There are no higher emotions/values

[LadyForCamus]

People put emotions into two categories.

Who does?  

The 1st category would be the lower, basic emotions such as a feeling of sexual arousal, a feeling of excitement to go to the carnival, or feeling panic from being in a dangerous situation.  Many people deem these as the shallow emotions.

Again...who views them as shallow?  What does it mean for an emotion to be shallow?  That seems like an incoherent concept.

But then there are the higher emotions founded upon morality, character, and intellect.  Even if a person couldn't feel the basic emotions, other people would still claim that this person can have these higher emotions in his life.  I am not sure if these higher emotions exist.  I don't think our morality, character, and intellect alone can be any real emotional state.

Morals, intellect, and character are not emotional states.  WTF are you talking about?

I think it can only be the basic emotions that are the real emotions.

Emotions are experienced, so it follows that as long as a subject is experiencing an emotion, then it is indeed real.

Hunger and thirst are basic impulses.  But there is no intellectual form of hunger and thirst since the intellectual brain does not experience the actual sensation of hunger and thirst.  So, there is no higher form of hunger and thirst.  Likewise, there are the basic impulsive/instinctive emotions and there can be no higher emotions either since the intellectual brain does not experience any real emotions.  There is a big difference between metaphors and the real things.

Um...what?

If you claimed that you were water and lightning since you flow through life with ease and strike down your enemies, then that would not make you actual water (H2O) and lightning.  You would just be metaphorically describing yourself as water and lightning.  People claim these higher emotions exist, but I think they are delusional and in denial.  I think humanity is living their life by a metaphorical version of emotions as well as a metaphorical version of value as I explain later on, too.

What ever drugs you are currently doing, I recommend you stop immediately.

As you can see here, the intellectual brain is just meant for ideas and analysis.  It does not allow us to experience things such as hunger, thirst, sounds, smells, colors, or emotions.  Rather, it just gives us ideas of those things.  Just because people act as though these higher emotions exist and claim they exist does not mean they actually exist.

Again, what emotions are you talking about?  

This whole idea also applies to value (i.e. things such as good, bad, horror, disgust, beauty, joy, etc.).  People think there is a form of value founded upon intellect, morality, and character (the higher values).  Here again, they are delusional and in denial.  The intellectual brain just gives us ideas of value, but does not allow us to experience any real value.  Perceiving and experiencing are the same thing.  If you perceive the color red, then you are experiencing the color red and vice versa.  If you experience hunger and thirst, then you are perceiving hunger and thirst and vice versa.

And if I experience immense frustration while weeding through this garbage, then I’m actually experiencing the emotion of frustration.

Likewise, when you perceive value, then you are experiencing value and vice versa.  Therefore, our intellect, morality, and character alone does not allow us to perceive value.  It can only be our basic emotions that allow us to perceive value since our basic emotions are actually the perception of value.  Our basic emotions are states of mind where we perceive value.  There are the positive/pleasant basic emotions such as if you felt excited to go to the carnival, if you felt love and attraction, or if you felt sexually aroused.  But then there are the negative/unpleasant basic emotions such as if you felt despair, misery, hate, disgust, or sadness.

It can only be the positive emotions that allow us to perceive good value, beauty, joy, love, etc. while it can only be the negative emotions that allow us to perceive bad value, hate, disgust, misery, etc.  In other words, the only way to truly see things in life from a positive perspective is through our positive emotions and the only way to truly see things in life from a negative perspective is through our negative emotions.

This is a total non-sequitur from what came before it.

Having no emotions (apathy) would just render us perceiving no value in our lives at all.  So, what feels good is good and what feels bad is bad.  That might sound way too simple, but it's often times the most simple solutions that humanity tends to overlook.

okay...and?

So, this absolute definition of good and bad might be the real version of good and bad regardless of how much humanity denies this and regardless of how much they act and claim these higher values exist.  Another thing here.  Things that sound absurd are often times things that are true.  So, just because this definition of good and bad I am putting forward sounds absurd and false does not make it false.  To conclude this, I would like to say that humanity is delusional and in denial when it comes to a lot of things.

Can you give me an example of a value that you believe does not exist?  Are you trying to say that more often than not, humans behave selfishly?  This is not news, lol.

They think we don't need emotions to give our lives value and that we can have real value in our lives through our intellect, character, and morality alone.

I don’t think anyone thinks that.

They would claim that emotions are for the weak which means they stigmatize against these emotional based values. Humanity wants to be in charge and create their own values rather than their emotions being in charge.  But life doesn't always give us what we want.  I think the only real value we can have in our lives is not the everlasting form of value that would come about through our intellect, morality, and character.  

Rather, it can only be the fleeting form of value that exists since positive and negative emotions are very fleeting things.  Therefore, if you wish to truly perceive your mother, father, a moment, situation, thing, or this universe as something beautiful and great, then you need to feel positive emotions from those things.  Sadly, this would have to mean that people who struggle with clinical depression had no good value, beauty, or anything positive in their lives.  That would even include all those famous, genius, miserable artists who contributed artwork to the world.

Non-sequiturs.  Non-sequiturs everywhere.

The people who could enjoy those works of art through their positive emotions had the beautiful value in their lives while the genius artist had nothing positive in his life since he could not perceive his artwork or his artistic endeavors as something beautiful and great.  Sure, he might have if he felt positive emotions on some level.  But it wouldn't be much because, in order for your life to have the greatest and most profound beauty, then you need to feel the most profound and intense positive emotions of your life.  

In addition, you need to feel a lot of positive emotions in order for your life to possess a lot of good value.  This would have to mean that the only greatest life one can live would be if he got high off of drugs and kept getting high.  Personally, I would not do drugs just from the idea in my mind of how much damage these drugs can cause and neither would I recommend drugs.  

Anyway, the philosophy known as hedonism would say the same things I'm saying here and I am only coming up with my personal arguments to support hedonism.  Hedonism says that pleasure (the positive emotions) are the only good things in life and displeasure (the negative emotions) being the only bad things in life.  Of course, there is no intellectual form of pleasure and displeasure.  According to hedonism, positive emotions are the only way our lives and things can be good and worth living for.

Beep.  Beep.  Boop.  So is this revelation going to change the way you live your life, TD?  Or do you just enjoy rambling?

This would mean that misery and an absence of positive emotions is no way to live or be an artist.  I, myself, plan on being a composer who composes amazing, beautiful, bizarre, otherworldly music and I need my positive emotions in order to make my composing hobby something beautiful and worth living for in my life.  In other words, I need to have fun and enjoy composing through my positive emotions.  Here is a link to hedonism:

http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_hedonism.html

Here is another link which is the emotional perceptual theory.  It explains a new idea surfacing which would be the idea that emotions are the perception of value.  Some people reject and deny this idea, but I support it based upon my own personal experience and arguments.  Value would be a synonym for emotions which means that, if you want your life to have value, then you must feel certain emotions.  This would be no different than saying, if you want your life to have real hunger and thirst, sounds, smells, and colors, then you need to feel hungry and thirsty, you need to perceive colors, you need to hear sound, and you need to smell scents.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.11...x/abstract

No one gets to tell another human being that they don’t value anything in their life.  Value, as you mean it here, is completely subjective.  If someone reports that they value their shitty life, then they do, and I’m sure they wouldn’t give one shit that you disagree with them.