Emotions are intrinsically good and bad

[The Grand Nudger]

You could have a positive emotion which is a good emotional value judgment while, at the same time, having a thought form of a good value judgment.  I have never said that it would always be a situation where you would only have one or the other.  However, there are times where you can have just one or the other.

What times, about what?

If you were in a mindless state and did not judge anything as good or bad while feeling bliss from a drug, then this would be an example of having an emotional good value judgment and not having any thought form of value judgment.

If I'm feeling emotion I'm not in a mindless state.  That's just a term of art. You still haven't given me any reason to assume that my thoughts and my emotions are a different thing.  I'm asking for an example, not a reassertion.

 Another example would be if you had a mental condition known as anhedonia which does not allow you to feel positive emotions.  You could think that your life is good, but you would only be having a thought form of a good value judgment without the emotional good value judgment.

You're playing fast and loose with anhedonia....but if the only people to whom your worldview applies or might even be conceptually useful are people with that condition........nothing you can say will change that for them.  No amount of thinking happy thoughts will suddenly mean that they feel pleasure. I agree, that's no way to live...most of us don't.

Meanwhile, I'm still right here, not suffering from anhedonia...still possessing positive value judgements and associated positive feelings........and still not hearing the voices of the angels..TD......

[Edwardo Piet]

I was currently focused on the discussion me and Khemikal were having.  If you are willing to have this type of discussion, then I would be glad to have it.

YAY! Yes please. I would like that very much. Please forgive me for my childish "YAY!" I do seem to have always come across as having multiple personalities. I'm normally like this. Some would say I was 'larger than life' others would say I was a 'weirdo'.

Anyway, I'd like to start by asking the following:

What is your opinion with regards to my position that if positive emotions are truly intrinsic goodness ™ and if negative emotions truly are intrinsic badness ™ but we also assume that a more intense positive emotion is better than a less intense positive emotion, and a more intense negative emotion is worse than a less intense negative emotion -- then doesn't this lead to your whole theory eventually reducing to an Reductio Ad Absurdum whereby the goal is to have ANY positive emotion, and you don't even need more than one, as long as it's as intense as possible. Say the emotion of ecstasy, euphoria, or bliss. And the idea is to stay in that state as much as possible. Which isn't realistically functional in the real world. And doesn't your theory also lead to the absurd converse -- the idea being to never have ANY negative emotion.... even when things like fear and anger are often very normal and healthy reactions to threats?

[bennyboy]

Let me apologize.  I still wouldn't define anything about feelings as intrinsically good or bad, but the way I said it was unnecessarily rude.

Well what you said was that I didn't know what intrisic meant but I obviously do lol.

I don't think emotions is intrinsically good or bad either. But suffering is intrinsically bad.

No, it's really not. Without the capacity to suffer, we'd be gone in about two generations. We'd be walking on glass, sticking our hands in fire, and throwing babies out the window to see if they could fly.

Suffering means things are going badly FOR you, but the capacity to feel when things are going badly is most certainly good.

You could, I guess, say that for most people, suffering is an intrinsically bad feeling, with "bad" being defined as subjectively negative. But to say that suffering is intrinsically bad in a global sense just isn't how words work.

[The Grand Nudger]

Wouldn't that fall under his header of "some intrinsically bad suffering is better than more intrinsically bad suffering" ?

A little bit of choking keeps us from swallowing the big crayon. The pain is still bad, in and of itself......but we can take solace in it's utility, at least, lol.

[Edwardo Piet]

No, it's really not.  Without the capacity to suffer, we'd be gone in about two generations.

Which is a better outcome than suffering. Non-existence is neutral.

Yes, suffering to some extent can be an instrumental good but that good is only instrumental with regards to it reducing even greater suffering in the longer run.

E.g. I have a vaccine... which hurts. But it prevents a disease which would make me suffer a lot more. Having a vaccine would be bad if it didn't achieve anything. It's because vaccines prevent even greater suffering that they're good.

I'm an anti-natalist. To me the second best world to a world where everyone is in a constant state of bliss (which is an unrealistic world and yet it seems to be what TD is striving for)... would be a world that didn't exist. The current world we live in contains a lot more bad than good. The extreme suffering that some people go through on this planet... is not worth the everyday 'sort of doing okay' that you and me experience.

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Wouldn't that fall under his header of "some intrinsically bad suffering is better than more intrinsically bad suffering" ?

^

Of course.

The point is there's bad and then there's worse. Bad is still intrinsically bad. But worse is also intrinsically bad but to greater degree. Bad is better than worse.

One thing that always stops me re-attempting suicide is the fact that I am likely to fail and it will cause me greater suffering. I could also survive but end up brain damaged or worse.

[Transcended Dimensions]

You could have a positive emotion which is a good emotional value judgment while, at the same time, having a thought form of a good value judgment.  I have never said that it would always be a situation where you would only have one or the other.  However, there are times where you can have just one or the other.

What times, about what?

If you were in a mindless state and did not judge anything as good or bad while feeling bliss from a drug, then this would be an example of having an emotional good value judgment and not having any thought form of value judgment.

If I'm feeling emotion I'm not in a mindless state.  That's just a term of art. You still haven't given me any reason to assume that my thoughts and my emotions are a different thing.  I'm asking for an example, not a reassertion.

 Another example would be if you had a mental condition known as anhedonia which does not allow you to feel positive emotions.  You could think that your life is good, but you would only be having a thought form of a good value judgment without the emotional good value judgment.

You're playing fast and loose with anhedonia....but if the only people to whom your worldview applies or might even be conceptually useful are people with that condition........nothing you can say will change that for them.  No amount of thinking happy thoughts will suddenly mean that they feel pleasure.  I agree, that's no way to live...most of us don't.

Meanwhile, I'm still right here, not suffering from anhedonia...still possessing positive value judgements and associated positive feelings........and still not hearing the voices of the angels..TD......

You could feel a positive emotion such as a feeling of excitement from the idea of going to the carnival while, at the same time, thinking it is a good idea to not go to that carnival.  Also, thoughts and emotions are a different thing.  A thought is just an idea or some words going through your mind while emotions would be euphoric and dysphoric states such as feelings of sexual arousal (a euphoric state) or a feeling of hopelessness or misery (a dysphoric state).

---

I was currently focused on the discussion me and Khemikal were having.  If you are willing to have this type of discussion, then I would be glad to have it.

YAY! Yes please. I would like that very much. Please forgive me for my childish "YAY!" I do seem to have always come across as having multiple personalities. I'm normally like this. Some would say I was 'larger than life' others would say I was a 'weirdo'.

Anyway, I'd like to start by asking the following:

What is your opinion with regards to my position that if positive emotions are truly intrinsic goodness ™ and if negative emotions truly are intrinsic badness ™ but we also assume that a more intense positive emotion is better than a less intense positive emotion, and a more intense negative emotion is worse than a less intense negative emotion -- then doesn't this lead to your whole theory eventually reducing to an Reductio Ad Absurdum whereby the goal is to have ANY positive emotion, and you don't even need more than one, as long as it's as intense as possible. Say the emotion of ecstasy, euphoria, or bliss. And the idea is to stay in that state as much as possible. Which isn't realistically functional in the real world. And doesn't your theory also lead to the absurd converse -- the idea being to never have ANY negative emotion.... even when things like fear and anger are often very normal and healthy reactions to threats?

Again, making wise decisions is still vital even without any emotions or the respective emotion to allow you to see good and bad values like how a sighted person would visualize colors. So, if your goal was to not have the most intense positive emotion of your life for only one moment and to instead have positive emotions throughout your life, then such a wise decision would still be recommended.

[bennyboy]

I think we've established that already...lol.  No amount of reading what I've already read is going to change my comments.  I'm asking you to point to a single value judgement that is clearly one or the other of your proposed categories.  Understand?  Without that, then the premise is unsound.

There were two categories I pointed out.  The 1st category was the thought form of value judgments.  These are value judgments that come about through our way of thinking such as thinking that it is a good day today or thinking something is horrible.  The 2nd category of value judgments would be the emotional value judgments.  These value judgments are the emotions themselves.  If you felt a positive emotion, then that is always a good emotional value judgment and if you felt a negative emotion, then that is always a bad emotional value judgment.  I have already explained this earlier in that post.  So, I am still not clear on what the problem here is.

The problem is that you are conflating a term normally used for objective truth to subjective judgments.  Yeah, we use the word "bad" in a lot of ways: a "bad" feeling is just one that I would rather not have, and I clearly have feelings like this.  "Bad" also means: counterproductive, dangerous, immoral, etc.

Presumably you didn't make the OP and argue for a dozen or so pages just to let us know that "bad" sometimes means "subjectively unpleasant."  If so, this thread is intrinsically wasteful of my time.

[Transcended Dimensions]

There were two categories I pointed out.  The 1st category was the thought form of value judgments.  These are value judgments that come about through our way of thinking such as thinking that it is a good day today or thinking something is horrible.  The 2nd category of value judgments would be the emotional value judgments.  These value judgments are the emotions themselves.  If you felt a positive emotion, then that is always a good emotional value judgment and if you felt a negative emotion, then that is always a bad emotional value judgment.  I have already explained this earlier in that post.  So, I am still not clear on what the problem here is.

The problem is that you are conflating a term normally used for objective truth to subjective judgments.  Yeah, we use the word "bad" in a lot of ways: a "bad" feeling is just one that I would rather not have, and I clearly have feelings like this.  "Bad" also means: counterproductive, dangerous, immoral, etc.

Presumably you didn't make the OP and argue for a dozen or so pages just to let us know that "bad" sometimes means "subjectively unpleasant."  If so, this thread is intrinsically wasteful of my time.

No, I was saying much more than this.

[Edwardo Piet]

Again, making wise decisions is still vital even without any emotions or the respective emotion to allow you to see good and bad values like how a sighted person would visualize colors.  So, if your goal was to not have the most intense positive emotion of your life for only one moment and to instead have positive emotions throughout your life, then such a wise decision would still be recommended.

Your theory doesn't account for this though. If emotions are intrinsically good and bad... then it's intrinsically good to go for positive emotions regardless of how 'wise' it is. And if emotions are intrinsically good and bad by what criterion can you decide that having less intense emotions for a longer period of time is 'better' than having only one emotion intensely for a a few moments... if 'better' can only be judged by an 'intrinsically good positive emotion'?

You're smuggling in other values like 'wisdom' and 'less intensity over a longer period of time is better than more intensity over a shorter period of time' ALONG WITH your judgement of 'intrinsic goodness' being down to only and solely 'positive emotions'.

[Foxaèr]

No, I was saying much more than this.

Nevermind.....