p.3 When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor. -Samuel Johnson
p.3 Without hope to fuel our dreams and our ambitions, we become captive to whatever is happening in our
immediate environment... The ability to anticipate the future is, in fact, a defining aspect of the human condition.
p.3-4 Hope is an anticipatory emotion, an expectant savoring in our mind of a desired future occurrence
that we believe we can help bring about. It differs from ordinary expectation - that things will continue as they have in
the past - because it is based on a belief that we can, through our own actions, make something turn out better than would
otherwise be expected. Most of us base much of our everyday behavior on such hopes, often without realizing how unique this
ability is.
p.4 We are able to conjure up thoughts and images of the future in our mind and act in response
to them, our behavior then being determined by what is going on inside our head rather than by what is happening in the world
around us. We are thus faced with a choice that no other animal ever has - whether to behave in response to our current
circumstances or to our imagined hopes and expectations.
p.5 Hope is a uniquely human amalgam of desire and expectation that motivates individuals to achieve their
goals and aspirations. It differs from other types of expectation about the future in that: (a) it is based on what are
believed to be realistic predictions, and (b) it leads to actions aimed at achieving the desired goals.
p.5 Hope is a pleasurable subjective state that arises when individuals expect that a desired future goal
is realistically achievable, and that expectation energizes them to initiate activities they believe will help them attain
it... Hope entails making a mental appraisal of the likelihood of a desired future state of affairs, based on prior experience
and available information. The brain analyzes the ways we might achieve the goal and comes up with predictions about the likely
consequences of each of them.
p.5-6 Behavior that is designed to bring about a hoped-for future state is referred to in this book as future-oriented
behavior to differentiate it from behavior that is focused on the present and its immediate extensions.
p.6 Future-oriented behavior is the behavioral signature of hope... Future-oriented individuals,
as Zimbardo (1994) observes, "focus primarily on anticipated consequences of possible action, and
consider liabilities and costs against expected gains." The time frame involved in future-oriented behavior is the out-of-sight,
over-the-horizon future, not the one immediately in front of the individual.
p.7 The capacity for future-oriented behavior evolved over the millennia as our ancestors gradually gained
the ability to anticipate the longer-term outcomes of their actions... the psychologist Paulhan coined the term presentism
in 1925 to characterize those who experience only the present
p.8 Humans are, of course, not the only creatures that engage in behaviors directed toward the future...
We base our future-oriented behavior on conscious consideration of the different options and outcomes we conjure up
in our mind's eye.
p.14 As our ancestors began to unravel the lawful regularities of nature, they became increasingly able
to anticipate future events and extend the range of things they could master... humans became increasingly able to foresee
the likely outcomes of their actions and of events in nature. The opening of this window to the future transformed our species
by making it possible for us to begin to plan and shape our own destiny.
p.14 Mankind has always been fascinated by the predictable. The daily orbit of the sun,
the waxing and waning of the moon, and the changes of the seasons became the first things our ancestors counted on in predicting
the future.
p.15 We interpret new experiences in terms of previous ones and anticipate what is likely to happen on this
basis.
p.16 Predicting what will happen in the future is much like forecasting the weather - it
involves making an appraisal of the likelihood that certain things will occur, based on prior experience. It depends
on understanding the rules and causal chains that link events, so that we can anticipate what is likely to happen in the future.
But the future remains veiled in uncertainty until it actually occurs, so the best we can do is predict the probability
of future occurrences, like a weather announcer... We are able to predict a great many events in such a probabilistic
way
p.18 One of the main functions of education is to provide individuals with a knowledge base that enables
them to anticipate and predict what is likely to happen. One's type of knowledge determines the areas in which one can make
reliable predictions.
p.18 The extent to which our expectations motivate and energize us is proportional to the amount
of hope they generate. This, in turn, depends on how confident we are that our expected good fortune will come to
pass and on how much pleasure we anticipate it will bring... How we see the future determines much of what we do.
p.20 hope is based on a believable expectation that the desired future will actually
happen.
p.20 A great deal of our everyday behavior is shaped by expectations, by assumptions both
conscious and unconscious of what follows what.
p.21 The best we can do at piercing the veil that hides the future from us is to reduce some of
its inherent uncertainty, since this can never be entirely eliminated. As a result, every prediction that we make
will be limited in some way. The more complex the subject and the more distant the time frame, the less accurate our predictions
are likely to be.
p.22 We make predictions by building models that link the variables we believe to be relevant and
specifying, as best we can, the rules that govern their interactions... A model's effectiveness as a predicting device depends,
of course, on the extent to which it captures the critical variables and relationships... most models contain a number of
assumptions, some of which may be quite speculative... Brand (1999) suggests... that the most effective strategy in everyday
life is to try to deal with each of them [JLJ - a range of possible outcomes] so we can be prepared for whatever befalls us.
p.41 The symbolic models that we construct greatly enlarge our range of adaptive behavior by allowing us
to anticipate and predict events, not just respond to them... The most important feature of the symbolic system, however,
is that it can process information independent of any external input. This enables us to create the ideas and images that
characterize conscious thinking and decision making, as well as much of our non-conscious problem-solving activities.
p.44 Imagination and
fantasy thus enable us to evaluate how pleasurable or otherwise a contemplated action would feel, producing information that
adds significantly to the symbolic systems more rational analysis of the proposed action.
p.45 Our most basic information processing
apparatus is concerned with the regulation of vital biological functions
p.52 The ultimate test of understanding
is being able to predict or control whatever is being considered.
p.68 Intellect, imagination, and emotion are the major tools of consciousness.
p.69 Consciousness is what enables us to have a choice in what we respond to and how we respond to it. We
can use the model of the world we have constructed to consider various behavioral options and anticipate their future outcomes
before deciding which one to pursue... Churchland (1996) believes that choosing where to focus what he calls our steerable
attention may be the closest we get to freely determining our behavior.
p.80 We are, for instance, able to anticipate whether we are likely to be happy, sad, or angry about something
that has not yet happened, simply by conjuring it up in our imagination... hope indicates that we anticipate being
happy in the future.
p.115 As their experiences accumulate and their models start to take shape, growing children begin to anticipate
what is likely to happen within familiar situations.
p.176 Other definitions [JLJ - of hope] include... 'an arduous search for a future good of some kind that
is realistically possible, but not yet visible' (Lynch, 1974). Shackle (1990) points out that 'hopes differ from fantasies
in that they involve imaginative expectations that are constrained by what we believe may plausibly happen. Enjoyment by anticipation
is not derived from mere day dreams, but by imagining a future course of events which seems credible to us as an outcome of
our planned actions.'
p.176 Haith et al. (1994) observe, 'In light of the importance of future-orientation in organisms, it is
puzzling that so little attention has been paid to future-oriented processes in the psychological literature.' ... According
to Samuel Johnson: 'The future is purchased by the present. It is not possible to secure distant or permanent happiness but
by the forbearance of some immediate gratification' (Brand, 1999). The Dalai Lama and Cutler (1998) also point out: 'Dealing
with expectations is a tricky issue. If you have excessive expectations without a proper foundation, that usually leads to
problems; on the other hand, without expectation and hope, there can be no progress. Some hope is essential, but finding the
proper balance is not easy.'
p.177 Dennett (1991) maintains that the fundamental purpose of the brain is to produce a future
- that our brains are, in essence, anticipation machines... He notes that humans build a mental
model of the world, based on the information they have gleaned from experience, and use this to generate rules and principles
that enable them to make predictions that are independent of what is going on in their current environment. Craik
(1943) was probably the first to conceive of the brain as a prediction machine. He proposed that much of our thinking involved
the mental simulation of possible future outcomes.
p.177 Frank (1961) observes: "For it is only to the extent that a person can successfully predict
the results of his acts that he can behave in a way as to maximize his chances for success and minimize those for failure.
Thus everyone is strongly motivated constantly to check the validity of his assumptions
p.179-180 As Johnston (1999) points out, 'few of us realize that our brain creates what is, in effect,
a virtual reality. The idea is so contrary to our common sense that few rational people would consider such a proposal
to be an important scientific insight that is essential for understanding human nature, but it is.' Mountcastle (1975) also
observes: 'Each of us believes himself to live directly within the world that surrounds him, to sense objects and
events precisely, to live in real and current time. These are perceptual illusions, for each of us confronts the world from
a brain linked to what is 'out there' by a few million fragile sensory nerve fibers. These are no high-fidelity recorders,
for they accentuate certain stimulus features, neglect other. The central neuron is a story-teller with regard to the afferent
nerve fibers; and he is never completely trustworthy, allowing distortions of quality and measure, within a strained but isomorphic
spatial relation between 'outside' and 'inside.' Sensation is an abstraction, not a replication of the real world.'
p.183 Gregory (1986) observes that 'computers cannot understand symbols (or indeed anything else
either), though they can manipulate symbols according to formal rules with consummate speed and accuracy, far surpassing our
fumbling efforts. They do not understand the questions they are asked or the answers they provide.' Trefil (1997)
argues that brains and computers are not really all that alike, that they work in different ways and are good at different
things.
