I believe values (what we care about) are the root of our emotional experience, and our emotions drive what things we think about, and what we think about drives what we do. So, studying the self is really the same as studying values. And that's really the same as morality. And this is also what religion is concerned with.
— Brendan Golledge

I disagree with just about everything in this paragraph. — T Clark

The paragraph does seem to be consonant with recent thinking on the relation between affectivity, cognition and values. For instance, enactivist approaches to cognitive psychology insist that cognitive and affective processes are closely interdependent, with affect, emotion and sensation functioning in multiple ways and at multiple levels to situate or attune the context of our conceptual dealings with the world , and that affective tonality is never absent from cognition. As Matthew Ratcliffe puts it,

“moods are no longer a subjective window-dressing on privileged theoretical perspectives but a background that constitutes the sense of all intentionalities, whether theoretical or practical”

“...affect binds us to things, making them relevant and ‘lighting up' aspects of the world in such a way as to call forth actions and thoughts. Without the world-structuring orientation that they provide, we are disoriented, cut off from the world, which no longer solicits thoughts and actions and is consequently devoid of value. In effect, [William] James is saying that our very sense of reality is constituted by world-orienting feelings that bind us to things...The absence of emotion comprises a state of cognitive and behavioural paralysis rather than fully functional cognition, stripped of ‘mere' affect. A phenomenology without affect is a phenomenology that guts the world of all its significance.” (Matthew Ratcliffe)

All thinking animals (such as birds and mammals) appear to be hardwired to try to improve their emotional state
— Brendan Golledge

Contentious statement. First, there is no way of knowing, or of testing, whether animals have emotional states. ‘Thinking animals’ is also a contentious claim, as what ‘thinking’ implies, and whether animals are capable of it, is vaguely defined and probably untestable. Then the first paragraph glides directly into ‘animals such as ourselves’, when it is precisely self-consciousness, language and abstract thought that differentiates h.sapiens from other organisms. Ergo the argument is based on questionable foundations. — Wayfarer

You said yourself in a later post that it's obvious that dogs have feelings.

When I think about what is actually happening when I feel an emotion, it seems clear that it is impossible for it to occur unless some cognitive process has taken place. Take anger, for instance. It seems to me that anger happens when you realize that some entity is attacking something that you care about. How can you figure this out without using your brain? If you aren't awake and paying attention, then it's impossible to feel angry no matter how people may be trying to hurt you at that moment. This is different than physical sensations like hunger and pain, which occur without your conscious participation. So it seems to me that that thinking and feeling go together. And whereas emotions cannot occur at all without a thinking process, emotions in turn guide the topic of thoughts (such as when you're angry, you're likely to think of ways of hurting the person who made you angry).

Oh, and I wasn't thinking of "animals like ourselves" as including a great ability for abstract thought. I was thinking only that they have some capacity to model the world and to feel emotions as a result. It seems obvious to me that all mammals and birds can do this. Reptiles and fish seem to have at least the ability to feel fear and anger. If they didn't, then why would they run/swim away from danger, or why would a crocodile attack things that approach their nests? That they feel fear and anger in a similar manner that we do seems like the most obvious answer.

there is no way of knowing, or of testing, whether animals have emotional states. ‘Thinking animals’ is also a contentious claim, as what ‘thinking’ implies, and whether animals are capable of it, is vaguely defined and probably untestable. — Wayfarer

Positivist approaches in psychology were based on the same assumptions concerning human behavior, which is why they excluded ‘unobservable and untestable’ concepts like emotion and cognition from their models. Fortunately, things have changed significantly with respect to what is considered empirically testable for both humans and other animals.

There is so much to reply to, I don't know if I can get to all of it.

It all comes down to "why do anything?". Once you go through the dialectic, it leads to questioning procreation and survival. And rightfully, it questions modern secular philosophies like hedonism, "economics as religion", and existentialism. This doesn't mean to then turn to the warm embrace of religion. That is a falsehood as well.

However, the universality of some religious ideas (the One, Nirvana, etc.) can counteract the absurdity of minutia-mongering. If you JUST figured out how that transmission works, you would be a better person, more useful. If you JUST figured out how to start an innovative X, more useful. If you JUST figured out how to solve the meaning and essence of words (philosophy of language debates), or the best physics model (theoretical physics debates), or know the intricate details of any subject, you will be edified with your knowledge. You will be BETTER, you will be USEFUL. QUESTION ALL OF THIS THINKING, whether you think minutia-mongering is more USEFUL, makes you BETTER, or you think MEANING comes from delving deeper into the minutia of a topic at hand you think is important.

As for the "religious experience", people generally seem to mean "flow states" or "meditative psychological states". These are ways to preoccupy the chatter of the restless mind. — schopenhauer1

As for the first paragraph, it seems to me that all values are arbitrarily asserted. So you have to arbitrarily decide whether life is worth living, and then go from there. I have decided that it is worth living.

It seems like the second paragraph is how we often get stuck looking for the "next thing".

I'm aware that religious experience often is associated with alternative states of mind, which I think are still important. I am more concerned with changing the general/usual state of mind.

Sounds like a fairly conservative take on good. I am uncertain what 'good' means and how it can be identified. The only thing I can say is that to cause suffering deliberately would appear to be bad. Does it follow that to prevent suffering is good?

Aren't all human choices motivated by wanting to feel satisfied in some way, regardless of whether it involves pleasure or pain? Isn't that why we have the idea of psychological egoism? Even when people act in ways that appear to be self-sacrificing or aimed at benefiting others, they are actually motivated by the pursuit of personal satisfaction, whether it be through direct pleasure, the avoidance of guilt, or the fulfilment of a sense of duty.

Doing good to satisfy a philosophy or please a god would ultimately seem to be a pursuit of personal pleasure. Do you think one can transcend self-interest? — Tom Storm

First paragraph. I think values are arbitrarily asserted. Although in a state of nature, before a person has developed much, it seems like good is associated with pleasure and bad is associated with pain. However, humans can learn to associate good and bad with almost anything as adults. Consciously thinking about what things we ought to consider good and bad is the point of this discussion. Because of the arbitrariness of value-assertion, using an external guide as a rule (such as a religious tradition) can be very helpful.

Second paragraph: I know subjectively speaking, I might think to myself, "I'd rather be playing video games, but it would be better for me to do the dishes," and then I will do the dishes. So my subjective experience is that I don't always do what I want. I suppose it could be argued that I get some satisfaction from doing the right thing, or that I really just don't want to feel guilty, or that I don't want to have to eat off a dirty plate later. Or maybe I choose to do the dishes because I know that otherwise my wife would do them, and I want to make things easier on her. It seems to me that if it is possible to think that I am good and therefore I do good things for myself, then it ought to be possible to think that another person is good for their own sake, and to want to do good things for that person (although this kind of thought probably requires some degree of training). It might be possible that if I didn't get some kind of personal satisfaction somewhere deep inside from helping another person, that I wouldn't do it. But my subjective experience is that I can value another person for his/her own sake.

Perhaps this is a problem with considering a monastic life to be conducive to developing psychological insight? Considered from a neuroscientific perspective, a monastic life could be considered to be starving one's brain of the input that comes with interacting with diverse people in diverse situations. It doesn't seem to me like a monastic life would be very conducive to developing robust intuitons regarding human psychology.

To take it back to Christianity, do you think the diversity of people who Jesus is purported to have associated with might have been relevant to Jesus being particularly psychologically insightful? — wonderer1

I actually lived at a monastery once, and it was very useful for learning about myself. I would not have gotten the psychological insight that I have without having been at the monastery. I suppose if I lived my whole life at the monastery, however, without having had experience of the broader world, then I probably would not be as psychologically developed.

If I understand the story of Jesus correctly, he was basically a mature person and ready to do his mission by the time he was 30. Maybe he developed more after that, but it seems like he was mostly already who he was by the time he started ministering.

