RE: Emotions are intrinsically good and bad
November 2, 2017 at 1:59 pm
(This post was last modified: November 2, 2017 at 2:02 pm by Transcended Dimensions.)
(November 2, 2017 at 1:56 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Yep, -you- failed. Own it. The failure is yours, not mine..or anyone else's.
Now, I don't think anything else I say would convince you or, at least, put you into a position where you deeply consider the possibility of my worldview being true. But here is this for anyone else who wishes to engage with me and consider the possibility of my worldview being true:
Now, I am going to point out a quote by a skeptic/neuroscientist who supports the idea of our emotions being value judgments:
Quote:Emotions are value judgments too. If they weren't, humanity would not be distinct from other mammals; we would be biological machines with no autonomy, acting purely on instinct. For example, if you are physically hurt, and the doctor treating you causes you pain during treatment, do you become angry and bite him? No, because you are able to override your instinctive anger and fear at someone causing you pain with your ability to reason that the treatment is necessary and the pain is temporary. But a dog can't reason, and will bite to stop the person causing the pain. Both the instinctive emotions AND the reasoned thoughts are value judgments.
If you would like me to show you how our emotions themselves are value judgments in addition to what the skeptic said, then that all goes back to what I said earlier in regards to wanting and liking. Wanting and liking is what makes things matter to us in good ways. If you just had the thought that something was good in your life, but it didn't matter to you, then you would only be thinking of it as a good thing, but you wouldn't be actually judging (seeing) it as a good thing. Our positive emotions are the reward wanting and liking which would have to mean that they are always a value judgment of good value. There is a study that points out how our positive emotions are the reward wanting and liking. I will point it out to you:
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.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/artic…
With that being said, our negative emotions would, therefore, have to always be value judgments of bad value since they are a form of disliking, not wanting, and a negative form of wanting. Now that I have established this, I need to establish how our rational/thought form of value judgments are not any real value judgments. There is a positive emotional state, there is a negative emotional state, and then there is a no emotional state (our rational value judgments) since there is positive, negative, and neutral. An example of this would be a positive charge, a negative charge, and a neutral (no) charge. From there, there is good, bad, and neutral (neither good nor bad). A positive emotional state is a good value judgment, a negative emotional state is a bad value judgment, and a no emotional state (our rational value judgments) would have to be no real value judgments at all. Therefore, our rational value judgments are not real value judgments which means they give our lives no real value while the only real value judgments are the emotions. So, it can only be our emotions that give our lives real good and bad value. From here, let me quote what I said earlier since what I say follows from this:
Quote:All I am saying here is that, no matter how absurd it seems and no matter what situation, positive emotions are always value judgments of good value, negative emotions are always value judgments of bad value, and our rational value judgments are always no real value judgments at all. I am convinced of this based upon my own personal experience because, during my blissful states, I have used my rational value judgments in judging things as horrible and disgusting, but none of that mattered to me. My life was still nothing but good during that blissful state and there was no real horrible and disgusting value in my life. The same idea applies to being in a negative emotional state and judging things in my life as good and beautiful. None of that mattered to me either and there was no real good and beautiful value in my life either. I could tell that these rational value judgments were nothing more than empty words in my life.