(December 13, 2017 at 10:57 am)Transcended Dimensions Wrote:   But like I was saying, if my worldview really is word salad, then it would instead be because I have no understanding of life whatsoever. 

A-yup.

(December 13, 2017 at 8:53 am)Hammy Wrote: "Good" is a word. But the good is not

---

(December 13, 2017 at 8:49 am)bennyboy Wrote:  IF hedonic states are good, they are intrinsically good, but that's just by your definition.  It really doesn't mean anything to say that.

Isn't that the way words always work?

"If neurological states are real, they are real, but that's just by your definition. It doesn't really mean anything to say that neurology is real."

You could say that about anything lol.

We use words to label things in reality that are real. No one can or has to 'prove that their definition is the correct one'.

Even science can't do that.

If I say roses are intrinsically rosy, what am I really saying?

There's no revelation of truth to be found there, just a reworking of word forms.

---

(December 13, 2017 at 10:57 am)Transcended Dimensions Wrote: I, myself, have never experienced any real joy, good value, or beauty independent of my positive emotions and I have never experienced any real horror, tragedy, despair, bad value, etc. in my life independent of my negative emotions.

It's like you are programmed to respond to words without actually understanding them.

You have never experienced any real joy independent of your positive emotions? Ermmm. . . maybe that's because joy is the name for one kind or category of positive emotion? It's like saying you've never experienced a table independent of flatness. Would you really want to go on for 100 pages about how tables are intrinsically flat-topped?

(December 13, 2017 at 2:14 pm)bennyboy Wrote:

(December 13, 2017 at 8:53 am)Hammy Wrote: "Good" is a word. But the good is not

---

Isn't that the way words always work?

"If neurological states are real, they are real, but that's just by your definition. It doesn't really mean anything to say that neurology is real."

You could say that about anything lol.

We use words to label things in reality that are real. No one can or has to 'prove that their definition is the correct one'.

Even science can't do that.

If I say roses are intrinsically rosy, what am I really saying?

There's no revelation of truth to be found there, just a reworking of word forms.

---

(December 13, 2017 at 10:57 am)Transcended Dimensions Wrote: I, myself, have never experienced any real joy, good value, or beauty independent of my positive emotions and I have never experienced any real horror, tragedy, despair, bad value, etc. in my life independent of my negative emotions.

It's like you are programmed to respond to words without actually understanding them.

You have never experienced any real joy independent of your positive emotions?  Ermmm. . . maybe that's because joy is the name for one kind or category of positive emotion?  It's like saying you've never experienced a table independent of flatness.  Would you really want to go on for 100 pages about how tables are intrinsically flat-topped?

I could, for example, attribute any name to sight.  But sight would still be sight.  This is what I mean here.  Positive emotions are still good even though we could very well attribute a different term to them. Let me present to you a study that supports this whole view that there are labels and then there are actual versions of those said things. It is a food and reward study. In this study, it is pointed out that wanting and liking would be our positive emotions since the reward wanting and liking would be our positive emotions. As you can see here, there is a label version of wanting and liking and then there is actual wanting and liking.

Quote:We have found a special hedonic hotspot that is crucial for reward 'liking' and 'wanting' (and codes reward learning too). The opioid hedonic hotspot is shown in red above. It works together with another hedonic hotspot in the more famous nucleus accumbens to generate pleasure 'liking'.
‘Liking’ and ‘wanting’ food rewards: Brain substrates and roles in eating disorders
Kent C. Berridge 2009 Mar 29.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2717031/

Time to move out of your moms house.

(December 13, 2017 at 2:27 pm)mh.brewer Wrote: Time to move out of your moms house.

I have added more to my previous post to back up the claim in that post if it sounded silly.  I presented a study there to back it up.

(December 13, 2017 at 2:41 pm)Transcended Dimensions Wrote:

(December 13, 2017 at 2:27 pm)mh.brewer Wrote: Time to move out of your moms house.

I have added more to my previous post to back up the claim in that post if it sounded silly.  I presented a study there to back it up.

As if I read your posts any more. Give me the page and/or number and maybe..............

(December 13, 2017 at 3:00 pm)mh.brewer Wrote:

(December 13, 2017 at 2:41 pm)Transcended Dimensions Wrote: I have added more to my previous post to back up the claim in that post if it sounded silly.  I presented a study there to back it up.

As if I read your posts any more. Give me the page and/or number and maybe..............

Here:

https://atheistforums.org/thread-51313-p...pid1672500

(December 13, 2017 at 3:03 pm)Transcended Dimensions Wrote:

(December 13, 2017 at 3:00 pm)mh.brewer Wrote: As if I read your posts any more. Give me the page and/or number and maybe..............

Here:

https://atheistforums.org/thread-51313-p...pid1672500

What the hell does that have to do with you moving out of your moms house?

(December 13, 2017 at 2:14 pm)bennyboy Wrote: If I say roses are intrinsically rosy, what am I really saying?

There's no revelation of truth to be found there, just a reworking of word forms.

Your analogy makes no sense.

The question there, is what "intrinsic rosiness" refers to.

If someone defines what intrinsic goodness refers to, and it refers to something real in the world. i.e. happiness (for example) . . . then than makes sense.

If someone just claims roses are intrisically rosy, then the question is what they actually mean.

"Just a reworking of word forms."

Words just refer to things in the world. "Goodness" refers to what someone thinks is good. "Evidence" refers to what someone thinks is evidence. "Yellow" refers to what someone thinks is yellow. It's not like someone has taken the word "yellow" and used it to refer to a black circle or something. Goodness already correlates with lots of positive things such as happiness, success, etc, etc. There are lots of ways something can be good or moral. So when someone says that they define morality to be whatever increases overall happiness in the long run (for example) then you can't say that what they refer to doesn't exist . . . if it does exist.

