The Happiness Of Pursuit: What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About The Good Life - Plot & Excerpts
are active processes that are constantly on the lookout for grist for their computational mills: perceived environmental affordances; episodic memories; bits and pieces of presently applicable more or less general knowledge; inner motives and drives; and whatnot. The products of their computations are turned into more memories and more knowledge and sometimes bring about overt action. Because actions have consequences, this thinking core strives at all times to perceive the world (and itself, when it turns its gaze inward) not as a random assemblage of informational odds and ends but as a meaningful web of cause and effect. Because of that, and to distinguish it from other components of what I am, I shall call this part of my mind the effective Self. Although it goes a long way toward defining my unique personality, the effective Self is not confined to my skull, for the simple reason that the concepts represented internally within my brain are hopelessly entangled, in the cause-and-effect sense, with outside objects and events.
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