Emotions are intrinsically good and bad

[Edwardo Piet]

No.  A judgment is an intellectual construct based on knowledge and opinion, and an emotion is a neurochemical triggering of biological response systems.  They aren't the same thing.

Correct.

No, that is not what emotions are.  Emotions are neurochemical triggering of biological response systems.

Correct.

 We can experience them as positive TO US, or negative TO US, but they are not intrinsically positive or negative.

They are intrinsically positive and negative TO US. They are still intrinsically as opposed to extrinsically good or bad TO US because they are NOT intrinsically good FOR anything (that would be a contradiction), even us. They are good in and of themselves. As they are the very part of us that are good or bad. It's our actions that are good and bad for our emotions. Or to put it more accurately: other things are only good and bad when they ultimately impact our emotions. Because our emotions themselves are good and bad and valuable in and of themselves.

But all non-neutral emotional conscious experience is ultimately good or bad. Not just what we can categorize into specific 'emotions'. Unlike what TD thinks. Emotions also are not judgements and also do not make judgements. As you recognize.

TD also commits a total non-sequtiur when he falsely jumps to the conclusion that a variety of moderately positive emotions over a long period of time is morally superior to one positive emotion experienced much more intensely for a shorter period of time. His premise doesn't entail that at all. And he uses crappy failed analogies to avoid using actual logic and to ignore the fact that his premise still DOES NOT entail what he pretends it does.

They are ideas.

Correct. Value judgements are ideas.

You need thought/rational/reasoning to establish goodness.  "Feels good" and "is actually good" are not necessarily the same thing.

Avoiding feeling bad is a higher good than feeling good.

 If it feels good for a man to strangle and rape children, would you say it's "actually good?"  I wouldn't.

This is another way TD fails as he says positive emotions are good and negative emotions are bad but he fails to recognize the highly important assymmery of how much more morally significant suffering is than enjoying oneself. In his view if a bunch of people are getting high on drugs while someone in the corner is dying and the drug addicts aren't so high that they're incapable of calling an ambulance to save the person's life.... then if they choose to ignore the dying person then they're still doing the morally right thing because them making themselves feel positive emotions is intrisically good as far as he is concerned.

His answer to this is always to make terrible analogies like 'a blind person who is unable to see can still visualize [even though they can't, lol] so just as the blind person can do that I can still escape this problem in the same way using common sense'..... lol so like... what even. His analogies are the worst ever. They fail so hard it hurts. They're his way of just completely avoiding doing real logical argumentation.

Your attempt to conflate an actual objective thing, like water, with a highly subjective thing, like feelings and attributions of good or bad, is illogical.

Your failure to differentiate between the ontology of subjectivity and epistemic subjectivity is illogical. Feelings are highly subjective and are not universally agreed upon... i.e. they are epistemically subjective. But they nevertheless objectively exist to each and every person ontologically... and are as real as anything else. In fact consciousness (i.e. subjectivity) is the one thing in the universe WE KNOW objectively exists (ontologically... which is what existence is about). The whole of the so-called objective world could be an illusion. Solipsism could be true. That's logically possible. But we KNOW that AT LEAST OUR OWN SUBJECTIVITY EXISTS. It's ontologically real. The subject is the one definite object in this world. Which is not a contradiction when 'object' and 'subject' are being used in two different senses. A person is a subject but also a conscious object. This does not mean that what is not objectively knowable is not subjective. Of course it is. Epistemically. But there is no reason why we can't objectively know ontological subjectity nor is there any reason we can necessarily objectively know ontological objectivity. In fact... it is ontological objectivity that is ultimately unknowable. If we're talking an objective world outside of the conscious subject. That is ultimately fundamentally unknowable. The objective world is ultimately unprovable. Hence why science is the study of the phenomenal world and not the noumental world (which is unexperiencable and therefore untestable by definition).

I think that's why you shy away from logic.  To be frank, you don't seem to really get the basics of it.

He really really doesn't. He wouldn't know logical entailment outside obvious mathematical sums if it stared him in the face and kicked him in the balls.

I see what this is now.  You were once Christian, and you still have these goofy ideas about spirit and feelings, but you no longer want to associate yourself formally with the religion.  

Yeah . . . it makes me laugh how he talks about how words themselves don't get you to to truly significant intrinsic value but then he insists on using terms like 'inner light' to describe positive emotions as if it actually makes a difference when he has already admitted it doesn't.