It's not like someone is just labelling something that has nothing to do with goodness. Because goodness doesn't only have one meaning anyway. And there's certainly nothing about happiness that says it can't be goodness.

No one ever has to prove whether their definition is the correct one. Definitions are premises, that can be accepted or rejected. Proving things isn't the point of definitions.

And it's also important not to confuse a semantic definition with a conceptual definition. When a philosopher asks what justice is they are not asking for a dictionary definition of the word "justice". They are asking what the fundamentals of justice is all about, and what justice should be considered to be about, and how it operates in the world.

The same is the case when someone says what they think real value or goodness or morality or whatever is. They're not saying "This is what the dictionary says it is". They're making a conceptual definition.

You can draw an analogy between health and ethics. No one has to agree 100% what health is exactly for it to be very clear that some things are definitely not healthy and some things definitely are.

And it's like, how you don't need to know what a perfect diet is in order to know that there's a clear difference between food and poison.

There doesn't have to be clear answers in practice for morality to be objective, definitions don't have to be proved (which never happens EVER with ANYTHING anyway!) for morality to be objective, and morals don't have to be universal for morality to be objective.

If the premise is that morality is whatever increases happiness overall... then that's a premise for you to accept or reject. It makes no sense to say that's not objective when there are objective answers to it. If what is meant by morality is whatever increases happiness overall in the long run, and there are right and wrong answers in principle to whatever increases happiness in the long run, then there are objective answers to those questions and morality is objective.

My Premise:  The premise would be that my own personal definition of good and bad does not say that good and bad are concepts or ideas.  Rather, good and bad are actual things like colors.  Colors would not be concepts, ideas, or things in the physical world, but are mental states.  For example, when you see the color red, that is a mental state.  It would be a visual state.  According to my personal definition of good and bad, good would be our positive emotional states and bad would be our negative emotional states.  Haven't you ever heard people say "I feel good today" or "I feel bad today?"  This is to be taken literally, according to my personal definition of good and bad.

Positive emotions would, therefore, be a synonym for good and beauty while negative emotions would be a synonym for bad, horrible, and disgusting.  I will go ahead and say that positive emotions would be like cheerful colors such as yellow, pink, and purple while negative emotions would be like colors such as brown, black, and dark red.  If you want your life to be in a shade of yellow, pink, and purple, then you need to experience those colors.  Experiencing those colors is the only way to perceive (see) those colors.  If you cannot see them due to being blind, then you can only perceive the idea of those colors, but not the actual colors themselves.  This means you cannot see things in your life as actually being good and beautiful as long as you cannot feel any positive emotion.  You can only have the idea of good value and beauty in your mind, but you wouldn't be able to actually see that goodness and beauty.

Likewise, negative emotions color our lives in a shade of somber, angry, sad, miserable, etc. colors such as brown, black, and dark red and this is what we should avoid.  With all of this being said, my point here is that, if you want your life to be good and beautiful (or, according to my colors analogy, if you want your life to be in a shade of yellow, pink, and purple), then you need to feel positive emotions in your life.  Negative emotions literally make our lives horrible and disgusting and, like I said earlier, we need to avoid negative emotions and have as much positive emotions in our lives as we can.  Now that I have shared to you my premise, you can see why I refer to positive emotions as being the inner holy light since they are literally everything to our human existence since they make our whole entire reality something good and beautiful.

Positive and negative emotions are the only real good and bad things in life.  It would be no different than saying that the only real colors in life would be the colors we visualize.  Not having positive emotions and being in a negative emotional state such as the worst hopeless state of your life would be like a person blind to the colors purple, pink, and yellow who can only see the colors dark red, brown, and black.  That was my personal experience and this personal experience is the very reason why I have this definition of good and bad.  When people say things such as that we create our own value, heaven, or hell on Earth through our way of thinking alone regardless of our emotional state, this is actually false.  It can only be our positive emotions that create a beautiful paradise for us here on Earth and it can only be our negative emotions such as hopelessness and despair that create a horrible hell for us here on Earth.

Therefore, we as human beings are not the ones in charge of creating a beautiful or horrible life for us.  It can only be our emotions that do.  It's about what is experienced on the inside and not about looking at things on the outside.  That is why my personal definition of good and bad is about what experience (mental state) you are having in your life.  As long as you do not have the inner experience to make your life beautiful, then your life cannot be beautiful.  What we experience on the inside is how we perceive the world on the outside.  Therefore, as long as you are completely dead on the inside, then everything else in life will be dead from your perspective.  To say that one's life can still be good, beautiful, and worth living when said person is dead on the inside would be nonsense.  According to my worldview, a lack of positive emotions is the only way we can become dead and empty on the inside.

Sure, we can become alive in terms of negative emotions such as fear and anger, but we would be dead in terms of having good value and beauty in our lives as long as we are not feeling any positive emotions.  Positive emotions are like positive energy that make our entire world positive, negative emotions are like negative energy that make our entire world negative, and being in any non emotional mental state such as making a moral assessment or an intellectual value judgment would be a state of mind where you are dead and empty on the inside as long as you are not feeling any positive emotion to make your world beautiful or a negative emotion to make your life horrible.  Lastly, feeling happiness, fun, enjoyment, and profound positive emotions such as love and beauty would bring your life the greatest and most profound beauty, joy, and good while.  Feeling a normal, constant, stable positive mood would only bring your life a smaller, basic level of good value and beauty in your life.  Therefore, the real goal in life should be to have as much fun and to enjoy our lives as much as we can.  I would do so all the while choosing to not make reckless decisions.