I am ready to test my idea

[MattMVS7]

I realize that my previous discussion (debate) here has been closed:

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/91032-the-science-of-joy-and-happiness/

 

Therefore, you won't see me debating any longer since debating got us nowhere. I thought I could get somewhere with it. In other words, I thought that I could make my idea logically valid. But as it turns out, that does not seem to be the case. Therefore, this new topic I made gets things done the right way. That is, we are now going to talk about how I can test my idea. We are going to talk about science this time and no more debating.

 

Overview Of My Theory To Be Tested (With New Points/Explanations)

 

First off, I am going to explain my idea that needs to be tested to give an overview. It actually explains some new things I haven't said before. I struggle with a chronic 24/7 absence of all my pleasant feelings/emotions (anhedonia) as well as depression. Now I have payed very close attention to having this personal experience with it and I realize something strange here. I notice that sometimes there are moments where things have a very subtle amount of meaning in my life.

 

But then there are moments in which things, out of the blue, spontaneously seem like nothing more than empty and meaningless shapes, sounds, and images. During these given moments, I feel an increase in my anhedonia. That is, I feel a further shutdown of my good moods which were, apparently, already so close to nothing that they were hardly detectable.

 

During those given moments where my anhedonia becomes worse, I feel a jamming sensation in my brain as though something is stuck there that is causing everything to turn off. I think it would be a dysregulated fear stress response that is overpowering everything and causing everything to turn off. My brain cannot get that fear stress response back under regulation (control), so everything has to be turned off for now.

 

But anyway, continuing on here. Depression and anhedonia are what turn off the reward system of our brains. So when my reward system turns off even further during those given moments where my anhedonia becomes worse, I perceive less good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration in my life. This has nothing to do with my way of thinking. In other words, my way of thinking is not causing me to perceive less of those things in my life. It is instead the further turning off of my reward system that makes me perceive none of those things in my life.

 

During those give moments, I can still tell myself that I still have good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration in my life. But they all seem like nothing more than labels (words and phrases) I am telling myself. I am not in the mental state of actually perceiving those said things in my life. Therefore, I would have none of those things in my life during my worst moments of anhedonia. That even goes for depression which I think is even worse and turns off the reward system even further.

 

Therefore, my idea here is that the moral (personally created) version of good, bad, love, joy, happiness, pain, sadness, rage, suffering, despair, etc. is nothing more than labels. It does not actually give us those said things. Our reward system is what gives us the former terms and our unpleasant feelings/emotions are what give us the latter terms of pain, sadness, rage, suffering, despair, etc.

 

Therefore, those terms are actual mental states like sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, etc. They are not our thinking alone. They do not come through personally defining those terms through our thoughts alone. So if you were blind and deaf and you still thought to yourself that you have sight and hearing, then that would obviously not give you sight and hearing. They would be nothing more than just the labels sight and hearing.

 

Now if I were to completely and utterly turn off all reward system function in your brain, then I am more than curious as to what you would report back to me. Would you really say to me that something seems very strange to you and that any good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration you think you still have in your life is now nothing more than just labels to you? Or would you actually think you still have those things?

 

If you still think you have those things, then do you really have those things? Or are you just fooling yourself here and that you are just not paying enough attention to your mental experiences here like I have? If you are actually fooling yourself, then my idea would be correct here. So the less and less reward system function we have, the more good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration we lose and the more they seem like nothing more than labels.

 

But on the other side of the spectrum, having full healthy function of our reward system gives us the mental state of heightened good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration. Our biological sense of reward (good moods) are the heightened state of good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration. It is a non-moral feeling/emotional (mood) version of good. This is the only version of good that can give our lives good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration according to my idea here.

 

But whether that is really true or not relies on scientific experiments to see if there can be any new supporting evidence for my idea. I am now going to explain the experiment below:

 

Experiment

 

I have actually come up with an experiment to be tested. You can tell me if it is flawed or not:

We need to find out if all good thoughts (thoughts of having good meaning in our lives) are always optimistic experiences for us. We would also need to find out if all optimistic experiences are rewarding experiences (our pleasant emotions).

