Emotions are intrinsically good and bad

[Transcended Dimensions]

I will actually make one last point here.  It is a logical argument that supports my view:

1.)  Emotions themselves are value judgments.  Positive emotions are always good emotional value judgments and negative emotions are always bad emotional value judgments.

2.)  Emotions are qualities. They are a quality of euphoria and dysphoria and they are also a quality of a good or bad emotional value judgment. Not only are emotions simply value judgments of good and bad, but they are also profoundly beautiful or profoundly horrible value judgments that take on various tones, atmospheres, and personalities. For example, you can judge, through your thinking, a certain character and his/her traits and personalities.

But so can your emotions which means the emotions take on the attributes of this character. But like I was saying, since a good emotional value judgment is synonymous with a positive emotion, then positive emotions are a quality of good just as how having water inside a glass is having a real quality of water inside that glass. Likewise, negative emotions would have to be the quality of bad.

3.)  The thought/rational/reasoning form of value judgments are not any real quality of good or bad value in our lives. If you had the thought of water, then that is not any real water. If you had the thought of pain or pleasure when no feeling of pain or pleasure was there, then that thought itself is not any real pain or pleasure. If you couldn't feel a positive emotion and you judged a positive emotion to be there, then that thought itself would also not be any real positive emotion. The same rule applies to negative emotions.

Likewise, if you had the thought/belief of being able to smell certain scents, hear certain noises, or see certain colors when you couldn't smell, hear, or see, then that would not be any real smells, noises, or sighted colors. In addition, positivity and negativity, along with love, joy, beauty, happiness, worth, suffering, misery, etc. are also qualities that cannot come about through our thoughts/beliefs/mindsets alone either. As you can see here, thoughts alone are just notions/instructions that help us make decisions and whatnot, but do not give our lives any real form of those qualities mentioned. They are just notions of qualities, but not any real qualities.

Therefore,

Conclusion:  Positive emotions are the only things that can give our lives real good value and our negative emotions are the only things that can give our lives real bad value just as how having actual water and not a personally defined version of water is the only real water we can have.

It is also no different than how smelling certain scents are the only real scents we can have in our lives, how hearing certain noises are the only real noises we can have in our lives, how feeling pain and pleasure are the only real pain and pleasure, how feeling positive and negative emotions are the only real positive and negative emotions we can have in our lives, and how seeing colors are the only real colors we can have in our lives. 

In short, positive emotions are the only real good and our negative emotions are the only real bad just as the hedonistic philosophy advocates regardless of the moral implications, shortcomings, or dangers of such a worldview.  Personally, I would choose to avoid any foolish choices and dangers.  But there are some stupid people out there in this world who would use my worldview to do reckless and harmful things to themselves and others.

Lastly, here is a response from a highly intelligent skeptic who points out emotional value judgments:

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.

[WinterHold]

 Positive thoughts have to line up with positive emotions and negative thoughts have to line up with negative emotions

Not always: take fighting. Some soldiers become "combat high" in the middle of the shootout.
It's psychology that generate the "feelings". Teach somebody something from a very young age; and that's your shaping of their memory; that shapes their psychology on the other hand.

In some cultures; certain acts are paired with positive or negative emotions.
What does it mean to be normal in North Korea? and what it means to be normal in the U.S ?
The wrong is wrong because we are told it is. That's why cultures and generations differ.

[Edwardo Piet]

You are so confused. You can't make your mind up what your frigging position is.

Now, I would like to ask you a question.  You said that we need a state of mind that possesses a positive quality to it to truly make our lives good and beautiful and that the belief of your life being good and beautiful simply isn't enough as long as you do not possess that positive quality.  Therefore, could you present me the articles/evidence that present this?

Not required. If consciousness and phenomenology were not present there would be no observer present to value anything in the first place. Consciousness is all we ultimately care about.... as even materialistic objects only matter when they can impact on our own or someone else's consciousness. There is no morality or value in a universe that consists of nothing but rocks.

---

1.)  Emotions themselves are value judgments.  Positive emotions are always good emotional value judgments and negative emotions are always bad emotional value judgments.

2.)  Emotions are qualities. They are a quality of euphoria and dysphoria and they are also a quality of a good or bad emotional value judgment. Not only are emotions simply value judgments of good and bad, but they are also profoundly beautiful or profoundly horrible value judgments that take on various tones, atmospheres, and personalities. For example, you can judge, through your thinking, a certain character and his/her traits and personalities.

But so can your emotions which means the emotions take on the attributes of this character. But like I was saying, since a good emotional value judgment is synonymous with a positive emotion, then positive emotions are a quality of good just as how having water inside a glass is having a real quality of water inside that glass. Likewise, negative emotions would have to be the quality of bad.

This here is in earnest by far the best stuff you've ever written. No sarcasm. I wish other things you have said were of this quality. After making points such as this it is a shame that you are leaving (you said you will only make one more (set of) point(s) and I took that as you now learning the forums Which is rather sad considering you said a lot of confused and inconsistent B.S. at fist but points like this are a drastic, drastic improvement. And I love improvement.).

