I am on the quest for truth here

I am on the quest for truth here and wish to find the answer to this theory I have come up with. I am now going to explain it:

My theory states that there is a scientific (psychological) basis for how things and people are of good value and worth to us (how they give good meaning to our lives). That psychological basis is not our thinking. It is not how we personally define good through our thinking. It is instead our incentive (our pleasant emotions). Our reward system (pleasant emotions are the only incentives a human being has based upon what Robert Sapolsky has said.

Robert Sapolsky is a highly intelligent and famous evolutionary biologist. You can search him up and watch his videos on Youtube.

So based upon that, our pleasant emotions are the only things that can make things, situations, and people of good value and worth to us. So they would be the scientific version of good. That is where the moral version of good transfers over to the scientific version of good in being our pleasant emotions. If we had no incentive, then it would not bother us at all if things and people that we judged to be good were to be damaged, hurt, or taken away from us. We just wouldn't care.

So I do not see how something or someone can possibly be defined as having good value and worth to us without our incentive. There are people who are bothered by losses and such even without their incentive (without their pleasant emotions). But this would only be because they are fooling their brains into thinking they had the incentive when they never had it.

Therefore, good and bad would instead have to be scientific terms. Good would be a synonym for our pleasant feelings/emotions and bad would be a synonym for our unpleasant feelings/emotions just as how visualization is a synonym for sight and how audiation is a synonym for hearing.

People can still have thoughts that they care about people and things without their incentive (without their pleasant emotions). But they would only be fooling themselves into thinking they care when they never did care. They don't have the incentive and they are only fooling their brains into thinking they have it.

Our care (incentive) has been defined through science as only being our pleasant emotions and not our thoughts alone as I said before. Love, joy, happiness, care, compassion, suffering, despair, rage, fear, etc. are all scientific terms and have been defined through science as only being our pleasant and unpleasant feelings/emotions and not our thoughts.

One last thing here. It is science that proves and disproves things. Not our personal moral opinions. Therefore, just because we say and think to ourselves that our lives still have good meaning without our pleasant emotions doesn't make it so. Science would have to prove otherwise. And, yes, I am asking for someone to challenge (debate) my theory.

 

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I would guess, but there's also negative reinforcement...

 

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The idiots in ISIS get pleasant feelings when they cut the heads off of people with different religious beliefs.

 

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Not only that, but some slum land lords take pleasure in throwing family behind in the rent payments out into the street in cold winter and replacing them with family more likely to pay the rent.

Good and bad are very relative terms with no scientific basis.

 

We have the survival aspect and we then have the problem solving aspect. The survival aspect is where we perceive good meaning towards the pursuing of our goals and dreams and in helping others. The incentive that exists in the realm of the survival aspect would be our pleasant emotions. This is what gives good meaning to our lives.

But we then have the problem solving aspect which is where we perceive bad meaning towards the running away from danger and solving/refraining from acts that hinder or threaten our survival. The incentive that exists in the realm of the problem solving aspect would be our unpleasant feelings/emotions. This is what gives bad meaning to our lives.

But having neither pleasant nor unpleasant feelings/emotions would only render your life having neutral (neither good or bad) meaning.

If what you are implying here is that since our pleasant emotions can motivate us to do horrible deeds and result in horrible outcomes, that this makes my theory false, then I am going to explain on this. The harmful, dangerous, and foolish acts and results would no longer be referred to as being good or bad. The scientific version of good and bad is a different version of good and bad than the moral version of good and bad. The scientific version of good and bad is a feeling/emotional version of good and bad. It is different than the moral (should or should not do) version of good and bad.

 

Researchers with the University of Chicago have discovered that some adolescents who engage in aggressive and disruptive behaviors appear to be genetically "wired" to experience pleasure when they are witnessing or causing pain in others.
About the Study
According to a university news release, this conclusion was reached by studying brain patterns in 16 adolescent boys:

• Eight boys with aggressive conduct disorder were compared with eight boys who demonstrated no signs of aggression. All of the subjects were between the ages of 16 and 18.
• All 16 boys were shown video clips depicting pain being inflicted both intentionally and accidentally on a variety of individuals.
• While watching the video segments, the boys were tested with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology.