So we need to find out if all good thoughts send the pleasure signal to our brains to give us the experience of pleasant emotions. If they do, then we would know that these are the types of thoughts that send the pleasure signal. From there, we need to find out if all optimistic thoughts send the pleasure signal as well. If they do, then that would say that all good thoughts are optimistic thoughts.

From there, we need to find out if all optimistic experiences for us as human beings are always rewarding experiences (our pleasant emotions). We need to find out what optimism is since us having good meaning in our lives is always something optimistic for us. We need to find out if optimism is joy, happiness, love, inspiration, and motivation. From there, we need to find out if joy, happiness, love, inspiration, and motivation are always rewarding experiences for us. How we would do that would be to see if joy, happiness, love, inspiration, and motivation are the only urges a human being has to live life. So we would have to see if our pleasant feelings/emotions are the only urges we have and if our thoughts alone do not give us urges, but do nothing more than make decisions and choices.

From there, we would also find out that our unpleasant feelings/emotions are also urges as well. So we would have to see if joy, happiness, love, inspiration, and motivation are our pleasant feelings/emotions or are our unpleasant feelings/emotions. We know how people act when they are optimistic. They show acts, tones, and expressions that are gleeful and such. We know how people act when they are pessimistic. They show acts, tones, and expressions that are somber and such. So I think it would be quite obvious here that our optimism can only be our pleasant feelings/emotions while it can only be our pessimism that would be our unpleasant feelings/emotions.

In conclusion, I want others to share their ideas as well. I want others to tell me what type of experiment I would need to perform to demonstrate/falsify my idea.

 

 

[OptimisticCynic]

It has been shown already that one man's pain is another man's pleasure. From this previous research we can deduce that pleasure, or emotional reward, is relatively independent of actual physical experiences. The "empty and meaningless shapes, sounds, and images" that make up direct experience are associated with previous experiences to establish their values within the individual brain. This suggests, to me, that deliberately seeking to become aware of all of the associations in your memory that can be connected to the experience of the present moment, may activate the part of your brain where values are recorded. Some change in your anhedonia may result. It is up to you whether you wish to experiment with it or not.

[MattMVS7]

It has been shown already that one man's pain is another man's pleasure. From this previous research we can deduce that pleasure, or emotional reward, is relatively independent of actual physical experiences. The "empty and meaningless shapes, sounds, and images" that make up direct experience are associated with previous experiences to establish their values within the individual brain. This suggests, to me, that deliberately seeking to become aware of all of the associations in your memory that can be connected to the experience of the present moment, may activate the part of your brain where values are recorded. Some change in your anhedonia may result. It is up to you whether you wish to experiment with it or not.

 

So you are saying here that pleasure and pain are all subjective. That it is all based on our outlook and associations in life that have been achieved throughout the course of our lifetime. But my idea is stating here that pleasure and pain are, in fact, always our mental experiences regardless of what we think and associate. That people would only be deluding themselves to think that they are having joy, pleasure, happiness, and inspiration in their lives while being nothing in a depressed mental state. The mental state of our good moods is the one and only thing that can give us pleasure, joy, happiness, love, and inspiration. So that is what my theory is saying. Pleasure cannot be pain and pain cannot be pleasure. Pleasure is always our biological sense of reward (good moods) from our reward system while pain is always our unpleasant feelings/emotions. If you experience pain from pleasure or pleasure from pain, then that would not make the pleasure pain or the pain pleasure. The pain is still pain and the pleasure is still pleasure.

Edited September 27, 2015 by MattMVS7

[OptimisticCynic]

Thank you for further defining your terms, 'pleasure' and 'pain'. Could you perhaps expound on "optimistic thoughts and experiences'?

 

Consider that mentally reliving an event from memory triggers the same hormonal responses as the actual event did. If the hormonal response system is malfunctioning, ie anhedonia, then the reliving of a pleasurable event would not trigger any pleasure hormone response. This supports your theory.

And,

People have reported their emotional state changing faster than the hormonal responses can react. The reaction time of emotionally triggered hormones has been researched. (I'm too lazy to look up the specifics.) It appears that the hormones come out after the emotion appears in the thinking. This suggests that there is more to emotional states than the hormonal responses. I suggest that our thinking selects our chemical emotional responses. I don't know the mechanism.