Well, obviously all of our instincts, desires, and emotions are wired to keep us alive. But it seems to me that the way emotions do that is that they make us try to make ourselves happy. It seems like a common-sense thing that we prefer to be happy rather than sad.
— Brendan Golledge

You make two unrelated statements. First you say the way emotions help keep us alive is to try to make ourselves happy. This is mostly wrong. Then you say that we prefer to be happy than sad, which is generally true, but irrelevant. — T Clark

I don't understand what the problem is. I would assume that most of the stuff that makes us happy would have been useful for our ancestors for staying alive, and that therefore aiming towards happiness is generally useful for our survival. This seems to me to be the same as that we prefer to be happy than sad. Where is the confusion?

Next you argue about instincts/desires/emotions. It seems to me that you are arguing about the definition of words. I realize that if you're talking about how those words are commonly used, then what I said was not right. But when I was talking about instincts/desires/emotions, I was giving definitions that I find useful for the purpose of discussion. They seem to me to be a complete description of the sensations that we feel that encourage us to do one thing or another.

This seems like a very simplistic analysis. More than that - it's presumptuous unless you are a student of religion, which you indicate you are not. — T Clark

I have not studied every single religion in the world in-depth (although I do have a cursory knowledge of Taoism, which you mentioned before). I have studied Christianity a great deal. I even lived at a monastery for a few months.

I disagree with just about everything in this paragraph. — T Clark

Lots of people have told me things like, "What you said is contradictory", or "I disagree", but if they don't provide an argument, then I have no reason to change my mind.

Re Kafka - I suspect that if you don't discover him in your 20's, he may be less affecting. I like The Metamorphosis and The Trial best. — Tom Storm

I think I was made to read, "The Metamorphosis" in high school. I only understood it at the surface level that some dude turned into a bug, and that it was meant to be a horror story. If there was some kind of psychological lesson to be learned from the story, then I missed it.

Considering that psychology is a science
— wonderer1

Hardly. Surely not in the sense he is meaning there: giving explanation to natural events (Zeus and lightning). — Lionino

I don't think there is much knowledge of physical sciences in religion. But I do think that religion is how people understood their psychology. The morals of the people were embedded in their religious stories.

Even though I don't believe in the literal truth of these stories, I am still inspired by them sometimes. The first example that comes to mind is that in Norse mythology, all the gods know ahead of time who they are going to fight in ragnarok, and that they will all die. But they all choose to go fight anyway. This seems inspiring to me. It seems to me to be a good thing that even if things are bad and you know you can't win, it is good to fight anyway. But in real life, we don't have prophecy, so we never really know with certainty that something is hopeless, like the Norse god do.

People are born without instruction manuals. The only instruction manuals are written by other players. So, I think it's no wonder that people got everything mixed up. Ancient people likely didn't have the concepts of "objective" (existing independently of the self) and "subjective" (occurring from within the self), or the idea of the unconscious, so it's no wonder that they got everything all mixed up. Google says that the first occurrence of the word unconscious was only a few hundred years ago. It seems to me that if people didn't even have a word for a thing, then they likely didn't have the concept either. But we have the experience that thoughts and feelings come to us from we know not where. So where did people think that they came from? They thought their spontaneous inner experiences came from gods (like Aphrodite = lust and Ares = anger), or from angels and demons. So, in a certain sense, people really did experience their gods. Modern people just don't believe in their interpretations of their experiences. So, although most religious people don't know this, their religious beliefs are actually how they model their psychology.

The paragraph does seem to be consonant with recent thinking on the relation between affectivity, cognition and values. For instance, enactivist approaches to cognitive psychology insist that cognitive and affective processes are closely interdependent, with affect, emotion and sensation functioning in multiple ways and at multiple levels to situate or attune the context of our conceptual dealings with the world , and that affective tonality is never absent from cognition. As Matthew Ratcliffe puts it, — Joshs

I don't really disagree with anything you said there. What I said was a simplification. I realize that emotions don't occur without a thinking process, or without knowledge of events. I also think that we wouldn't think much without emotions. Without some kind of stimulant like an emotion, our brains would probably just sit there doing nothing like a computer that is not receiving instruction. So in a very simplified sense, our values determine our emotional responses, our emotions determine what we think about, and we select our behavior from our thoughts.

Positivist approaches in psychology were based on the same assumptions concerning human behavior, which is why they excluded ‘unobservable and untestable’ concepts like emotion and cognition from their models. Fortunately, things have changed significantly with respect to what is considered empirically testable for both humans and other animals. — Joshs

Part of the point of my original post was that psychology cannot be studied like a hard science because it is difficult/impossible to observe inner psychological states. I was arguing that people ought to be interested in their own psychology as a real subject of study, even if they have to go it alone. And people like myself who make general claims about psychology have a hard time because we can't easily demonstrate that things are the way we say they are.

enactivist approaches to cognitive psychology insist that cognitive and affective processes are closely interdependent, with affect, emotion and sensation functioning in multiple ways and at multiple levels to situate or attune the context of our conceptual dealings with the world , and that affective tonality is never absent from cognition. — Joshs

Yes, I agree with this strongly. People with damage to those areas of the brain involved in emotions sometimes find themselves unable to make even the simplest decisions. There is no doubt that emotions are interwoven with all aspects of our cognitive life. But that's not what Brendan Colledge wrote. Here's what he said:

I believe values (what we care about) are the root of our emotional experience, and our emotions drive what things we think about, and what we think about drives what we do. So, studying the self is really the same as studying values. And that's really the same as morality. And this is also what religion is concerned with. — Brendan Golledge

Emotions developed early in our species evolutionary history and parts of the brain involved in emotions are located in more "primitive" areas, i.e. in the pre-cortex. In that context, what does "values are the root of our emotional experience" even mean? To over-simplify, the emotions were there first. They are part of the foundation of our thinking and were there long before consciousness.

I realize that if you're talking about how those words are commonly used, then what I said was not right. But when I was talking about instincts/desires/emotions, I was giving definitions that I find useful for the purpose of discussion. — Brendan Golledge

If you want to participate effectively in philosophical discussions, you should use words as they are commonly understood. At the very least, you should specify clearly what non-standard usages you are using.

Lots of people have told me things like, "What you said is contradictory", or "I disagree", but if they don't provide an argument, then I have no reason to change my mind. — Brendan Golledge

I have provided specific arguments in my posts in this thread based on my understanding of cognitive science and psychology while you have provided nothing beyond "seems to me" based on a very incomplete understanding of both religion and science.

Emotions developed early in our species evolutionary history and parts of the brain involved in emotions are located in more "primitive" areas, i.e. in the pre-cortex. In that context, what does "values are the root of our emotional experience" even mean? To over-simplify, the emotions were there first. They are part of the foundation of our thinking and were there long before consciousness — T Clark

It sounds like you’re getting your idea of the primacy of emotion in evolutionary history from this model:

The model begins with ancient subcortical circuits for
basic survival, which we allegedly inherited from reptiles. Sitting atop those circuits is an alleged emotion system, known as the “limbic system,” that we supposedly inherited from early mammals. And wrapped around the so­-called limbic system, like icing on an already-baked cake, is our allegedly rational and uniquely human cortex. This illusory arrangement of layers, which is sometimes called the “triune brain,” remains one of the most suc­cessful misconceptions in human biology. Carl Sagan popularized it in The Dragons of Eden, his bestselling (some would say largely fictional) account of how human intelligence evolved. Daniel Goleman employed it in his best­seller Emotional Intelligence. Nevertheless, humans don’t have an animal brain gift-wrapped in cognition, as any expert in brain evolution knows. “Mapping emotion onto just the middle part of the brain, and reason and logic onto the cortex, is just plain silly,” says neuroscientist Barbara L. Fin­lay, editor of the journal Behavior and Brain Sciences. “All brain divisions are present in all vertebrates.” So how do brains evolve? They reorganize as they expand, like companies do, to keep themselves efficient and nimble.(How Emotions are Made, Lisa Barrett)

The above account suggests instead that affect, cognition and consciousness developed in tandem. The defining feature of living systems is their normative organization, the fact that they are purpose-driven to maintain their form of life in changing circumstances. This doesnt mean that amoebas have values in the same way that humans do, but that affectivity and sense-making work together to produce goal-oriented directionality.

Consciously thinking about what things we ought to consider good and bad is the point of this discussion. Because of the arbitrariness of value-assertion, using an external guide as a rule (such as a religious tradition) can be very helpful. — Brendan Golledge

Are you particularly concerned by what we use as an external guide? Isn't this itself arbitrary too? We can pick secular humanism, a political ideology or fundamentalist Islam. How do we know which oughts and ought nots within a system are useful or 'correct'. Seems we have to step outside of the external guide to make an assessment.

Where we obtain our oughts from is itself a curious thing - it appears to be contingent and may have nothing to do with right or wrong (in a more transcendent sense), just perceptions of right or wrong. Isn't it the case that oughts and ought nots are located in the contingent system of values we gain through culture and experience? Some of these might coalesce into a system of sorts. Isn't morality essentially an intersubjective agreement, with many outliers and willing transgressors?

The above account suggests instead that affect, cognition and consciousness developed in tandem. — Joshs

I think I was clear in my previous post that emotions are involved in all aspects of our cognitive life. At the same time, it is true that every mammal that has ever existed has had emotions. Emotions were a part of animal cognition long before anything we would call consciousness had evolved.

I think I was clear in my previous post that emotions are involved in all aspects of our cognitive life. At the same time, it is true that every mammal that has ever existed has had emotions. Emotions were a part of animal cognition long before anything we would call consciousness had evolved. — T Clark

I happen to believe that the functionally unified, normative, goal-oriented organization of living systems is what consciousness is in its most primordial sense, so what distinguishes humans and higher animals from simpler ones isn’t an all-or-nothing capacity of consciousness, but a matter of degree. Neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio assert that there can be no consciousness without emotion. It has also been suggested that there can be no emotion without consciousness, that unconscious affect is a non-sequitor.

I happen to believe that the functionally unified, normative, goal-oriented organization of living systems is what consciousness is in its most primordial sense — Joshs

Whenever we set sail on the sea of consciousness, differences in definitions are often the reefs on which our arguments run aground. I would not normally call what you have described "consciousness." That's not an argument against your position, but we are talking about different things.

Whenever we set sail on the sea of consciousness, differences in definitions are often the reefs on which our arguments run aground — T Clark

Then perhaps we must let it run aground. Beside, I think I’m getting seasick.

I suspect the lion’s share of those intuitions are formed by early adulthood , which may explain why philosophers like Heidegger, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard were able to generate profound psychological insights while living essentially monastic lives. — Joshs

Perhaps. I have only a superficial view of those three.

I tend to find both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard rather overwrought, and not to my taste. Still, I can see how both express things that I can understand others to find psychologically liberating, even if I don't much relate.

Emotions developed early in our species evolutionary history and parts of the brain involved in emotions are located in more "primitive" areas, i.e. in the pre-cortex. In that context, what does "values are the root of our emotional experience" even mean? To over-simplify, the emotions were there first. They are part of the foundation of our thinking and were there long before consciousness. — T Clark

(Value) + (Perceived event related to that value) -> emotion

I will try to give a new example from recent experience. My wife hates it when I have holes in my clothes, and I don't care. She values how I appear to other people, and I don't. Offense is the feeling of hating facts. So, when she sees that I have holes in my clothes, she becomes offended. I see the holes, but I have no emotional response because I don't care how other people perceive me. Likewise, if my wife did not see the holes, then she would not be offended (she doesn't perceive the relevant event).

To use an old example, if you thought that somebody had stolen your money, then you'd probably be angry. This is because you (probably) care about money, and anger is the feeling that comes when you are aware that somebody is attacking something you care about. If you realized that instead you had just lost the money (change of perceived event), then you'd probably be sad rather than angry. Likewise, if you decided that you didn't care about the money (change of value), then you would not have an emotional reaction to losing it.

I think in lower animals, good = pleasure and bad = pain. However, humans, as I said in the original post, can invent all manner of good and bad separate from our immediate material needs. Love of money is an example. A wild man who grew up without the concept of money would probably have no emotional reaction (other than maybe curiosity) at being given paper bills or having them taken away.

Edit: So, to more directly answer the quote. I agree that emotions have been there for a long time, but I am arguing that values are how they operate. The most typical value assertion is that pleasure = good and pain = bad, but that humans can choose other values (although they often don't do this consciously).

Consciously thinking about what things we ought to consider good and bad is the point of this discussion. Because of the arbitrariness of value-assertion, using an external guide as a rule (such as a religious tradition) can be very helpful.
— Brendan Golledge

Are you particularly concerned by what we use as an external guide? Isn't this itself arbitrary too? We can pick secular humanism, a political ideology or fundamentalist Islam. How do we know which oughts and ought nots within a system are useful or 'correct'. Seems we have to step outside of the external guide to make an assessment.

Where we obtain our oughts from is itself a curious thing - it appears to be contingent and may have nothing to do with right or wrong (in a more transcendent sense), just perceptions of right or wrong. Isn't it the case that oughts and ought nots are located in the contingent system of values we gain through culture and experience? Some of these might coalesce into a system of sorts. Isn't morality essentially an intersubjective agreement, with many outliers and willing transgressors? — Tom Storm

I am very happy to talk about this. But based on the reception to my previous posts, I thought I'd wait for someone to bring it up rather than write a book in my original post.

I like Christian morality a lot. I think the early Christians and Jews were maybe the most interested in righteous living of any people ever. The primary area where I would disagree with them is that I don't believe in an afterlife, so that I do not like the suicidal altruism prescribed in Christianity.

I thought a lot about how I could create a moral system. It is hard when you don't have faith in the literal truth of religious stories because you can't prove your morals to another person. However, I think I have found a semi-objective basis for morality.

One observation is that it appears that only living beings have the experience of "good" and "bad". So, we can conclude that the only moral judgments that can have any effect on the material world are behavioral prescriptions for living beings. For instance, asserting that elliptical orbits are good/bad would be useless. But telling people that murder is bad is likely to have an effect on the murder rate.

Also, it is a logical truism that a moral system (or any other thing) which would destroy itself will not survive very long. So, if we want our moral system to not be in vain, then our moral system must be good at multiplying and preserving itself. This likely includes multiplying and preserving the people who believe in it, since moral systems cannot exist outside of believers.

It also seems true that, all else being equal, feeling good is better than feeling bad. Feeling good about doing good also encourages you to do more of it.

So, if we want our morals to have an effect on the world and be long-lasting, then we should have a moral system that prescribes behavior for living beings that is effective at perpetuating the morals that they believe in, and which they enjoy doing.

Purely individualistic morals are not sustainable in human societies (however appealing they may be emotionally), because all men are mortal. The individualistic morality that a person holds will die with him. The only morals that can be passed down from generation to generation are those that perpetuate the survival of the tribe that believes in them.

I like to think of these as, "God's morals," because whatever we think morality ought to be, these are probably the morals that WILL BE.

Of course, this is not a complete morality. I think it is a good basis for a morality though. It is objective whether a thing (such as yourself) exists or does not exist. So, that is a good foundation. On many particular moral issues, I try to work through what I think makes sense, and often find that I come to similar conclusions as traditional moralities. One would expect that traditional moralities are good at surviving if you think that the history of moral development in culture is an evolutionary process.

I have come up with several parallel moral rules which seem to be consistent.

One is that the above discussion seems to lead to enlightened self-interest.
I am a body -- so taking care of my health is good
I am a mind -- so learning things and otherwise using my mind is good
I am a "heart" -- so seeking after the good is good
I am a cell in a social body -- so trying to do good to my social unit (in-so-far as they are not pursuing useless and self-destructive things) is good
I am a "child of god"/"part of the universe" -- so if I think I've found some other objective meaning to my life, then it's good to do that too

Here are some rules for life that I think are the best I've come up with so far:
1. Think continually on what is good.
2. Test your ideas. Try to prove yourself wrong.
3. Do your best, and try to be content with this.