"Aggressive adolescents showed a specific and very strong activation of the amygdala and ventral striatum (an area that responds to feeling rewarded) when watching pain inflicted on others, which suggested that they enjoyed watching pain," UC psychology professor Jean Decety, who participated in the study, said in the release.
........................
old study with small sampling size
..........
and then,
peer group adoration can take mild antisocial behaviors to the extreem

 

I feel that because of the the electrochemical nature of the brain, psychology primarily rests on the furthering of quantum mechanics. Hooray for the Planck length! We only have ten billion more years to go before we can start to understand ourselves now.

 

It may not take that long BWS. We model both the behaviors of 'good' vs 'bad' in our mammalian neocortex. If you could act to save the life of someone you consider to be 'good' who has been kind to you, vs. someone who is 'bad' and was mean to you, which one would you save? To a lizard, there isn't a reason to save anyone but yourself, but what would a mammal do, and why would they do it?

Modeling behaviors is what put us on this miraculous path to becoming one organism, and a quintessentially caring and social one. For every path nature chooses, there will be outliers to the rule, but you know what to do to them, given a choice. It isn't good or evil; it's what it is.

Truths that affect our survival collectively are really the only ones that matter to us, and this one is hard to miss, and it might even have been an accident, but it works.

 

Consciousness is an artifact of neuron hardware. Rest neurons exist at highest energy potential due to the pumping of cations. When rest neurons fire, the membrane potential changes and energy is released. The neuron then expends ATP energy resetting the membrane potential.

This is different from computer memory, since computer memory is designed to begin at lowest potential. This makes memory stable. Neurons are not design to be stable, but rather to be subject to change; lower energy.

Say we designed computer memory, in the image of neurons, so the memory disk begin at highest energy potential; hot memory. What would happen is hot memory would not be stable, but would spontaneously change over time in response to the need to lower energy. Electrons will tunnel and jump into lower energy states, with the energy output causing a chain reaction.

After the change, we note the differences and analyze the changes and then add any changes that meet certain logic criteria to a cold backup copy. We then rewrite the hot memory from the modified cold back up. The new high energy memory now starts with a slightly different organization, for spontaneous change.

The logic that the brain uses to analyze change is connected to personality firmware. These define human nature and collective human propensity. This makes changes to the backup copy, human.

 

Now I have made a debating point in my previous post. If anyone wishes to continue and debate with me, then go ahead.

 

I support your debating point.

Chemical rewards by means of neurotransmitters like dopamine and seratonin may optionally be overridden by other factors more important to survival, and very little other than chemical rewards may prevent us from behaving as snakes, lizards, psychopaths, drug addicts or alcoholics would. The latter examples are problematic to your thesis precisely because in the case of addiction, neurotransmitters have been supplanted by external chemical self-stimulation. After that point, good vs. bad is balanced against getting that next fix.

 

So your premise is: If something feels good it is good and if something feels bad it is bad. Sure that's fine. It does not seem scientific though because depending on the person or the society, one will deem the an act as good and the other will deem the same act as bad.

 

Wellwisher:

No.

Neurons are not necessary to consciousness, sentience, or anything resembling it. The specialized neurons we use may be implemented in more than one manner, and are merely an artifact of ancestral species that evolved initially in a salty ocean where sodium and potassium ions were abundant.

You're always sounding off about water. Even your chosen screen name refers to this.

Consciousness is not what the thread is about. It's about a level of sentience that subsumes thinking. Consciousness is a neurosensory illusion, or else you would be conscious when you sleep. Neurons may even function after brain death, when corpses spontaneously sit up or have preapisms in morgues. It is not consciousness. Chickens may survive much longer even after decapitation, but they are in no sense actually alive, sustainable as a chicken with all of its parts, nor conscious.

At any rate, the question posed cannot be successfully debated at the level of neurons. Bump it up a notch.

 

Well, let me just say this here. I struggle with a chronic 24/7 absence of all my pleasant emotions (anhedonia). I cannot stand being in this completely settled down mood when composing for the world of anime and videogames. This grand moment of my composing dream absolutely calls for me to be always up and running in a high inspired mood.

That high inspiration can only come through my pleasant emotions. I cannot have any sort of inspiration (incentive) whatsoever through my thoughts alone since they are all nothing more than the "thinking" experience of my brain. They can only experience the words and phrases of inspiration and good meaning. But they cannot actually give my life nor my composing dream any inspiration or good meaning for me.

So I just don't understand how a severely crippled depressed or anhedonic person's life can still have good meaning if he/she just simply judges it to be so without his/her pleasant emotions.

 

Do you have a doctor that can write prescription medication?

 

I am sorry to hear that. I can't really imagine what that would be like but I am sure it sucks. Good luck.

 

I am still trying to find a way to ease up this anhedonia. But I still have not found a way yet.

But anyway, continuing on here. I have discussed my theory with someone else who became agitated and offended when my theory imposed upon their moral version of good that they live by. As a matter of fact, I think anyone would be upset if the moral version of good were to be taken away from them and that they could no longer have any good meaning in their lives.

So my response to this person (and to anyone else here who would also become upset if they could no longer have good meaning in their lives) would be:

Let me ask you this. Why is it that you are upset about my theory going against your own moral version of good that you wish to live by in your life? It would be because you have the incentive to have it and live by it in your life. It is the incentive that exists in the realm of the survival aspect since it is not a problem to you that hinders or threatens your survival that you wish to solve. It is not something like a life crisis or anything like that for you.

But our thoughts alone cannot experience any incentives as I said before. So what you would be doing here is fooling your brain into thinking you have the incentive to have and live by your moral version of good if you had no pleasant emotions. So I think you can now see where I am getting at here.

If you had no pleasant emotions and you were not fooling your brain into thinking you have the incentive to have and live by your moral version of good, then you wouldn't have thoughts of your moral version of good mattering to you at all. It would then not bother you at all if it were to be taken away from you and if all your family and goals/dreams that you deemed to be of good value and worth to you were to be taken away from you.

So that is where my theory is getting at here. It asks the question of how something can possibly be of good value and worth to us and give our lives good meaning without our incentive (without our pleasant emotions).

 

Watch Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.

 

I can't watch it. Therefore, just give me an explanation as to how it refutes what I just said in my previous post.

 

I would argue that "good" and "bad" are not meaningful within science in that way. They are judgements that we each make, they are subjective.
But if you mean that "good" and "bad" for the purposes of this discussion are to be synonymous with "enjoyable" and "not-enjoyable" then okay, let's work with that.

One would need to alter their view of what "good" or "bad" is, if indeed such terms still hold a meaning, such that they become terms applicable to that which the person can experience.
For example, there is the adage along the lines of "if it makes you happy it must be good", well, if you can't feel happiness it would be possibly more a case of "if it doesn't make you miserable it must be good".
I.e. you alter what good or bad is relative to what you can experience. Maybe "good" becomes that which makes other people happy. "Bad" becomes that which makes others or yourself miserable. And personal emotion thus becomes irrelevant to that view.

If you do refer to these terms as being the same as "enjoyable or not", then someone who can not experience enjoyment can not claim anything is "good", but knowing that they should then accept that "good" (as understood in this manner) simply doesn't apply to them.

They should then value their life in other terms, perhaps in purely intellectual terms. I say perhaps as I can not truly imagine what it must be like, of the level of emotion, if any, such people as yourself have.
But there are other values to judge oneself and one's actions by other than "good" and "bad" / "enjoyable or not" etc.
It wouldn't necessarily result in a lifestyle that others would deem enjoyable, but since "enjoyable" has no meaning to those without the emotion, it is simply a matter of living with the knowledge that it is different.
One could simply abdicate their notion of what is "good" (as understood in this discussion) to someone they trust.

It is really no different than asking a blind man to describe the colour red... they are missing that sensory input, so they can't, so they live their lives slightly differently but still as fully as able.
A sufferer of anhedonia is also missing a sense (of enjoyment)... so must live their lives slightly differently.


Or am I missing the point of this thread (if so, apologies)?