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Plato famously described the mind as a chariot, an analogy that has been set up and knocked down more times than Ricky Hatton. Its critics rarely offer a persuasive replacement, however, so it’s interesting to read the late Sir Stuart Hampshire’s very different explanation:

Let it be accepted that we have to borrow the vocab that is to describe the operations of our minds from the vocab that describes the public and observable transactions of social life. The picture of the mind that gives substance to the notion of practical reason is a picture of a council chamber, in which the agent’s contrary interests are represented around the table, each speaking for itself.

The chairman, who represents the will, weighs the argument and the intensity of the feeling conveyed by the arguments and the intensity of the feeling conveyed by the arguments, and then issues an order to be acted on. The order is a decision and an intention, to be followed by its execution. This policy is the outcome of debate in the council chamber.

This analogy is intended to reinforce Hampshire’s contention that the natural place for moral judgements is in deliberation. He writes:

It has been a mistake of moral philosophers in the tradition of British empiricism to concentrate attention on the judgements we make as criticisms of the behaviour of others, or on comments that we may make on our own past conduct.

Also a recurrent error in much modern psychology.

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The last episode of Alone in the Wild is tonight. The incredible Ed Wardle continues his journey into the Yukon wilderness, while we watch his beard grow and his stomach shrink and ask ourselves why he ever agreed to do this. I’ll never read an adventure book the same way again.

One thing that’s amazed me throughout is Ed’s psychological resilience. In the last episode he convincingly told us (I paraphrase):

My chest hurts, my legs hurt, I’m hungry and sore. My pack is rubbing against my back. But I’m happy. I’m happy.

In his award-winning book Stumbling on Happiness, the psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains one reason for this:

We might think of people as having a psychological immune system that defends the mind against unhappiness in much the same way that the physical immune system defends the body against illness. This metaphor is unusually appropriate. The physical immune system must strike a balance between two competing needs: the need to recognise and destroy foreign invaders such as viruses and bacteria, and the need to recognise and respect the body’s own cells.

If the physical immune system is hypoactive, it fails to defend the body against itself and we are stricken with autoimmune disease. A healthy physical immune system must balance its competing needs and find a way to defend us well – but not too well.

ps. More prosaically, for those wondering why Ed’s so obsessed with salmon, the answer is here.

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The dreadful Guardian Saturday magazine reports on a landmark 1976 psychology study:

Two American researchers, Ellen Langer and Judith Rodin, gave a group of elderly nursing home residents a plant to care for. Another group in the same home were given plants, but told that nurses would take care of them.

Three weeks later, those who had cared for their own plants reported much higher levels of happiness than those who hadn’t; 18 months later, their health and levels of activity had improved and, most significantly, fewer of those residents had died.

The author concluded from this that caring for others, even for plants, can make us happier - and even extend our lives.

I conclude that taking part in pseudo-scientific experiments can make us happier - and even extend our lives.

Perhaps someone can explain to me why my conclusion isn’t valid?

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What is luck? Do some people have more of it than others? If they do, where do they get it?

The new Harry Potter film is tremendous - no matter what the reviews say. I can’t say what it would be like if you weren’t a massive fan who’d read all the books several times, but I enjoyed it.

The film features one of J. K. Rowling’s best creations: “liquid luck”, or felix felicis. This potion gives anyone who drinks it good fortune for a short period. Harry wins a small vial in a contest and takes it in order to convince Professor Horace Slughorn to give up a memory. You can see the results in this bootleg. It looks very much like confidence.

In another scene, Harry pretends to slip some felix felicis in Ron’s drink, to boost his morale before an important Quidditch match. Ron plays perfectly, embued with near-magical powers by his mental state:

The link between luck and confidence is made explicit elsewhere. Taking too much of the potion, we are told in the book, can cause giddiness, recklessness and overconfidence. When Harry does have a sip, Rowling writes:

Slowly but surely, an exhilarating sense of infinite opportunity stole through him; he felt as though he could have done anything, anything at all … Harry got to his feet, smiling, brimful of confidence.

Chance, by definition, is what we cannot control. But luck is not wholly implacable. A little observation of our lives tells us that some people attract more of it than others.

In his book The Luck Factor the psychologist Richard Wiseman describes the behavioural habits “scientifically proven to help you attract good fortune”. Lucky people are “social magnets”, he says, who build “networks of luck”. They have a relaxed attitude towards life. They are open to new experiences. Lucky people listen to their hunches and gut feelings, and they anticipate good fortune in the future. They expect their interactions with others to be successful.

Wiseman erroneously gives a list of actions, instead of the disposition they spring from. But he is correct to say that Fortune has likes and dislikes. Above all, she is attracted to confidence.

The idea that Fortune cannot be influenced comes from Christian philosophy. Ever since the Christian philosopher Boethius first called Fortune the sightless goddess in the sixth century AD, people have liked to imagine that she is thoughtless and indiscriminate in the bestowal of her gifts. In Titian’s painting, Fortune is symbolised by the wheel, turning inexorably, careless of who it crushes.

Classical philosophers saw more clearly. Luck is not blind. As the Roman historian Livy recognised, she prefers certain individuals.

Livy gave us the phrase “Fortune favours the brave”. Courage, however, is not so valuable for us. In our time, Fortune prefers the confident.

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Gnomic baseball sage Yogi Berra asked that question, and it’s a good one. For sportsmen, it’s particularly perplexing. But in our daily lives we all encounter the problem: can you think and act at the same time?

An excellent New Scientist article explores this subject by looking at the case of Ralph Guldahl. At one point, Guldahl was the greatest golfer in the world, a model of metronomic consistency. Then, without warning, he lost form and faded away. The trigger, according to golfing mythology? Guldahl’s authorship of a book (not a book!): Groove Your Golf.

I’ve written before about confidence and the paradox of hedonism and the New Scientist has some evidence to support this theory:

Last year, psychologists Kristin Flegal of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Michael Anderson of the University of St Andrews in the UK showed that thinking aloud had a lasting effect: after explaining a successful putt, skilled golfers took twice as many putts to sink their next ball. In fact, explaining at length had the effect of temporarily wiping out all their expertise.

The problem stems from the need to describe movements that have become instinctive, in effect switching the brain from autopilot to manual. To make matters worse, the focus shifts from motor skills to language, and the need to find words to explain something normally done without thinking.

In the end - and with pleasing roundedness - the article concludes that the book did not destroy Guldahl’s game. But there’s definitely something there.

I wonder if what always seems to me like the high incidence of OCD-type behaviours among sportsmen - Wayne Rooney’s fondness for the vacuum cleaner being the best known example - has anything to do with their need to avoid thinking? (For other examples, see Tait, Matthew and Bentley, David).

And, if this is the case: will the increasing importance of confidence in general inspire greater levels of OCD across the population as a whole?

Just a thought…

UPDATE (30.07.09): Jonah Lehrer has an interesting article on choking in Observer Sports Monthly. His conclusion: that having a meaningless phrase running through your head can stop you bottling it. An idea he clearly got from the Simpsons episode.

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