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(August 18, 2015 at 11:34 pm)Detective L Ryuzaki Wrote: I have come up with a theory here that explains how the moral (personal value judgment) version of good and bad is fake and does not make us and our lives good or bad. That there is a scientific version of good and bad that humanity and science is unaware of.
It is our incentive that makes things and people of good value and worth to us in the first place. If we have no incentive to live for anyone or anything, then it would not bother us at all if those things and people were to be taken away from us. You just wouldn't care. Therefore, I just don't see how something can be of good value and worth to you without having any incentive to live for it.
Since our pleasant emotions (our reward system) is the only incentive an animal (in this case, a human being) has based upon what Robert Sapolsky has said who is a highly intelligent and famous evolutionary biologist, then it is only our pleasant emotions that can make things and people of good value and worth to us in our lives. You can search up Robert Sapolsky on http://www.youtube.com and watch his videos.
Our thoughts alone without our pleasant emotions due to depression and/or anhedonia (absence of pleasure) cannot give our lives any good meaning since they are all nothing more than the "thinking" experience of our brains. They can only experience different thoughts, send pleasure/displeasure signals, and send signals to make us move and express certain tones, acts, and expressions. But that is it. They cannot experience any incentives (urges) to live on and pursue our goals and dreams.
Just as how a blind and deaf person cannot give his/herself sight and hearing through his/her thoughts alone, we cannot give our lives any incentive either through our thoughts alone as long as we struggle with depression and/or anhedonia. Good and bad are senses like sight, hearing, and smell. They are scientific terms like sight, hearing, and smell. Our pleasant feelings/emotions are a sense of good meaning in our lives while our unpleasant feelings/emotions are a sense of bad meaning in our lives.
Our thoughts alone can only experience the words and phrases love, joy, happiness, suffering, despair, fear, rage, incentive, etc. But they cannot actually experience those things since those are scientific terms that have been defined through science as only being our pleasant and unpleasant feelings/emotions and not our thoughts.
Our pleasant feelings/emotions are the scientific version of good and our unpleasant feelings/emotions are the scientific version of bad. To lament and become frustrated/enraged over losses in your life without your incentive would be your brain fooling itself into thinking it had the incentive to live for those said things and people when it never had it to begin with. You would be fooling your brain into thinking your life is good and worth living despite your depression and/or anhedonia when it was never true.
I myself struggle with depression and a chronic 24/7 absence of all my pleasant emotions. This personal experience is what has led me to this theory. If my theory is wrong, then please prove it wrong. Otherwise, people would just be believing in the moral version of good and bad like a religion.
In conclusion, morality and the thinking area of our brains alone would not give our lives any good or bad meaning. It would only be a matter of choices and decisions. It would only be a matter of avoiding or pursuing certain situations and nothing more. We wouldn't even refer to the acts of Hitler as being bad. We would still say that Hitler's life was good since he derived pleasant emotions from harming the Jews. Morality does not exist. It would no longer have the terms good and bad for it. It is all just a matter of how we as human beings socialize and interact and nothing more. Our pleasant and unpleasant feelings/emotions are a feeling/emotional version of good and bad and not any moral version of good and bad.
I think you are on to something here.
However, you are neglecting to consider that the individual is embedded in a system larger than itself.
Personal good and bad could be, as you say, only restatements of the pleasant and unpleasant emotions of one person, a reflection of the activity of the brain's reward system. But if one considers a higher level of complexity, that of the family, the community or the state, good or bad would have to be re-defined.
My model defines morality as contextual to the replicating system to which it applies. e.g. good or bad for the person is not good or bad for the community. The community might find it convenient to sacrifice the individual for the community's smooth operation. It could confine or kill that individual for the benefit of itself.
A more nuanced definition of a moral action in my model is this: an action taken by or acting on a replicating system is moral from the system's perspective if it serves to aid the replication and expansion of that system. It may be a tautology that this definition results in the perpetuation and expansion of moral systems.
Your depression and anhedonia are sub-optimal, bad, for your community as you are likely unable to participate fully in communal activities. Diagnosis and treatment are therefore moral actions.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat?