Emotions are intrinsically good and bad

[brewer]

All right, which one of you left the cage door open?????????

[Whateverist]

All right, which one of you left the cage door open?????????

You think the attendant at the institution where he is being monitored left the door to the nursing station unlocked thereby providing computer access again?  More thorazine, stat!!!

[Transcended Dimensions]

Most people would tell me that my worldview has to be false because, according to my worldview, a psychopath who feels positive emotions from harming someone would be a good thing.  This would put me in a position where I have to resort to these arguments to address this problem.  There are 8 arguments I have thought of:

1.)  If we treat good and bad as materialistic things like water, food, money, and electricity, then we no longer have a moral definition of good and bad here.  What we have here is a materialistic definition of good and bad.  A person who feels a lot of positive emotions in their lives would, thus, be no different than a person who is rich and has a lot of money.  A person who is euphoric would be rich in the good value and beauty in life.  But a person who is very depressed, miserable, or apathetic would be very poor on the good value and beauty in life.  It would also be no different than a person who has colors, hunger, thirst, sound, smell, and taste in his life versus a person who doesn't.  

You can't have these things through your intellect and morality alone as I mentioned before.  According to my worldview, positive and negative emotions are intrinsically good and bad.  Therefore, argument #1 would have to apply.  Lastly, I think the good value of our lives is founded upon nothing more than our materialistic, pleasure-seeking nature as human beings  and that many people with a sense of morality are in denial of this.  That all goes back to what I said before in regards to how people are in denial of their basic emotions being a feeling version of value that gives their lives value and how they think they can have values in their life through their morality, character, and intellect instead.

2.)  We as human beings are not stupid and we can still make whatever decision we need to make regardless of how we feel to save our lives, the lives of others, and to benefit ourselves and others.  Even if, for example, there is no value in saving the life of someone else for a person who feels completely numb, that numb person can still force himself to save that person anyway just from the idea in his head that this someone is a good person and needs to be saved.  I have done many things in my life regardless of how I felt.  

Sure, I do give up on my hobbies and whatnot when I feel miserable and hopeless.  But I still force myself to do things that are necessary such as walking on the treadmill to keep myself alive and healthy.  The thing is though, we as human beings need to have good and beautiful value in our lives.  If we just lived our lives forcing ourselves to do things when we don't feel up to them, then that is no way to live at all.  

I also do not agree with the idea that me making certain choices already presupposes that my life had value regardless of how I felt.  This is because I can clearly tell, from my own introspection, that my conscious being was completely empty and dead inside during my hopeless moments.  So, I can clearly tell that my life had no beautiful value whatsoever during my hopeless moments regardless of the things I thought and did.  However, there could be a positive emotion there on such a small level that I was unable to detect.  

In which case, my life really did have beautiful value during these miserable moments.  But it would be something so small that I was unable to detect it.  If something had no good value to me at all whatsoever, then wouldn't I be something like a sitting statue?  I am not sure about this one.  It could very well be possible that we as human beings can still make decisions and perform certain actions even if things have no value and worth whatsoever to us.    

3.)  Plenty of things that sound absurd are, in fact, true things.  So, just because my worldview/model sounds absurd and false does not make it false.  As a matter of fact, there are plenty of cruel things in this world that are already true.  

4.)  Life is unfair and doesn't always give us what we want.  People wish to create their own values in their lives and not have anything else dictate the value of their lives.  But just because people want this does not mean they can have it.  That all goes back to argument #1.  Your moral, character, and intellect alone cannot make you a rich person.  You cannot make money magically fall from the sky into your lap by believing so.  You need actual money and a lot of it to be rich.

5.)  It is often times beautiful things in life that are rare and very fleeting.  For example, a rainbow is only there for a little while before it fades away.  We can chase after the rainbow all we like, but it will fade away.  I think the beautiful value in our lives works the same way.  We as human beings want an everlasting value in our lives through our morality, character, and intellect.  I do not think this type of value exists.  Thus, we as human beings are rendered to chase after positive emotions to give our lives beautiful value and positive emotions, as I said before, are very fleeting things.  

6.)  Life is mostly a matter of luck.  Some people are rich, some people are poor, some are healthy, while others are unhealthy.  Having value in our lives might work the same way.  In other words, people who are very happy through their positive emotions are the lucky ones who have a lot of good value in their lives while depressed, miserable people are the unlucky ones who have little to no good value in their lives.      

7.)  There are certain needs we have as human beings that have devastating effects.  For example, we all need a heart to live.  But this need has devastating effects because people who have heart attacks would cause grief to their loved ones.  Therefore, just because our need for positive emotions as being the only good things in life would have the devastating effects of, for example, causing grief to a loved one when we lose our positive emotions since he/she would hate to see our lives become devoid of good value, that does not dismiss such a need as being false.  

8.)  We as human beings are delusional.  Being delusional was something that benefited the survival of us and others.  That all goes back to what I said earlier in regards to how people believe in false values such as the fundamentalist Christian values.  But then there are people who are not delusional and realize the truth such as the atheists.  You will meet many hedonists who think like me and you will meet many non hedonists who believe moral and intellectual based values are real values just as how you will meet many atheists and many Christians who think their values are real.  Hedonists and non hedonists debate just as how Christians and atheists debate.  I personally think the hedonists had it right all along.

[bennyboy]

Holy fucking necro.

/thread already.