Why We Feel

by Victor S. Johnston

Book Overview

Why do we think some people are beautiful? Why do orgasms feel good? Why do we get angry? Anxious? In this intriguing book, biopsychologist Victor Johnston explores the origins of human emotions. Drawing on computer science, neurobiology, and evolutionary psychology, he shows us that emotions are not some strange accident of nature, but are instead the basis of learning and reasoning, and help us to adapt to a complex, rapidly changing environment...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0738203165
• ISBN13: 9780738203164
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Truly thought provoking, entertaining and well written.

Wow. I am what could be described as a "slacker" with "some college", but I enjoy reading books about science, particularly those that aim to explain why things are the way they are...I picked up "Why we Feel" because it seemed like an interesting topic. As a matter of fact, the guy at the counter read the tile and commented "That's a good question!". I feel that this is a book everybody should read. It gives so much insight into who we are that I feel truly thankful that I read it. Feelings. What would life be without them? As the author argues, there would be no point to life at all. This book goes a long way to answering questions like why do some things feel good and others feel bad? I would sum it up thus: There is, in reality, no point for life to exist. So, emotions are nature's way of motivating us to keep on living! When you do something that will increase your chances of reproducing, you feel good. This includes falling in love, having sex, gaining resources such as food or shelter, etc. As an example on how a negative emotion helps you live, consider if you were a cave man and you found a bone with a particular size and shape that allowed you to beat up your enemies and kill animals for food. If you lost this tool one day, you would feel deep sadness. This negative feeling would be nature punishing you for losing a valuable resource that increases your chances for survival. The author explains how emotions evolved, and other concepts such as why we consider certain characteristics as "beautiful" and certain tastes as good are really just nature's way of steering us towards what we need to reproduce. The book is short and completely free of fluff or egotistical rambling. The author writes extremely well and keeps a nice constant pace throughout. I read this book in two sittings and will re-read it many times I'm sure. As a non-scientist I found it slightly dense at times, but it's short and interesting enough to re-read. I recommend this book to anyone who is curious about why things are the way they are. If you want to learn about life, not just Human life, but your dog and animals as well, this is a wonderful book. You'll never look at yourself or other people the same way again after being exposed to what modern science has to say about the origin and purpose of human emotions. I will definately buy his next book, if there is one.

Sugar isn't really sweet, ripe strawberries aren't red.

The 1st chapter in this book is entitled 'The Grand Illusion.' This is not some pessimistic assessment of the human condition, like we've all been fooling ourselves for naught all the long; this is merely the same caveat that the likes of the ancient Buhddists, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (himself often accused of pessimism), and modern science writer Torr Norretranders have also elucidated: namely, we're sort of idealistic in how we process what we perceive to be the external (and internal) world. It's not so very egregious that we're like a bunch of asylum escapees, hallucinating some vastly inaccurate version of a reality we can never hope to know, it's just that neither are we ice cold observers of an objectively understandable interaction between our organismal selves and reality. It's a subtle distinction but one well worth knowing. Dr. Johnston does such a good job of delineating this concept that I had to rate this book the maximum of 5 stars. It is even more germane that he does so in the context of evolutionary psychology by stating that we, evolved primates that we are, did not nor did we need to evolve an ability to perceive and understand reality directly; that would have been nice and all, but what we did, and by virtue of it having happened, what we needed to accomplish was some means by which to survive and leave offspring in the field (remember, the way things are is no endorsement of any normative value for or against). Not only do we perceive and process reality in very creative ways, but we also color the heck out of it to squeeze the maximum utility out of it, hence, sugar (high quality nutrient) is sweet and good, and sharp teeth and gutteral growling sounds (the theme of not a few scary, supernatural movies) are bad, nay, downright evil! Thus, by the very acts of perceiving and cognizing, do we add and embellish hedonic tone to our experience. In general, this book is a good cummulative grouping of modern cognitive science research findings sans the fluff. It's too bad Daniel Dennett has already claimed the title "Consciousness Explained" and Steven Pinker "How the Mind Works." Either title would have suited Dr. Johnston's work very well.

onward and inward

This book does what would have seemed impossible in 200 pages: coordinates the findings of two decades on emotion & consciousness under an evolutionary framework. Johnston is at once succinct, cogent and accessible; his originality shows both in the choice of example and in the way he's developed his ideas and those of others into a consistent theory. The fundamental assertion,that biology has dictated the conditions and ultimate rationale for emotion, fuses the now-classic research of Antonio Damasio with an evolutionary paradigm introduced by Henry Plotkin. Then, building upon both 'dry' and 'wet' cognitive science, it goes on to illustrate the essentiality and relevance of emotion, answering quite a few 'intractable' issues of consciousness on the way. Johnston is never promotional, and never strains for effect. Though he pays proper attention to his sources, his originality is manifest in the ways in which he fleshes out what would otherwise be a dense set of ideas. This book, then, illustrates a happy coalescence of scholarship and style. One looks forward to its eventual expansion into a comprehensive tome; but, for the moment, it may be read with pleasure & benefit by neophyte and expert alike.

A Pleasure To Read

A very well written and tightly argued look at "the science of human emotions" and a pleasure to read. I would also commend it as a good companion to the more widely publicized book by Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens. Johnston focusses on emotions and explains consciousness, including consciousness of emotions, as an "emergent phenomenon" of the composition and arrangement of the brain, and delves no further into anatomy. Damasio picks up from there and tries to say something about how the structure and organization of the brain actually accomplishes this property. Readers may want to ponder the conceptual device of "emergence" which plays such an important part in Johnston's exposition. To say that "speed" in a car is an emergent property of the car, and does not reside in the carburetor or the transmission, does not prevent us from showing how the carburetor and transmission accomplish speed, but does help us understand that selection is working on the whole system and the arrangement of its parts and not on the individual components. Likewise with consciousness. In addition, because Johnston is rhetorically opposing the idea of a correspondence theory of the truth, he stresses the arbitrariness, other than for survival, of the neural representations of our environment, which "really" consists primarily of a whirling chaos of photons, energy particles, and electromagnetic radiations. His argument is very effective, yet somehow our brain's ability to organize this environment has allowed us to come up with pi, build bridges that don't fall down, and develop a mathematics with an amazing capacity to describe the universe; our representations do seem to give us some powerful access to something out there. Both subjects display the force of Johnston's prose, which in part can be attributed, I think, to the clarity that derives from taking a strong rhetorical stance. Throughout the book, the sense one gets is of a powerful intellect in full command of his material.

Virtual Reality

Johnston is extremely convincing in his explanation of how pleasant and unpleasant sensations evolved. For example, he explains that the pleasant sensation of "sweetness" is not a property of sugar molecules, but an illusion of the brain that emerged through natural selection because sugar is a great source of energy. Using persuasive reasoning he explains such things as why rotten eggs smell bad, why tissue damage causes the illusion of pain, and why we feel complex emotions such as love and sadness. This book is a great read that may just challenge your entire view of reality.