RE: Emotions are intrinsically good and bad
December 13, 2017 at 2:24 pm
(This post was last modified: December 13, 2017 at 2:40 pm by Transcended Dimensions.)
(December 13, 2017 at 2:14 pm)bennyboy Wrote:(December 13, 2017 at 8:53 am)Hammy Wrote: "Good" is a word. But the good is not
Isn't that the way words always work?
"If neurological states are real, they are real, but that's just by your definition. It doesn't really mean anything to say that neurology is real."
You could say that about anything lol.
We use words to label things in reality that are real. No one can or has to 'prove that their definition is the correct one'.
Even science can't do that.
If I say roses are intrinsically rosy, what am I really saying?
There's no revelation of truth to be found there, just a reworking of word forms.
(December 13, 2017 at 10:57 am)Transcended Dimensions Wrote: I, myself, have never experienced any real joy, good value, or beauty independent of my positive emotions and I have never experienced any real horror, tragedy, despair, bad value, etc. in my life independent of my negative emotions.It's like you are programmed to respond to words without actually understanding them.
You have never experienced any real joy independent of your positive emotions? Ermmm. . . maybe that's because joy is the name for one kind or category of positive emotion? It's like saying you've never experienced a table independent of flatness. Would you really want to go on for 100 pages about how tables are intrinsically flat-topped?
I could, for example, attribute any name to sight. But sight would still be sight. This is what I mean here. Positive emotions are still good even though we could very well attribute a different term to them. Let me present to you a study that supports this whole view that there are labels and then there are actual versions of those said things. It is a food and reward study. In this study, it is pointed out that wanting and liking would be our positive emotions since the reward wanting and liking would be our positive emotions. As you can see here, there is a label version of wanting and liking and then there is actual wanting and liking.
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.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2717031/