A Comforting Fiction

Last month I presented a bit of research on how our bodies’ chemicals appear to drive, direct, and dictate (ie ‘condition’) our behaviour by trying to maximize the body’s feelings of pleasure and minimize its feelings of pain. They do this because that’s been a successful evolutionary strategy for millions of years (ie it’s in ‘our’ and our bodies’ best interests), and they do it with a remarkably small arsenal of chemicals. When we feel good, we want to do the thing again, and when we do it again, our bodies reinforce the behaviour by generating more of the pleasure chemicals. And conversely they convey painful signals (like feelings of fear and rage, and hunger pangs) when they want to direct us to avoid some other behaviours. The thought process in that article has caused me yet again to make some minor modifications to my model of how the body seemingly actually directs and determines our behaviour, which I’ve shown in the figures above. Here’s a brief step-through of the example…