(August 19, 2015 at 8:53 am)robvalue Wrote: One last try If I'm understanding you correctly:
What you have created is correct, but it is a logical tautology (always true regardless). It's nothing to do with science, or the subject matter in fact. Let me explain:
Say we have a person X. We find out their capacity for having "positive feelings" with F(X) and their ability to live a "worthwhile life" as L(X). They both return a Y or a N.
You have stated that L(X) = Y if and only if F(X) = Y. So, in fact, F(X) = L(X) for any person X. You get the same answer, yes or no, for both questions for any given person.
Your proposal is now:
"If a person has no positive feelings, they can't live a worthwhile life."
If F(X) = N then L(X) = N
But since F(X) = L(X), it becomes
If F(X) = N then F(X) = N
So this is correct, but it is a tautology. If you have no positive feelings, you have no positive feelings. This logic is also true for any F and L that I define in the same way. F could be "Do I have a green car" and L could be "Am I trendy?" and I say F = L . Then I get the same result. The fact that F happens to be talking about feeling is irrelevant. The above example reduces to if I don't have a green car, I don't have a green car.
So hopefully you see my problem! You're just stating something that must logically be true, by definition. Which is fine, but it doesn't demonstrate anything else.
Now let me just say this. There are two different personality types. There are those types of people who are just completely fine living with no incentive or any inspiration whatsoever. They are completely fine living their lives completely neutral and settled down. They are completely fine with living like biological robots.
But then there are those types of people like me who always need to be up and running in a high transcended inspired state. If people such as me ever become lowered down into that inferior biological robotic settled state, then we would become psychotically enraged.