Life is all about pleasure

[MattMVS7]

I am finally back and have thought about this whole idea about our pleasure being the only good thing in life and this is what I have concluded. It has some of the same things as I've already been saying. But please read all of it anyway since there are some new important and valid points I am making here:

 

First off, there are two versions of good and bad. The first comes from our thoughts, actions, personal created meanings in life, and from other people and other things in life. The 2nd version comes from our pleasure and suffering. The 1st version is only good and bad in a neutral sense. Meaning, that they are not the truly good and bad things in life and don't make us and our lives truly good or bad. While the 2nd version of good and bad that comes from our pleasure and suffering are the true version of good and bad that makes us and our lives truly good or bad. Our thoughts of good and bad are the scientific properties good and bad (since our thoughts of good and bad are the combined functioning of those atoms and particles in our brains that create those thoughts). However, they are the neutral scientific properties good and bad while the scientific properties good and bad that come from our pleasure and suffering are the actual version of good and bad (which would be the version that many people refer to when saying good and bad which would be the version that really does make them and their lives truly good or bad and is not the neutral version of good and bad). Now immediately before you object to what I just said here, I am going to post very convincing reasons backing up my claims here.

I am going to walk you through an example of how all our thoughts are neutral (neither good or bad). For example, go ahead and say a word in your mind that is neutral to you (which would obviously be a thought). Maybe you can say a number in your mind such as the number 16 which would be nothing more than just a number to you that is neither good or bad. Therefore, all other thoughts we have in life are all the same in that sense as well since they are also nothing more than neutral sounds, images, numbers, words, etc. that cannot make us or our lives anything actually good without our pleasure and it's only our own pleasure that makes us and our lives anything good. You might be thinking something such as that the only reason why that number you created in your mind in that given example was neutral was only because of the fact that you have attributed a neutral value to it. But this would be false. There was no attributed value whatsoever to it. Therefore, the only reason why it was neutral to you was because of the fact that you were able to see that number for what it really was. And that would be the fact that it was nothing more than just a number. You were not blinded by any other attributed meanings of good and bad to fool yourself into thinking that number was something good or bad. You have first said that number to yourself in your mind and at the time it was neither neutral and neither good or bad (it was nothing more than just a number to you). Then, from there, based on that experience, you have then concluded that it was neutral. This neutral value judgement you have given is not false at all and doesn't make anything I'm saying false. This would be because, when we say something is neutral (such as our thoughts and personal created meanings in life being neutral), then what we are saying here is that these thoughts are nothing more than just thoughts. That they are nothing more than words, sounds, images, etc. So this would be true.

Therefore, this also applies to all other thoughts and personal created meanings we have in life as well since they are also nothing more than just neutral sounds, words, images, etc. Even our own thoughts of good and bad are nothing more than just neutral sounds, words, images, etc. just like that neutral number you created in your mind in that given example. Even our own attributed meanings of good and bad to our thoughts of good and bad are all neutral as well. So people are only fooling themselves into thinking that they and their lives are still somehow good without their pleasure. They are fooled by thoughts of good and bad and other created meanings that are perceived as good or bad when, in reality, all these thoughts and created meanings are all neutral. But even now as I am speaking here and saying that number you created in your mind was neutral (including me saying that all our thoughts are neutral), I am attributing a neutral value to them. So you might then be thinking something such as that number and all thoughts and personal created meanings we have in life aren't neutral at all since it was just my attributed neutral value to that number and all other thoughts and was all just my own personal opinion. But this would be false. Here, again, I will say that what I mean by neutral is that when thoughts are nothing more than just thoughts here (that they are no different than that number you created in your mind in that given example which was nothing more than just a number). So what I'm saying is true. Our thoughts are only different in the sense that they are different words, sounds, images, etc. and that they make us perform different actions. But that is it. They are all still neutral. They are simply the different activity of the functioning of our brains that come up with these different thoughts. It would be no different than the different activity of the parts of our brain that make us blink and breathe in different ways and nothing more.

Any perceived logical fallacies in my argument here might hold true for other things in life, but not for what I'm saying here. You might say something such as that "Your logic is false and what you are saying is that you can create an 'ooooh' vowel sound when you sing. Therefore all words you sing have 'oooooh' vowel sounds" in order to try and disprove my argument here. But the fact is that all things in life besides pleasure, pain, and despair are nothing but atoms and particles that are neutral (neither good or bad). But it is only pleasure, pain, and despair in of themselves that are the only good and bad things despite the fact that these things are also the functioning of atoms and particles.

I am also going to explain below how even our own actions including everything else in life are all neutral as well including how only our pleasure and suffering are the only good and bad things in life:

First off, the reason why I state that pleasure is the only good thing is because of the fact that it always feels good in of itself no matter what and no matter what value we attribute to it. Even if we had no knowledge, thoughts, or intelligence whatsoever, and we were to then experience pleasure, our pleasure would still feel good to us anyway. So good is a scientific property which would be our pleasure which would be the combined functioning of the atoms and particles in our brains that give us pleasure as I've stated before and am also stating here to make myself absolutely clear. Same concept applies for bad since pain and despair always feel bad in of themselves no matter what as well. Now I am now going to explain some more as to how our actions and everything else in life are all neutral:

Since all atoms and particles are separate from the atoms and particles of our pleasure, then to say that harming someone in order to give you pleasure makes your pleasure bad, this would be false because the combined atoms and particles of the person suffering and the combined atoms and particles of our thoughts of good and bad as well as other things do not have the same properties of the combined atoms and particles as a whole that make up our pleasure. It would be no different than saying that, since the combined atoms and particles of a piece of metal possess a certain function and properties (which, in this case, we would call "bad"), then that also makes the combined atoms and particles of other materials the same as well (that this also makes them "bad") which is false. Concepts such as good and bad (aside from our experience of pleasure, pain, and despair), these are the subjective thoughts themselves that create these concepts in the brain and are the functioning of the atoms and particles themselves in the brain responsible for the creation of these concepts in the brain that do have scientific properties (though these thoughts are all neutral as I've already stated). And, of course, they are also experiences in of themselves that are the real objective version of good and bad good that also have scientific properties (which would be the functioning of the atoms and particles that give us pleasure, pain, and despair). Therefore, our thoughts cannot define our pleasure as being something bad or neutral or our pain and despair as being neutral or good. They also cannot define anything else as being good, bad, or neutral either since they are the separate combined functioning of atoms and particles that have different functions and different properties. Even if they somehow could define other things in life (including even our own thoughts of good and bad) as being good or bad, then it would all still be the neutral scientific properties good and bad. Meaning, that they are not really good and bad at all. Even if other things in life were somehow good or bad, it would all still come back to our own minds since we are only in our own minds and we can only experience our lives from our own perspectives. In other words, it would all still come back to our thoughts of good and bad.

But since those thoughts are all neutral, then knowing and thinking that someone or something is good in life would not make you or your lives anything truly good without your pleasure since that would all just be neutral thoughts as I've just said. There is also no possible way for anything else in life besides our own pleasure and suffering to be good or bad anyway. This would be because if no human beings were born and all that came into existence was the Earth and the universe, then everything would neither be good or bad. It would all just be the functioning of atoms and particles. To say that a piece of metal possesses certain functions and properties would be true. But to say that this piece of metal is good or bad would be false since everything in this universe is all the scientific functioning of atoms and particles and can only be explained through science. Value judgements such as good or bad do not exist in other objects and materials since they are not the combined functioning of atoms and particles that would define good and bad. They instead can only be defined in terms of scientific descriptions such as mass, weight, energy, etc. But value judgements such as good and bad do exist as our thoughts and are the combined functioning of the atoms and particles that make up those thoughts (though they are the neutral version of good and bad while the actual version of good and bad woud be the combined functioning of the atoms and particles that give us pleasure and suffering as I've just said before). Also, what I mean by separate is that if you have one object in your hand and you then have another object in your other hand, then those two objects are separate from one another. This same concept also applies to other objects and other people being separate from our own brains and are separate from our own thoughts and pleasure centers and that our thoughts as well as our own pleasure and suffering cannot define anything else in life as being good or bad from our own perspectives.

Also, if you are going to say something such as that since objects have an effect on each other and that since objects would, therefore, also have an effect on our brains, then that somehow makes those objects and our brains "connected" in that any good or bad thought we come up with would actually define that said object as being good or bad since those objects and other people are somehow "linked" with our thoughts. If this is what you are going to say, then this would be false because in order for the objects to actually be good and bad, then they would have to be the thoughts themselves of good and bad. Our thinking is independent of other objects and other people. Whatever effects those objects have on our brains is not the same thing as our thoughts having an effect on those objects in the sense of making them good or bad. Our thoughts might have some effect on other objects. But it wouldn't be the actual thoughts themselves of good and bad that are projected onto those objects. Rather, it would be different effects on those objects such as gravity, attraction, etc.

Now if you think that something else is good or bad in life, then that doesn't make it good or bad since those other things in life would have to actually have the exact same functioning of all the combined functioning of atoms and particles of our thoughts of good and bad (they would actually have to be those thoughts themselves). Your thoughts also cannot somehow project themselves onto other people, other objects, or even other parts of your brain and make these things good, bad, or neutral. So all these other things in life stand alone as being nothing more than meaningless atoms and particles that are neutral (neither good or bad), our thoughts (though they are those meanings themselves we create) are all still neutral regardless of what meanings they are, while our own pleasure and suffering are the only good and bad things in life. Everything in this universe including all ideas, thoughts, our minds, and actions, these things are all made up of atoms and particles that have scientific properties. Our minds may be different, but they are all still the different functioning and wiring of atoms and particles. Also, I am now going to explain how our pleasure and suffering are the only good and bad things in life:

The version of good many people think of is the version that is not neutral and is the version of good that actually makes them and their lives truly good. However, since all our thoughts are neutral as I've just stated, then anyone who says something such as that they and their lives can still be truly good without their pleasure, then they would be false. This version of good these people are speaking of would, therefore, have to be outside the realm of our neutral thoughts. But as I've also said before, there is nothing else in this life such as other people or even nature itself that is anything good and that these things are also the functioning of meaningless (neutral) atoms and particles that are also neither good or bad. These other things couldn't make us or our lives anything good anyway since we are in our own minds and it would still all come back to our neutral thoughts as I've just said before. Therefore, this version of good would have to be our pleasure. Same thing for bad in that it would only be our pain and despair that would be bad. This would be because they always feel good and bad in of themselves no matter what as I've said before.

So you might then be thinking that I am attributing good and bad value to pleasure and suffering through my thoughts here and that pleasure and suffering can't be anything good or bad either since even my own thoughts of good and bad cannot define my pleasure and suffering as good or bad and that these thoughts cannot project themselves onto my pleasure and suffering and make them good or bad. However, pleasure and suffering are a form of good and bad that doesn't involve our thoughts and has nothing to do with our thoughts and created personal meanings in life. Rather, our thoughts of good and bad (the idea of good and bad that many people have) would refer to the real version of good and bad which would be our pleasure and suffering and nothing else and people are only fooling themselves into thinking otherwise. Pleasure and suffering are the real scientific properties good and bad as I've said before since they always feel good and bad in of themselves no matter what. But you then might also say to me something such as that how we come up with the meanings good and bad in the first place would be through our thoughts, knowledge, and intelligence and that pleasure and suffering cannot always be the only good and bad things in life since good and bad come from our personal value judgements (our thoughts) and is all something subjective. However, as I've just said, the version of good and bad that many people think of is the version that is not neutral. Therefore, this version would have to be our pleasure and suffering.

Also, you are only in your own mind and you are not in the minds of others and this entire life is all from your own perspective. You cannot experience the pleasure and suffering of others and you can only experience your own pleasure and suffering. Therefore, it is only your own pleasure and suffering that are the only good and bad things in life from your own perspective while the pleasure and suffering of others are the only good and bad things in life to them from their own perspectives. The pleasure and suffering of others from your own perspective is nothing more than a neutral thought. Therefore, you can harm others and that would still not make you a bad person. You would still be a good person since only your own pleasure is what defines you and your life as being anything good. How good your life is and how good you are (your level of greatness) is solely determined by the level of pleasure you have.

Therefore, this is the reason why you can even still be a good person if you obtained pleasure from harming even millions of innocent people around the world and this is the reason why you would still be a bad person and/or a neutral person if you had depression and/or anhedonia (emotional numbness) who instead helped millions of innocent people around the world. Also, people such as psychopaths who have very little to no value towards others and their pleasure who only have value towards their own pleasure are just as mentally disordered as someone who instead has very little to no value towards his/her own feelings of pleasure who instead has value towards other people and their pleasure including other things in life. Only when a person has both an equal amount of value towards his/her own pleasure as well as others in general and their pleasure are they considered mentally stable since they would be at this stable "equilibrium."

In conclusion, some people might say something such as that the pleasure and suffering of others from their own perspectives cannot possibly be anything neutral since they can feel pleasure profoundly from witnessing others experiencing pleasure and that they can feel profound despair from witnessing others experience despair. However, these things are all neutral from this person's perspective no matter what. What goes on in the brain is that neutral stimuli such as imagery, words, and sounds, they are all perceived as good or bad things through our own personal created meanings and through the neutral mental processes in our brains that then send an emotional signal to our brains. These emotions are what are the only good and bad things to us in life. Our own personal created meanings and all our other mental processes are all still neutral including everything else in life from our perspectives. So even though you might experience pleasure from witnessing someone else experience pleasure or that you are experiencing despair from witnessing someone else experiencing despair, then it would still only be your own pleasure and despair from that which would be the only good and bad things to you. Some people would also say that we have mirror neurons that allow us to experience the pain, pleasure, despair, and suffering of others. However, it is all still our own mirror neurons and it is still our own experiences of pleasure and suffering and we are not actually experiencing the pleasure and suffering of others.

Edited December 16, 2014 by MattMVS7

[Ophiolite]

You expect me to read 3,549 words with no evidence that they will make any more sense than your earlier posts? Have you heard of an abstract, or executive summary? Want to try giving us one?

 

I've started you off your rewrite with your first paragraph.

 

Good and bad exist in two forms:

• Self-generated - our thoughts, actions, personal meanings
• Externally generated - from people and events

 

These have distinct features.

• Self-generated
  • Nominally good or bad, but effectively neutral
  • Arise from the physics and chemistry of our brains
  • Do not define the quality of our life

• Externally generated
  • The ‘real world’ good or bad
  • Arise from the complex behaviour of the world
  • Define the quality of our life

I shall now demonstrate why these assertions are valid.

Edited December 16, 2014 by Ophiolite

[imatfaal]

I was firmly in a tl;dr mode - but I will admit O's summary has piqued my curiosity. Have you ever read up on virtue ethics and arete (not the sfn expert of that name) - in some ways it is at the polar opposite of your assertions and seeing both sides of a coin can be most illuminating

[tar]

MattMVS7,

 

"This would be because, when we say something is neutral (such as our thoughts and personal created meanings in life being neutral), then what we are saying here is that these thoughts are nothing more than just thoughts. That they are nothing more than words, sounds, images, etc. So this would be true."

 

What if even the mere act of having a thought is good, and not neutral?

 

The basic assumption of your logic would be suspect. "Just a thought", would not be a correct statement.

 

There is a strong argument that being alive is better than being dead. That is, that life itself is good, regardless of whether you have a sweet or sour taste in your mouth.

 

Regards, TAR

[MattMVS7]

My Absolute Convincing Argument for Hedonism (Pleasure=Good, Suffering=Bad, Everything Else in Life=Neutral (Neither Truly Good or Bad)

I have now come up with a new explanation as to how all our thoughts are neutral (neither truly good or bad) and how pleasure and suffering are the only true good and bad things in life. Let's pretend that you did not have the ability to perceive meaning, then words and phrases would be nothing more than words and phrases. One person you meet would not mean anything different from another person you meet. One shade of color would be no different than another, etc. The only difference would be that they would be different stimuli and nothing more. Therefore, this also applies to our own perceptions of meaning themselves since they are also nothing more than just different perceptions in of themselves and it has nothing to do with us attributing any neutral value or any other value to them. I am not saying that those perceptions are meaningless because they do have meaning since that is obviously what our perceptions are in the first place. I am saying something different here. Allow me to explain:

Our thoughts/perceptions are no different than any other "neutral" part of our brain such as the parts of our brain that make us move, breathe, blink, etc. They are only different in the sense that they are different functions and nothing more. If you were to look at one shade of color vs another, then yes they would obviously be different. But they are the same in the sense that they both neither feel good or bad. Therefore, this also holds true for our thoughts and perceptions as well in that they are also no different than any other "neutral" part of our brain or any other object for that matter since they don't feel good or bad. But they are different functions and such nonetheless. What separates our feelings of good and bad (pleasure and suffering) from other "neutral" things in life and what makes them the true good and bad things in life is that if you were to perceive something as being good in your life without your pleasure, then you could obviously say that perception is good since that is what it is (a good perception). But like I said before, that version of good (perception) is no different than any other "neutral" part of our brain or any other object.

Therefore, that perception would only be good in a neutral (fake) sense which means it is not truly good. But the version of good that comes from our pleasure in which we would be able to experience pleasure as a good feeling even if we had no knowledge or intelligence to attribute any value to that feeling, this version of good is the true good since it is the only other version of good there is besides the version of good that comes from our thoughts/perceptions and moral values. I said that the version of good that comes from our thoughts/perceptions and our moral values are no different than any other "neutral" thing in life which makes those said thoughts/perceptions and moral values neutral. Therefore, the true version of good would have to be the version that comes from our pleasure. Same thing for the true version of bad which would be suffering. As I said before, pleasure is a version of good since it always feels good. It always feels good even if you were to have no intelligence or knowledge to attribute any good values and such to it. Therefore, this means that pleasure is a version of good in of itself that is independent of our thoughts/perceptions and moral values. Pleasure always feels good and suffering always feels bad. People who say that pleasure feels bad or that suffering feels good, these people are lying. It is only the pleasure that is derived from their suffering that feels good to them and it is only the suffering that is derived from their pleasure that feels bad to them.

Now one might say that pleasure and suffering do not feel good or bad. Rather, they might say something such as that they feel pleasant and unpleasant and that they are not what we would define as "good" or "bad." But how we define something as good or bad comes through not saying that those things are neutral. For example, one would say that his/her life is truly good even without his/her pleasure and that everything in his/her life including his/her own perceptions are not neutral. But since they are neutral as I've said before since they are no different than any other neutral thing in life, then they are not what we would define as truly good or bad. So the true version of good and bad would have to come from our pleasure and suffering since they are the only things in life that are truly different from everything else in that they are the only things that feel pleasant (good) and unpleasant (bad).

One more given example here of how pleasure and suffering are the only true good and bad things in life is that if someone were to feel strong love for someone (love being a form of pleasure since it is a good feeling), then his/her actions and personality expressions would be genuinely expressed. But if you were to have anhedonia (absence of pleasure), then if you were to perceive love towards someone else and show actions/personality expressions of love towards that person, then those said actions and personality expressions would not be genuinely expressed. They would instead be "forced" (faked). For example, if you feel excited about something great in your life, then your expressions of excitement would be genuine. But a person with anhedonia would have to force (fake) his/her expressions. They would, again, be faked expressions and would not be genuine at all. Some people with anhedonia might claim that they have genuinely helped others and made the best of their lives. But this would only be because they have forced themselves to do so since they knew that it was the right thing to do anyway. Also, they are only fooling themselves into perceiving that things are good in their lives despite their anhedonia when the fact of the matter is that all those perceptions are neutral as I've said before. These people with anhedonia then act on those decoy perceptions and claim that their said actions/personality expressions are genuine when the fact of the matter is that they are also decoys. It's through our feelings that our personalities and actions are genuinely expressed and it's only through our feelings that our profoundness, innocence, and greatness becomes genuine. Otherwise, if we didn't have feelings at all, then we would be nothing neither truly good or bad and our lives would be neither truly good or bad either.

[Gees]

MattMVS7;

 

Well, I am not convinced.

 

Has it occurred to you that in order to buy into the ideas as set forth in the OP, a person would have to be narcissistic?

 

Gee

[MattMVS7]

MattMVS7;

 

Well, I am not convinced.

 

Has it occurred to you that in order to buy into the ideas as set forth in the OP, a person would have to be narcissistic?

 

Gee

 

Not true. All that is needed to at least consider my arguments as an alternate possible truth would be for you to just have an open mind. You do not need to be a narcissist.

