**1. Introduction**

There is a long debate about what happiness is, which started in Ancient Greece, especially with Aristotle, and that has not yet been resolved. The only consensus that seems to have been established around this theme refers to something that this philosopher had already stated: that happiness is what every human being ultimately seeks [1, 2]. But this is still little, as it still does not capture the essence of the phenomenon. In our understanding, there is a fundamental reason for the stagnation of knowledge on this topic: a lack of interest by psychologists in understanding Aristotle's works in-depth, in which he already offers "good tips" about what happiness is, which can be taken as starting points for identifying what this phenomenon is in essence. In this

work, we then use these "tips" to suggest, with the help of evolutionary science, what true happiness is and then offer a rationale for how pursuing it can generate positive effects on mental health. To achieve this goal, however, we must first provide certain understandings, also with the help of Aristotle and evolutionary science, that serve as a basis to comprehend what true happiness seems to be.

### **2. Basic categorizations pathways and basic emotions**

In a recently published article [3], the main author of this work, argued that humans and other animals share not only categorical thinking, but also certain types of categorization ("what is something?"; "what end to seek?"; "by what means?"; "was there success in accomplishing the end?"), which would be aligned in a mat of categorizations, constituting what he called the basic evaluation process [4]. He hypothesized that within this evaluation process there are five options for basic categorizations pathways (BCP), namely: "identification of patterns in the novelty"; "acquisition of the benefit", "promotion of the good of the other"; "elimination of the threat"; and "escape the threat". Therefore, the basic evaluation process would follow a certain path depending on the type of categorization "what is something?" performed ("a novelty", "a benefit", "an ally (or potential ally) in difficulty", "a threat that can be eliminated", or "a threat that cannot be eliminated").

**Table 1** [5] exposes this idea, highlighting the basic categorizations that our minds ultimately perform1 ; and also what is their usefulness, that is, what adaptive advantage they are able to offer that justified having been mental practices selected by evolution.

Osmo [3] also defended the idea that if the mental architecture of humans is composed of ancestral structures such as BCPs, it is then possible to locate BCP as being at the root of innumerable subjective phenomena of our species, such as emotions. He argued that each BCPs were established as a function of achieving a certain basic end (goal), since it is only with the attainment of such an end that one can come into contact with consequences linked to continuing to survive in hostile conditions. With this in mind, and also from the idea that in the last stage of the BCPs occurs the categorization responsible for evaluating whether or not there was a success in reaching an end, Osmo proposed that emotions can be understood as psychophysiological reactions selected by evolution, mainly because: (1) they directly increase the chances of reaching an end; and (2) increase the chances of realizing whether or not there was a success in achieving an end, which indirectly increases the chances of achieving a basic end next time. In this sense, he suggested that there are two types of emotions, those selected because of "1", which he called emotions of trajectory; and those selected because of "2", which he called emotions of result [7, 8].

The central idea is that at the root of every emotion there is evaluative thinking [9, 10], and that: (1) the evaluative thinking behind the emotions of trajectory are categorizations related to " what end to seek?"; and (2) the evaluative thinking behind the

<sup>1</sup> Humans have a cognitive power that allows them to make more specific categorizations compared to other animals. However, while they may be more accurate, in the end, both our categorizations and theirs seem to "end up" in the same place. By this we mean that, in essential terms, our minds always carry out basic categorizations (for example, "this is a benefit"; "this is a threat"), which are those that proved to be fundamental for survival in the ancestral past [6].


*True Happiness as a Shortcut to Mental Health: A New Theory of Psychopathology… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103131*

#### **Table 1.**

*Basic categorizations pathways (BCPs).*

emotions of the result are categorizations related to "was there success in accomplishing the end?" Thus, the categorizations present in the basic evaluation process would be at the root of basic emotions.

Curiosity, which would be an emotion of trajectory, for example, would come from the categorization that "we must seek the end of identification of patterns in a novelty"; and joy, which is an emotion of result, would come from the categorization that "there was success in achieving this end".

Therefore, and considering the existence of five different BCPs, Osmo [3] suggested that there would be five basic trajectory emotions, namely:


In addition, based on the notion that there are only two possibilities with regard to the result of an action, the success or failure in achieving an end, Osmo [3] also argued that there are, then, two basic emotions of result:

