Budistid on õnnelikud
Eesti Päevalehest, 27. mail 2003
Kaivo Kopli

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Teadlaste sõnul on neil nüüd tõendeid, et budistid on tõesti õnnelikumad ja rahulikumad kui teised inimesed.

USA-s läbi viidud katsetused on näidanud, et budistide ajus on hea tuju ja positiivsete tunnetega seotud piirkonnad eriti aktiivsed. Teine uuring aga tõestas, et budistlik meditatsioon aitab inimesi rahustada.

California San Francisco ülikooli teadlased avastasid, et praktikaga on võimalik taltsutada aju emotsioonide keskust, milleks on mandeltuum ehk amügdala ja mis kontrollib hirmu, ängi, ehmatuse ja ilmselt ka viha tekkimist. Kogenud budistid, kes regulaarselt mediteerivad, ehmatasid, üllatusid ja vihastasid märksa vähem kui niiöelda tavalised inimesed.

"Kõige mõistlikum hüpotees on selline, et miski kohusetundlikus budistlikus praktikas annabki tulemuseks õnnetunde, mida me kõik ihaldame," oskas uuringuid juhtinud Paul Ekman avastuse selgituseks öelda.

Eraldi uuringus kasutasid Wisconsini ülikooli teadlased uut skänneritehnoloogiat ajutegevuse jälgimiseks, võttes katsejänesteks rühma budiste. Nende testid näitasid, et vasakpoolsed eesmised ajusagarad huugavad budapraktikutel kogu aeg, mitte ainult mediteerimisel. See piirkond on seotud enesekontrolli, ettenägelikkuse, meeleolu ja positiivsete emotsioonidega.

Seega oletavad nüüd teadlased, et budistidel on suurema tõenäosusega positiivsed tunded ja hea tuju. Ajakirjas New Scientist avastusest kirjutanud Duke'i ülikooli professor Owen Flanagan ei usu, et Tiibeti budistid sünnivadki mingi "õnnegeeniga", mis selle ajupiirkonna aktiviseerib. Pigem on budistlikus praktikas midagi sellist, mis toodab õnnelikkust, ütles ta.

Amügdala osas tehtud uurimuse kommentaariks ütles Flanagan, et ilmselt siis suudavad budistid kontrollida seda ajupiirkonda, mis tavapäraselt töötab automaatselt. Lihtsalt ratsionaalselt mõtlemisega on raske ületada amügdala "tundeid", lisas ta.

 

SAMAL TEEMAL

 

Looking happy

* 05 July 2003
* From New Scientist Print Edition.
* Andrew Norris Warrington, Cheshire, UK

Mary Midgley makes the fine point that observation and experience play an important part in judging the happiness of a fellow human (14 June, p 30). But to my mind what was being said in Owen Flanagan's piece on happiness was that both brain scans and observation play a part (24 May, p 44).

Psychologists will tell you that some people can become very good at "acting happy". They can fool even those they are close to. So intuition is not enough on its own. And Buddhists are a very special case, in that it is possible that all that their hours of meditation achieve is to appear "outwardly" calm. As scientists we have to put all the facts together and not just run down one avenue. We must listen to both logic and intuition.

 

Measuring happiness

* 14 June 2003
* From New Scientist Print Edition.
* Mary Midgley Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Your issue of 24 May contains two delightful examples of the way in which evidence from physical sciences is now taken to settle questions that visibly need evidence of a quite different kind.

In his article on happiness Owen Flanagan writes that, as a result of certain brain scans, "we can now hypothesise...that those apparently happy, calm Buddhist souls...really are happy" ("Watching him watching you"). So, had those results been different, would that have proved that they were not happy? Or again, if the tests had shown some unmistakably miserable people to be happy, would that constitute a proof that they were so? Or would it just show faults in the tests?

The article about whether chimps should be put in the same family as humans because of the similarity of their DNA concludes that "reclassification would inflame the moral and philosophical debate" ("Rival males are the ultimate turn-on"). But how could discovering similarity of DNA affect our duties to any being? If we were dealing with aliens, would their unrelatedness mean that it did not matter what we did to them? No calculations about DNA can ever tell us about these things.

The reason why we should consider such creatures as chimps is that they are complex, sensitive social beings. We know this directly through the social perceptions with which we, as similarly complex creatures, are equipped. Those perceptions are central to our moral capacities. They also enable us to judge the happiness of others.

 

Laying the ghost in the machinePremium

* 24 May 2003
* Magazine issue 2396

"Though I wanted to think that everything was false, it was necessary that the 'I' who was doing the thinking was something; and noticing that this truth, I think, therefore I am, was so solid and sure that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were incapable of upsetting it, I judged that I could accept it unhesitatingly as the first principle of the philosophy that I sought." René Descartes, 1637

"I think, therefore I am" is probably the most famous phrase in Western philosophy and certainly continues to cause the biggest problems for those studying mind and brain. In his thought experiment, Descartes systematically doubted everything, beginning with his sitting by the fire in his dressing gown - because he might be dreaming. He declared he could not doubt that he was thinking: thus his famous assertion.

From that flowed "dualism", the view that the mind is special, made of some separate immaterial thing that can exist after death. This is the "ghost in the machine", a separate "I" that can be identified with the soul, with consciousness, with free will and with that feeling that somewhere inside my head is a tiny me sitting at the controls.

Descartes' contemporary, Princess Elizabeth of Holland, immediately pointed out the problem with that point of view: how can a separate immaterial me ...

 

The colour of happiness

* 24 May 2003
* Owen Flanagan
* Magazine issue 2396

What can neuroscientists learn from Buddhists? Owen Flanagan, professor of philosophy at Duke University, looks at the remarkable effects of meditation on the brain

MEMBERS of my tribe - we call ourselves philosophical naturalists - treat all talk of souls and spirits as metaphorical. We think of the seat of the soul as the brain, in concert with the rest of the nervous system. The Dalai Lama speaks of a "luminous consciousness" that transcends death and which he thinks might not have brain correlates, but we believe even this must be realised neurally.

So an interesting question for neuroscientists is how do the brains of Buddhist practitioners - or indeed any other wise, happy and virtuous people - light up? How are the qualities of happiness, serenity and loving kindness that arise from the Buddhist practice of mindful meditation reflected in the brain? How does that subjective experience manifest itself?

Neuroscience is beginning to provide answers. Using scanning techniques such as PET and functional MRI, we can study the brain in action. We now ...
The complete article is 784 words long.

 

Who do we think we are?

* 17 May 2003
*
* Magazine issue 2395

We've been obsessed with human nature ever since we knew we had one. Now, barriers are coming down and disciplines joining forces for what will be a truly epic journey

COPERNICUS took away our claim as humans to a special position at the centre of the Universe. Darwin forced us to take our place among the animals. Now the last refuges of mystery are being invaded as science begins to take apart human nature itself.

Psychologists of every hue - cognitive, linguistic, developmental, social and evolutionary - have been joined by neuroscientists, neurologists, ethologists, artificial intelligence experts, philosophers and economists in the rush to solve this last great problem. The scale and scope of activity is unprecedented.

Nor is anyone shy about announcing their findings to the public: never before have there been so many best-selling books on mind and brain from so many different thinkers. And no sooner has one proclaimed that a profound mystery - consciousness, say - has been explained, than half a dozen others counterclaim that the mystery has merely grown deeper.

Amid this great rush, ...

 

The Mind Doesn't Work That Way by Jerry Fodor

* 16 December 2000
* Douglas Hofstadter
* Magazine issue 2269

The Mind Doesn't Work That Way by Jerry Fodor, MIT Press, £15.95, ISBN 0262062127

"SO FAR, what our cognitive science has found out about the mind is mostly that we don't know how it works." Thus intones philosopher Jerry Fodor in the closing lines of his short new book The Mind Doesn't Work That Way. As the title hints, this work was written largely as an antidote to psychologist Steven Pinker's recent bestseller How the Mind Works, and in particular, it is a riposte to what Fodor labels the "relentlessly cheerful" tone adopted by Pinker.

Fodor's key thesis is that much of human thought is "global", whereas computational models of thought are "local" or "syntactic". Never, supposedly, shall the twain meet. So, Fodor says, there is something seriously wrong with the project of understanding the mind from the bottom up, where "bottom" is a set of relatively simple and independent ...

 

Self conscious

* 28 March 1998
* From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.

Ned Block, Owen Flanagan and Guven Güzeldere's The Nature of Consciousness comprises 50 core papers from the consciousness debate. To trace the manoeuvres of its cast of mystics, pessimists and materialists is to see how rational inquiry proceeds over territory that science cannot (yet) confidently tread. Anyone possessing a well-thumbed pop Dennett or Penrose will covet this handsome "textbook". Published by MIT Press, $29.95, ISBN 0262522101.