 of 2019). You are not designed to be happy, so you don’t even try. The newspaper of Catalonia. Obtained from https: // www.the newspaper.com/es/The-Conversation/20190813/ARTICULATION
- Hergenhahn, b. (2011). Introduction. In introduction to the history of psychology (pages. 1-25). Mexico d.F: Cengage Learning.
- Leahey, t. (1999). The Darwinian revolution. In History of Psychology (pages. 186-191). Madrid: Prentice Hall.
- Seligman, m. (2004). The New Era Of Positive Psychology. Ted Talks. Obtained from https: // www.Ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology?Language = is
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