[MattMVS7]

I am now going to keep all my arguments regarding hedonism restrained to this topic only. So here is one last convincing argument I came up with supporting hedonism:

There are 3 pleasure states: negative (hopelessness), neutral (anhedonia), and positive (feeling pleasure). The negative state of pleasure (depression), depression is also a natural response by evolution to discourage our survival aside from it being something such as a chemical imbalance or the result of a brain abnormality. It warns us when something is going wrong in our lives which is the reason why we become depressed when something bad happens in our lives such as the loss of a loved one, etc. When we are encouraged for survival, that would be defined as having genuine good perceptions in life such as to want to live and make the best of our lives, help others, etc. This encouragement can only be defined through our pleasure since it is only our feelings that genuinely encourage and discourage our survival. They are the only things that genuinely make us perceive our lives as either being good and worth living or as bad and not worth living at all. But if you are in a state of anhedonia (absence of pleasure), then this should also tell you that your life is not worth living at all either since how we normally function as human beings would be through relying on our perception of good to make our lives good and worth living. That neutral perception should then send a depressive signal to your brain and then make you and your life bad and of truly even less worth now. As I said before, in a state of anhedonia, our good and bad perceptions are not genuine and is just our mind's irrational way of fooling ourselves into thinking that we are having genuine good and bad perceptions without having any pleasure or suffering in our lives at the moment.

I said that our encouragement for survival in life can only be defined by having genuine good perceptions. Therefore, since depression discourages our survival, then this means that we cannot genuinely perceive us and our lives as being good and worth living while in a state of significant depression since depression shuts down our good perceptions. Therefore, depression shuts down our good perceptions in a negative sense in that we would have bad perceptions, anhedonia simply neutralizes our perceptions in which we neither genuinely perceive our lives as being good or bad without pleasure and suffering, and pleasure is what defines our genuine good perceptions in life.

When a person is depressed, he/she might say to his/herself in a depressive mood (tonality) that his/her life is still good and worth living. He/she might very well continue on to pursue his/her dreams and goals in life even while still feeling depressed. But those good perceptions are all decoys without our pleasure as I've said before. The person's depression has shut down his/her genuine good perceptions in life. But he/she is now doing nothing more than just simply saying to his/herself that his/her life is still good and worth living anyway and just forcing his/herself to live life anyway. So now this person is just simply being fooled by words and phrases alone when there is no genuine good perception at all from those words and phrases while he/she is in a state of depression.

On one side of the spectrum you have people who are so severely depressed that they don't want to do anything who find no good value in their lives. They can hardly function and can hardly want to do things in their lives at all. These types of people are so severe that they can never bring themselves to make the best of their lives and such. These types of people need electric shock treatment. But on the other side of the spectrum you have people who are so happy and excited in life that they are doing all sorts of great things in life. So based on that, you can clearly see how our level of pleasure defines our level of good perception in life. But even if it were somehow a proven fact that you and your life are truly good even in a state of depression/anhedonia, then what good is that going to do for you? What is the use of you and your life being good if you are not even allowed to genuinely perceive it as being good?

Now our perceptions do define how we feel. But it's our feelings that make those said perceptions genuinely good or bad only from the perspective of those feelings alone and not from the perspective of those perceptions (thoughts) alone which are all neutral in of themselves as I've said before. So it's just how we feel independent of our thoughts that genuinely makes us and our lives good or bad. I also realize that there is one other emotion which would be empathy. There are also 3 states of empathy as well: negative (in which you feel bad such as you feeling sorry for hurting someone else), neutral (no empathy in which one might also just simply help others out anyway through just thoughts and such alone), and positive (which would be a feeling of pleasure in which you feel good for helping someone else). Here again, the negative state defines us and our lives as being bad and genuinely defines our perceptions as bad, the neutral defines us and our lives as being neither good or bad and our perceptions as being neither good or bad without our pleasure, and the positive state is what genuinely defines us and our lives as being genuinely good and defines our perceptions as being genuinely good.

