Emotions are intrinsically good and bad

[brewer]

Why do you live with your mother?

It's because it makes things much more convenient for me. [edit]

Is it convenience or necessity? 

What does you mother do/provide that makes it convenient?

[bennyboy]

Why do you live with your mother?

It's because it makes things much more convenient for me.  Lastly, psychologists often divide emotions into two categories:  intrinsically positive and intrinsically negative (i.e. feeling good and feeling bad).  I have every reason to think this division is true based upon my own personal experience.  After all, positive and negative, good and bad, light and darkness is a well known concept in many movies, anime, artwork, etc.  Feeling good and feeling bad is an actual quality of good and bad.

You've got it wrong.  Good and bad are descriptions of things which we like or dislike, and no more.  To say that descriptive words have "qualities" really is nonsense.

I've mentioned this before and you didn't respond I believe-- to say that feelings are "intrinsically" good or bad is gibberish when in that context, since they are DEFINED that way.

Check it out: a "dog" is a 4-legged mammal with long canine teeth, etc. etc. (you can fill in the rest)

My "discovery": My beagle, Victor, is intrinsically a dog.

[Transcended Dimensions]

It's because it makes things much more convenient for me.  Lastly, psychologists often divide emotions into two categories:  intrinsically positive and intrinsically negative (i.e. feeling good and feeling bad).  I have every reason to think this division is true based upon my own personal experience.  After all, positive and negative, good and bad, light and darkness is a well known concept in many movies, anime, artwork, etc.  Feeling good and feeling bad is an actual quality of good and bad.

You've got it wrong.  Good and bad are descriptions of things which we like or dislike, and no more.  To say that descriptive words have "qualities" really is nonsense.

I've mentioned this before and you didn't respond I believe-- to say that feelings are "intrinsically" good or bad is gibberish when in that context, since they are DEFINED that way.

Check it out: a "dog" is a 4-legged mammal with long canine teeth, etc. etc. (you can fill in the rest)

My "discovery": My beagle, Victor, is intrinsically a dog.

You could say that water is an orange or that water is a table, but that would not change the fact that water is still water.  Water is still H20.  In that same sense, good and bad would still be our positive and negative emotions.  People who have near death experiences have whole new experiences that words simply cannot describe.  Therefore, they had an actual quality (mental state) that they cannot articulate.  In that same sense, there is a version of good and bad that can't be articulated either.  Sure, we could use the words good and bad to describe our positive and negative emotions, but the emotions themselves are a form of good and bad that goes beyond words.  They are, again, an actual quality of good and bad.  If you still cannot understand and make sense of that, then it is simply beyond your comprehension.  My personal experience and values are simply beyond your comprehension.

[SaStrike]

You say that "words simply cannot describe" and "it cant be articulated". So that means you are describing the indescribable and expecting people to understand, and if they cant then "simply beyond your comprehension"

Ok sure Mr 2 parts hydrogen 1 part zero.

[bennyboy]

You've got it wrong.  Good and bad are descriptions of things which we like or dislike, and no more.  To say that descriptive words have "qualities" really is nonsense.

I've mentioned this before and you didn't respond I believe-- to say that feelings are "intrinsically" good or bad is gibberish when in that context, since they are DEFINED that way.

Check it out: a "dog" is a 4-legged mammal with long canine teeth, etc. etc. (you can fill in the rest)

My "discovery": My beagle, Victor, is intrinsically a dog.

You could say that water is an orange or that water is a table, but that would not change the fact that water is still water.  Water is still H20.  In that same sense, good and bad would still be our positive and negative emotions.  People who have near death experiences have whole new experiences that words simply cannot describe.  Therefore, they had an actual quality (mental state) that they cannot articulate.  In that same sense, there is a version of good and bad that can't be articulated either.  Sure, we could use the words good and bad to describe our positive and negative emotions, but the emotions themselves are a form of good and bad that goes beyond words.  They are, again, an actual quality of good and bad.  If you still cannot understand and make sense of that, then it is simply beyond your comprehension.  My personal experience and values are simply beyond your comprehension.

Yeah, yeah, I know.  Most of this thread has been you rambling about your feelings and claiming to be a special snowflake.  Of course, I couldn't also be a special snowflake, or that would diminish you.  Your feelings are unique and elevated, and mine are just the incoherent stumbling sensations of the normal man on the street.  It must be tiring for you, being so superior and yet having such great difficulty describing your superiority in terms that mortals can comprehend.

You can experience whatever you want to experience.  However, I'm very good with words, and you are using yours wrongly.  For anything to be a quality of something else, the something else has to be defined.  Redness is a quality of an apple, because an apple is defined, and some apples are red.  Even brain function can be defined in terms of blood flow, neuronal activity, and qualitative reports of subjective experience.  However, "good" and "bad" are not sufficiently well-defined to say that anything else can be qualities of them.  

If you are talking about a particular good feeling-- say the feeling you get when you sip hot chocolate with someone special while watching a sunset, then. . . nope, you still have it backwards.  The unique flavor of goodness isn't a property of "good" in general-- rather, in that case when you say it's a "good" feeling you have an ineffable and indescribably subtle emotion which you cannot describe.

That's because goodness is a concept which is both abstract and arbitrary, and such a vague term is not concrete enough to allow modifiers.

---

You say that "words simply cannot describe" and "it cant be articulated". So that means you are describing the indescribable and expecting people to understand, and if they cant then "simply beyond your comprehension"

Ok sure Mr 2 parts hydrogen 1 part zero.

I find it mystifying that someone would spend 50 pages articulating something which can't be articulated.  Deepity!

[Transcended Dimensions]

You could say that water is an orange or that water is a table, but that would not change the fact that water is still water.  Water is still H20.  In that same sense, good and bad would still be our positive and negative emotions.  People who have near death experiences have whole new experiences that words simply cannot describe.  Therefore, they had an actual quality (mental state) that they cannot articulate.  In that same sense, there is a version of good and bad that can't be articulated either.  Sure, we could use the words good and bad to describe our positive and negative emotions, but the emotions themselves are a form of good and bad that goes beyond words.  They are, again, an actual quality of good and bad.  If you still cannot understand and make sense of that, then it is simply beyond your comprehension.  My personal experience and values are simply beyond your comprehension.

Yeah, yeah, I know.  Most of this thread has been you rambling about your feelings and claiming to be a special snowflake.  Of course, I couldn't also be a special snowflake, or that would diminish you.  Your feelings are unique and elevated, and mine are just the incoherent stumbling sensations of the normal man on the street.  It must be tiring for you, being so superior and yet having such great difficulty describing your superiority in terms that mortals can comprehend.

You can experience whatever you want to experience.  However, I'm very good with words, and you are using yours wrongly.  For anything to be a quality of something else, the something else has to be defined.  Redness is a quality of an apple, because an apple is defined, and some apples are red.  Even brain function can be defined in terms of blood flow, neuronal activity, and qualitative reports of subjective experience.  However, "good" and "bad" are not sufficiently well-defined to say that anything else can be qualities of them.  

If you are talking about a particular good feeling-- say the feeling you get when you sip hot chocolate with someone special while watching a sunset, then. . . nope, you still have it backwards.  The unique flavor of goodness isn't a property of "good" in general-- rather, in that case when you say it's a "good" feeling you have an ineffable and indescribably subtle emotion which you cannot describe.

That's because goodness is a concept which is both abstract and arbitrary, and such a vague term is not concrete enough to allow modifiers.

---

You say that "words simply cannot describe" and "it cant be articulated". So that means you are describing the indescribable and expecting people to understand, and if they cant then "simply beyond your comprehension"

Ok sure Mr 2 parts hydrogen 1 part zero.

I find it mystifying that someone would spend 50 pages articulating something which can't be articulated.  Deepity!

Alright, let me present it this way then:

Brief Description Of My Worldview:  This is a very brief description of my worldview for anyone pressed for time and for people who don't have much patience.  As I explain later on here, there are two forms of value judgments.  The first are the thought form of value judgments and the other form of value judgments are the emotional value judgments which are the emotions themselves.  I am firmly convinced, based upon my own personal, profound, and powerful experience, that it can only be the emotional value judgments that can give our lives real value.  That is, it can only be our emotions that can make things, moments, and situations of real good or bad value to us depending upon which emotion we feel. 

Since positive emotions are always emotional value judgments of good value, then they are the only things that can make things in our lives perceived as good.  Since negative emotions are always emotional value judgments of bad value, then they are the only things that can make things in our lives perceived as bad.  It is, therefore, only through our emotional states that we can perceive good and bad.  Our emotions would have to be like glasses that we need to wear in order to see the value in our lives. 

Believing that the rational value judgments can give real value to your life would be no different than believing that the thought of water, food, or electricity can give your life real water, food, or electricity.  It can't!  Those thoughts would just be nothing more than empty words in your life and would bring your life no real version of those things.  Since positive emotions are the only things that can put us into a state of mind where everything is joyful, beautiful, happy, good, and worth living for, then the only way to live and be an artist is through positive emotions.  Having negative emotions in your life or no emotions at all is simply no way to live or be an artist regardless of your contributions to the world and what types of artwork you create.

[bennyboy]

You really are just juggling terms. "Negative" is another term for "bad." "Positive" is another term for "good." Positive emotions don't PUT us into a state of joy-- joy is just one of the positive emotions which we are capable of experiencing. You really seem to be reaching for something that doesn't need to be reached for.

But there's something that you are missing, and it's one of the keys to life. The sum total of many positive and negative experiences over the course of a lifetime may lead to an appreciation that is more deeply felt as good than any of those experienced along the way.

I've had very many bad experiences in my life, but my life has added up to a story-- the idea of what it means to be me-- and this idea provides me with a much stronger sense of value than any orgasm, drug experience, rainbow or cuddly puppy ever could have. It is the idea that I've mattered that LEADS to the "good" emotion I call satisfaction, not vice versa.

And in fact, I'd say that for the most part, this is how it works-- it is ideas of the self and of the world which lead to a true sense of value, not any of the very impermanent emotions that arise along the way. The positive emotion is the physical reward for living a life with value, not the other way around.

[Transcended Dimensions]

You really are just juggling terms.  "Negative" is another term for "bad."  "Positive" is another term for "good."  Positive emotions don't PUT  us into a state of joy-- joy is just one of the positive emotions which we are capable of experiencing.  You really seem to be reaching for something that doesn't need to be reached for.

But there's something that you are missing, and it's one of the keys to life.  The sum total of many positive and negative experiences over the course of a lifetime may lead to an appreciation that is more deeply felt as good than any of those experienced along the way.

I've had very many bad experiences in my life, but my life has added up to a story-- the idea of what it means to be me-- and this idea provides me with a much stronger sense of value than any orgasm, drug experience, rainbow or cuddly puppy ever could have.  It is the idea that I've mattered that LEADS to the "good" emotion I call satisfaction, not vice versa.

And in fact, I'd say that for the most part, this is how it works-- it is ideas of the self and of the world which lead to a true sense of value, not any of the very impermanent emotions that arise along the way.  The positive emotion is the physical reward for living a life with value, not the other way around.

The idea that you've mattered would make you feel a positive emotion and it can only be that positive emotion which brings your life good values.  But the idea (thought) alone that you mattered would not bring your life any real good values as long as that thought did not make you feel a positive emotion.

[Silver]

The idea that you've mattered would make you feel a positive emotion and it can only be that positive emotion which brings your life good values.  But the idea (thought) alone that you mattered would not bring your life any real good values as long as that thought did not make you feel a positive emotion.

Word salad abounds.

[bennyboy]

Jerking off gives me a "positive emotion," as it feels good. It does not, however, add any lasting value to my life. That's because the only long-running positive emotion is that of satisfaction, which depends on one's world view, a sense of achievement, a sense of self-respect, a sense of functionality in family, and so on.

If you want to argue that satisfaction is required in order to evaluate one's life as good, I'd agree. If you want to argue that all pleasurable emotions represent good, and all unpleasurable emotions represent bad, then you have a poor understanding of how the human animal functions.