If my thinking selects the pain or pleasure response, then my anhedonia could be caused by my thinking. Or it could be a physical or chemical problem. This is only helpful in that it is quicker and easier to change thinking than the other possibilities. A good psychiatrist will check all of the possible causes. By the specified definitions of pleasure and pain, this has no bearing upon your theory. It may have some relation to the "jamming sensation" you mentioned. When you have a remote control car that is not working right, you check the car first or you check the remote control first. Checking both together is not the first step. Whether I am deluding myself, in thinking that I am feeling pleasure when my body is not activating the pleasure response, seems like a third step question to me. Then I have to decide whether I consist of my thinking, or my body, or the combination of both. (That argument belongs in the philosophy forum.)

 

Given multiple subjects subjected to a pure tone, such as middle C; the subjects will stop registering the sound as pleasant and instead register it as painful as the volume of that tone is increased. They will do this at different volume levels. If identical twins react to the tone as painful at different volume levels, it would tend to support the hypothesis of pleasure and pain being subjective. Identical twin sets always reacting to the tone with pain at the same volume would tend to support the hypothesis of pleasure and pain being objective experiences. --This, uncomfortably, brings up the thought of experiments performed at Nazi concentration camps.--

 

I do not know if any of this is helpful to you, but it was fun for me to think about. Thanks

[MattMVS7]

Thank you for further defining your terms, 'pleasure' and 'pain'. Could you perhaps expound on "optimistic thoughts and experiences'?

 

Consider that mentally reliving an event from memory triggers the same hormonal responses as the actual event did. If the hormonal response system is malfunctioning, ie anhedonia, then the reliving of a pleasurable event would not trigger any pleasure hormone response. This supports your theory.

And,

People have reported their emotional state changing faster than the hormonal responses can react. The reaction time of emotionally triggered hormones has been researched. (I'm too lazy to look up the specifics.) It appears that the hormones come out after the emotion appears in the thinking. This suggests that there is more to emotional states than the hormonal responses. I suggest that our thinking selects our chemical emotional responses. I don't know the mechanism.

If my thinking selects the pain or pleasure response, then my anhedonia could be caused by my thinking. Or it could be a physical or chemical problem. This is only helpful in that it is quicker and easier to change thinking than the other possibilities. A good psychiatrist will check all of the possible causes. By the specified definitions of pleasure and pain, this has no bearing upon your theory. It may have some relation to the "jamming sensation" you mentioned. When you have a remote control car that is not working right, you check the car first or you check the remote control first. Checking both together is not the first step. Whether I am deluding myself, in thinking that I am feeling pleasure when my body is not activating the pleasure response, seems like a third step question to me. Then I have to decide whether I consist of my thinking, or my body, or the combination of both. (That argument belongs in the philosophy forum.)

 

Given multiple subjects subjected to a pure tone, such as middle C; the subjects will stop registering the sound as pleasant and instead register it as painful as the volume of that tone is increased. They will do this at different volume levels. If identical twins react to the tone as painful at different volume levels, it would tend to support the hypothesis of pleasure and pain being subjective. Identical twin sets always reacting to the tone with pain at the same volume would tend to support the hypothesis of pleasure and pain being objective experiences. --This, uncomfortably, brings up the thought of experiments performed at Nazi concentration camps.--

 

I do not know if any of this is helpful to you, but it was fun for me to think about. Thanks

 

When I say optimistic thoughts and experiences, then what I mean here is that when you see people perform optimistic acts, tones, and expressions, then this means they are cheerful, happy, joyful, and inspired acts, tones, and expressions. So being in an optimistic mental state would mean to be in a cheerful, happy, joyful, and inspired mental state. But if you were to perform acts, tones, and expressions that are just very rapid, then they would just be rapid acts, tones, and expressions. Since they are not cheerful, happy, joyful, and inspired, then they are not optimistic acts, tones, and expressions.

 

So clearly there is the difference between being in an optimistic mental state as opposed to a mental state in which we are just doing things in life like rapid and efficient biological robots. Our thoughts alone cannot give us any optimistic mental experience according to my theory. They can only give us the experience of thoughts. So it is like being in a robotic intellectual state that makes choices and decisions. But our good moods are what give us the mental state of optimism. When we are feeling good, then this means we are optimistic in life. If we feel bad, then this means we are pessimistic in life. If we are neither in a good nor a bad mood, then we are neither optimistic nor pessimistic.