In conclusion, I am making these arguments to try and help find better cures and treatments or anhedonia and depression. If people would realize that pleasure and suffering are the only true good and bad things in life, then they would be much more inclined to find better treatments and a cure. Too many people are just accepting of suffering due to them thinking that they are still good people even with much suffering and/or an absence of pleasure in their lives. But I wish to change this mindset so that people would then truly realize once and for all the pleasure and suffering really are the only true good and bad things in life. Not only am I trying to find better treatments and cures for depression and anhedonia, but also for suffering in general. My hedonistic values would also encourage others to find better treatments and cures for suffering in general as well. This would also even include mortality since living in an eternal blissful life of no suffering is the one and only good and greatest life there is and is the one and only thing that would make you the greatest person.

[swansont]

!

Moderator Note

Similar threads merged.

[s1eep]

This is stupid. We have finite resources, if life was all about pleasure then humans would have never come to be.

[MattMVS7]

I have paid very close attention to what the experience of my good feelings (moods) are for me and they truly are the experience of good value and worth in of themselves. It is no different than a situation where a person in physical pain can clearly indicate what the experience is for him/her such as that it was a stabbing, burning, or scratching pain. They would not be labels (descriptors and judgments) that he/she would be applying to his/her physical pain. Rather, this is what the experience of his/her physical pain is really like for him/her.

Since the experience of my good feelings is clearly an experience of good value/worth in my life and since no other experience gives my life any good value/worth which makes all other experiences either dead, lifeless, and mechanical or horrible and miserable, then I have come to the conclusion that there is an evolutionary definition of good and bad that science has yet to discover and I am going to explain it below:

Just because different people judge different things as good/bad, joyful, happy, beautiful, horrible, and pleasant/unpleasant doesn't mean that they are personally defined. For example, there are people out there who believe in life after death and there are people who believe death is final, but that does not mean that whether there is life after death or not is something personally defined. There is life after death or there isn't life after death regardless of your personal point of view.

This would also apply to good/bad and pleasant/unpleasant. When a certain stimulus sends the feel-good signal to your brain and that induces a good feeling (a good mood), then that is the "good" signal to your brain. That is evolution's way of telling you that a certain stimulus is good and worth something to you. It can be good for a number of reasons. For example, if you felt good from playing a video game, it could be because of a certain character you admire or because you really love the level you are playing. Bad (unpleasant) feelings would be evolution's way of telling you that a certain situation or stimulus is bad and to avoid it or solve it.

Therefore, this would be the evolutionary definition of good and bad. It is a whole new definition of good and bad that scientists have yet to discover. We have a thought version of good, bad, and worth which would be the personally defined version of good, bad, and worth where you personally define what you think is good and bad and what makes your life worth living.

But this version of good, bad, and worth is fake. It does not give good or bad value to your life and it doesn't make your life worth living. It is instead the feeling version of good and bad that gives real good and bad value to your life. As long as you feel good, then that is the experience of good value in your life and that is the experience of a life worth living regardless of how you judge that feeling, what situational context that good feeling is in, what your attitude is, etc.

There are different definitions of good, bad, and worth out there. However, none of them give your life real good or bad value or worth. The sole factor that determines the value and worth of your life is the evolutionary definition of good, bad, and worth. That is, how you feel.

Remember, personally defining a good or bad feeling in your life without your good or bad moods does not make it so just as how a blind or deaf person thinking he or she can see or hear does not make it so either. Personal definitions should be ignored here. What actually determines whether you are having a good feeling or not is what it is you are actually experiencing.

So, with all of this being said, if you felt bad from doing a certain act and you judged it to be good since it was changing your life for the better, then that would not bring your life any real good value since you did not feel good from that. Everything without our good feelings are nothing more than acts, tones, gestures, attitudes, etc. regardless of what the situation is and regardless of our personal judgments.

In other words, if I was feeling good at the circus since I was having fun riding rides and my mother was in danger, then I would think to myself that it would be a bad thing to just leave her in danger and I would go save her life. However, that would not actually bring my life any bad value since I was feeling good. Rather, it would just simply be a situation where I realize that my mother is in danger and that I wish to save her.

Our good feelings are the only experience of real value, real worth, real joy, real happiness, real love, real beauty, real inspiration, etc. They are all there is to life and to the human experience.

Edited March 24, 2017 by MattMVS7

[Prometheus]

Our good feelings are the only experience of real value, real worth, real joy, real happiness, real love, real beauty, real inspiration, etc. They are all there is to life and to the human experience.

 

'Bad' feelings and experiences are as much a part of the human palette as 'good' ones.

 

One of the best, and most beautiful, films i've ever seen is Grave of Fireflies. It's also the saddest film i've ever seen: a 'bad' feeling by your definition. I feel enriched for having watched it.

 

Feeling bad isn't necessarily bad: i feel sad when a loved one dies, and i wouldn't want it any other way.

 

Feeling good isn't necessarily good: just ask some alcoholics to tell you how addiction feels. Usually bitter sweet, getting more bitter as time goes on.

[MattMVS7]

 

'Bad' feelings and experiences are as much a part of the human palette as 'good' ones.

 

One of the best, and most beautiful, films i've ever seen is Grave of Fireflies. It's also the saddest film i've ever seen: a 'bad' feeling by your definition. I feel enriched for having watched it.

 

Feeling bad isn't necessarily bad: i feel sad when a loved one dies, and i wouldn't want it any other way.

 

Feeling good isn't necessarily good: just ask some alcoholics to tell you how addiction feels. Usually bitter sweet, getting more bitter as time goes on.

 

But that is only what you think though. If this evolutionary definition of good and bad is real, then your claim would be false.

[swansont]

!

Moderator Note

Similar threads merged, again. Please stop opening new threads about philosophies about feeling good/bad.

[Prometheus]

 

But that is only what you think though.

 

True. But my thoughts on this subject are as valid as any other individual's.

 

If you want to live a hedonistic life go for it - it seems to work for a few people. Why do you need (pseudo) science to validate your lifestyle?

[MattMVS7]

!

Moderator Note

Similar threads merged, again. Please stop opening new threads about philosophies about feeling good/bad.

 

I apologize. I forgot about this topic here since it has been such a long time.

[Velocity_Boy]

Any personal meanings we create in life are all neutral as they all come from the exact same functions of our brains that create nothing but neutral words, sounds, images, etc. For example, create any sound, letter, image, etc. in your mind that provokes no emotional response and is bland to you. Therefore, all other meanings we create in life are the same in that sense because, again, they are all the same functioning in our brains. So that makes our own created meanings all neutral as well. These created meanings are no different than the creation of neutral words, sounds, images, etc. because there is no difference between any personal meanings we create in life as opposed to neutral words, sounds, images, etc. because they are the exact same things. Our personal meanings we create in life may make us do good things in life, but they are all still neutral anyway. Only our pleasure itself that arises from any personal meanings we create in life is good (positive) and is the only thing that makes our lives good and worth living and you would be delusional to somehow think that, without your ability to experience pleasure, that your life is still somehow good and worth living. Also, pleasure, in of itself, is a good experience and we do not need any created meanings in life (which would be knowledge, thoughts, etc.) to tell us that it is good. So if you were happy, but had no knowledge or thoughts whatsoever, your happiness would still feel good to you despite the fact that you are completely unaware of what happiness is and the fact that you are unaware of the word "good" and what it even means. Therefore, any created meanings in life by themselves do not tell us that anything is good (they are not the activating of the pleasure centers of our brains which is the only thing that gives us the "good" signal). The same thing goes for depression. Depression in of itself is a bad experience and we do not need any knowledge or thoughts to tell us that it is bad.

 

Therefore, even everything else in life and even your own attitude is neutral and you are free to harm and take advantage of others as long as it gives you the most pleasure in life. However, I would never harm others despite my own personal beliefs because this is not who I am at all. Also, you are not in the minds of other people anyway. So it's only your own pleasure in life that makes your life good and worth living. Not you helping others and giving them pleasure despite your own absence of pleasure. Finally, the only difference between a thought and such that has meaning to us as opposed to one that doesn't (one that is neutral) would just be the fact that with one meaning, you are experiencing emotion while with another you are not. So it's only our emotions themselves that have the meaning of "good" or "bad." As in terms of one thought that has meaning to us as opposed to another that doesn't, the only difference between these two thoughts is that one sends an emotional signal to the brain while the other doesn't--that is all.

 

You are of course perfectly expressing the beliefs and the ethos of both the Epicurean, and the Moral Relativist.

 

And as somebody who is both, I agree with your post entirely! Good job.