Although with regards to the part I quoted I disagree with the part I crossed out.

[Edwardo Piet]

Emotions are not value judgments themselves. This so-called highly intelligent skeptic you quote is overrated and the quote is a non-sequitur. Humans don't act out their anger in the example you give because they have the willpower and rationality to avoid doing so. To conclude that 'therefore emotions themselves are value judgments' is just a nonsensical non-sequitur just like your conclusion that you have common sense 'therefore emotions are intrinsically good and bad logically entails that time is more important than intensity'. It's a pity you still make non-sequitur upon non-sequitur upon non-sequitur upon non-sequitur over and over and over.

Emotions are constrained by value judgments that are made with the non-emotional rationality. Emotions themselves are not value judgments.

[bennyboy]

I will actually make one last point here.  It is a logical argument that supports my view:

1.)  Emotions themselves are value judgments.  Positive emotions are always good emotional value judgments and negative emotions are always bad emotional value judgments.

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.

2.)  Emotions are qualities. They are a quality of euphoria and dysphoria and they are also a quality of a good or bad emotional value judgment. Not only are emotions simply value judgments of good and bad, but they are also profoundly beautiful or profoundly horrible value judgments that take on various tones, atmospheres, and personalities. For example, you can judge, through your thinking, a certain character and his/her traits and personalities.

No, that is not what emotions are. Emotions are neurochemical triggering of biological response systems. We can experience them as positive TO US, or negative TO US, but they are not intrinsically positive or negative.

3.)  The thought/rational/reasoning form of value judgments are not any real quality of good or bad value in our lives.

They are ideas.

If you had the thought of water, then that is not any real water. If you had the thought of pain or pleasure when no feeling of pain or pleasure was there, then that thought itself is not any real pain or pleasure. If you couldn't feel a positive emotion and you judged a positive emotion to be there, then that thought itself would also not be any real positive emotion. The same rule applies to negative emotions.

You need thought/rational/reasoning to establish goodness. "Feels good" and "is actually good" are not necessarily the same thing. If it feels good for a man to strangle and rape children, would you say it's "actually good?" I wouldn't. That's because we have a societal consensus (read: rational agreement) that certain behaviors are bad.

Conclusion:  Positive emotions are the only things that can give our lives real good value and our negative emotions are the only things that can give our lives real bad value just as how having actual water and not a personally defined version of water is the only real water we can have.

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.

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

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.

Eh?

I see what this is now. You were once Christian, and you still have these goofy ideas about spirit and feelings that make people magi-special snowflakes, but you no longer want to associate yourself formally with the religion. Animals are much more capable of evaluation their environment and the actors in it, and understanding contexts, than you seem to think they are.

[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.

[Transcended Dimensions]

I will actually make one last point here.  It is a logical argument that supports my view:

1.)  Emotions themselves are value judgments.  Positive emotions are always good emotional value judgments and negative emotions are always bad emotional value judgments.

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.

2.)  Emotions are qualities. They are a quality of euphoria and dysphoria and they are also a quality of a good or bad emotional value judgment. Not only are emotions simply value judgments of good and bad, but they are also profoundly beautiful or profoundly horrible value judgments that take on various tones, atmospheres, and personalities. For example, you can judge, through your thinking, a certain character and his/her traits and personalities.

No, that is not what emotions are.  Emotions are neurochemical triggering of biological response systems.  We can experience them as positive TO US, or negative TO US, but they are not intrinsically positive or negative.

3.)  The thought/rational/reasoning form of value judgments are not any real quality of good or bad value in our lives.

They are ideas.

If you had the thought of water, then that is not any real water. If you had the thought of pain or pleasure when no feeling of pain or pleasure was there, then that thought itself is not any real pain or pleasure. If you couldn't feel a positive emotion and you judged a positive emotion to be there, then that thought itself would also not be any real positive emotion. The same rule applies to negative emotions.

You need thought/rational/reasoning to establish goodness.  "Feels good" and "is actually good" are not necessarily the same thing.  If it feels good for a man to strangle and rape children, would you say it's "actually good?"  I wouldn't.  That's because we have a societal consensus (read: rational agreement) that certain behaviors are bad.

Conclusion:  Positive emotions are the only things that can give our lives real good value and our negative emotions are the only things that can give our lives real bad value just as how having actual water and not a personally defined version of water is the only real water we can have.

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.

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

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.

Eh?

I see what this is now.  You were once Christian, and you still have these goofy ideas about spirit and feelings that make people magi-special snowflakes, but you no longer want to associate yourself formally with the religion.  Animals are much more capable of evaluation their environment and  the actors in it, and understanding contexts, than you seem to think they are.

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.

As for my sight analogy, I think you have stated it wrong, Hammy.  I said that a blind person can't visualize colors, but can only think of colors.  Now, I am just going to post this because I wish to share more of my personal experience:

I have had many moments in my life where I felt nothing but a positive emotion and, yet, I judged certain things as being ugly, disgusting, and the most horrible moments, things, and situations in my life.  From there, people would ask me if that is any real ugly, disgusting, and horrible value in my life.  I would tell them that it all comes down to my inner universe.  I would compare this state of mind I am in (which is just words) to those horrible miserable states of mind I've been through in the past.  The conclusion is clear as day.  Those words wouldn't be any real horrible, ugly, or disgusting value in my life at all.

They do not possess any horrible quality.  There is no real horrible (negative) quality there and, thus, nothing bad being perceived in my life.  The same thing applies for moments where I was in the most miserable state of my life (a negative emotion) and I judged things to be the most beautiful and good things.  I would compare this state of mind to the profound beauty, joys, and good value I have had through my positive emotions.  The conclusion is clear as day here, too.  Words themselves simply do not possess the joys and whatnot (the real good/positive quality) that my positive emotions have offered me.  They are just empty, hollow words that act as nothing more than mere indicators or instructions that give me insight and help me make the decisions I need to make in life.

For people to tell me that words themselves can hold power in my life as though implying that they, themselves, can be a real positive or negative state is so asinine, ignorant, and dismissive of my personal experiences that it just really annoys me and angers me.  Words themselves cannot be any real positive or negative state for me.  That is, they cannot hold the power of the inner light (positive quality) and the inner darkness (negative quality).  So, I have no idea what these people are talking about.  Lastly, people can call me all the names they want to.  But none of these words can hurt me since it can only be my negative emotions that can allow these words to bother me, hurt me, and make me angry/upset.  With all of this being said, the only real good value in my life can only come about through my positive emotions and the only real bad value in my life can only come about through my negative emotions.

[Edwardo Piet]

 I said that a blind person can't visualize colors, but can only think of colors.

But they can't. They can only think of the concept of colors at best. They can't think of colors themselves at all. Colors are visual and a fully blind person who hasn't ever even been able to see in the past is completely unable to visualize i.e. they cannot think visually.

I have had many moments in my life where I felt nothing but a positive emotion and, yet, I judged certain things as being ugly, disgusting, and the most horrible moments, things, and situations in my life.  From there, people would ask me if that is any real ugly, disgusting, and horrible value in my life.  I would tell them that it all comes down to my inner universe.  I would compare this state of mind I am in (which is just words) to those horrible miserable states of mind I've been through in the past.  The conclusion is clear as day.  Those words wouldn't be any real horrible, ugly, or disgusting value in my life at all.

So you're completely denying the effects that beliefs can have on emotions, basically. You can feel positive emotions and then convince yourself that things are horrible... and then that can cause you to feel horrible emotions. Just because things are not as horrible as you believe they are does not mean that your delusions cannot cause you to feel things that are awful. They can.

You, like Benny, are confusing epistemic and ontological subjectivity. Just because you cannot epistemically conclude something objectively does not mean that those subjective effects are not very objectively real in your consciousness ontologically.

You are doing the equivalent of someone who says that because emotions are "all in your head" then that means they're 'not real'. And the equivalent of a Christian who once told me that atheism proves that emotions are unreal because they are 'just brain chemistry'.

[bennyboy]

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.

So child rape is intrinsically good if the rapist perceives it as a positive experience? I have difficulty viewing the world in this way.

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.

I think there's conflation posing as reasoning here: we use the word "good" to talk about feelings we like, and then say that feelings are intrinsically good. Sure you could say that, since the experience of feelings is intrinsic to the human condition. But a five year-old has already arrived at this understanding: "I feel happy when I eat a carrot, but my sister cries when my mother makes her eat carrots. We like different things. I think carrots are good, and my sister thinks they are bad."

What's the position, and where's the value in holding it? What am I missing here?

[Edwardo Piet]

So child rape is intrinsically good if the rapist perceives it as a positive experience?  I have difficulty viewing the world in this way.

I don't even have difficulty viewing the world that way because I don't view the world that way at all.

I think there's conflation posing as reasoning here: we use the word "good" to talk about feelings we like, and then say that feelings are intrinsically good.  Sure you could say that, since the experience of feelings is intrinsic to the human condition.  But a five year-old has already arrived at this understanding: "I feel happy when I eat a carrot, but my sister cries when my mother makes her eat carrots.  We like different things."

What's the position, and where's the value in holding it?  What am I missing here?

It's irrelevant when people disagree on the matter. Because 'objective' does not mean 'universal'.

Objectivity precisely means that disagreement is irrelevant because there are objectively right and wrong answers regardless of agreement or disagreement on the matter.

And the fact that definitions themselves cannot be proven to be objectively the right definitions is irrelevant too. Defintions are the premises. Scientists don't have to prove that they are using the 'right definitions' before it becomes objective. The words are picked out subjectively and they're used to label things in the world that really do have right and wrong answers. Definitions can NEVER be proved objectively to be the 'right definition'. You could make the common objections of people being able to prove that their own definition of objective morality was the right one... against anything. The point is whether ANY definition maps correctly onto the real world. The fact people disagree over definitions is irrelevant.