I could write a whole other post on why I like these rules. One feature of these 3 rules is that they don't posit final answers, but only ask you to seek them. It is not a coincidence that I chose these 3, because the metaphysics I came up with a few years ago says that all human experience can be decomposed into values, reason, and sensory experience. So the 3 rules engage these 3 areas.

Recently I came up with these a hierarchy of values:
1. Love truth
2. Try to survive (also help your social unit).
Later (3?) All else being equal, try to feel good

Trying to survive seems like an objective first value, because it's not possible for you to do anything else if you are dead. But I think it is hard to survive if you don't know the truth, so truth can come even earlier because it is a prerequisite. And feeling good comes last, because it's obviously good to feel good, but I don't like tricking one's self in deceitful ways into feeling good. One could argue that maybe feeling good is the 3rd value, because apart from surviving, what values you choose are kind of arbitrary (like whether you'd rather go to the movies or play a game). So, I'm not certain, but maybe nothing is in between surviving and feeling good.


A thought experiment I had a few years ago which I like is, "What's the worst that can possibly happen, and how does that compare to real life?" The worst thing I could think of at the time was that a meteor hit the Earth and killed all life. I thought, "Would Earth then be evil?" I thought that Mars has no life (so far as we know), and we don't consider it to be evil, so Earth would probably not be evil either. I thought that if the worst I can think of is not evil, then real life must be net good.

It seems to be possible to say that any positively existing thing is good, and bad is only the loss of good. For instance, we usually feel pain when our health is deteriorating. But we have to have health before we can lose it. And we typically consider murder to be bad because it takes away from the positive goodness of the life of a man. So, life is good, because God can't take anything from you that he didn't give you first.

I suppose if there were an everlasting hell where people were tortured horribly and arbitrarily forever, then that would be bad. But this is not possible in a naturalistic mindset.

I'm not aware that these ideas have a name. One name I considered giving it was, "existence philosophy".

One fun thing about the arbitrariness of value assertion is that you can assert almost anything and it will become true. For instance, I could assert, "The sky is beautiful, and seeing it is already enough to make the day worth it," and if I believe it, it will be true (at least to me). This only works though for value assertions which make no false claims about material reality. Something which I think is common in modern morality is that people tell themselves, "It is good that people are equal." I do not believe that material equality between people actually exists. So people who take this as a moral precept get offended by people who try to tell them how the world really works. I could assert to myself now, "It is very good that I have shared these ideas. If other people read them and think about them, then they are also doing good." I already feel a bit better.

Sometimes value assertion doesn't work. Like if I really wanted to do something else that I wasn't able to do (like maybe if I was single and didn't want to be), then telling yourself stuff which you don't really believe (like that I'm happy with my current life circumstances) won't work. In this case, you need to either work to improve your life circumstances (which is never 100% within your control), or do some serious introspection about what I really want out of life and why (which is always at least a little bit within your control). But if something really seems to be good, it seems to me that it's better to at least try, even if it doesn't work. Effort towards doing the good always seems praiseworthy.

I happen to believe that the functionally unified, normative, goal-oriented organization of living systems is what consciousness is in its most primordial sense, so what distinguishes humans and higher animals from simpler ones isn’t an all-or-nothing capacity of consciousness, but a matter of degree. Neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio assert that there can be no consciousness without emotion. It has also been suggested that there can be no emotion without consciousness, that unconscious affect is a non-sequitor. — Joshs

I agree with this. I thought of consciousness as just being, "having a model of the self," and this can clearly occur in degrees. And as I said before, it seems to me that reason and emotion are inseparable in their operation.

I agree with this. I thought of consciousness as just being, "having a model of the self," and this can clearly occur in degrees. And as I said before, it seems to me that reason and emotion are inseparable in their operation. — Brendan Golledge

I largely agree as well, but I balk at saying "inseparable". I'd say having emotions is what drives the process which results in our developing models of selves in the larger world.

Yea maybe my word choice wasn't the best. I guess I think emotions provide the motivation for thinking, but I suppose a thinking process can work just fine once it gets going without further emotional input.

Yea maybe my word choice wasn't the best. I guess I think emotions provide the motivation for thinking, but I suppose a thinking process can work just fine once it gets going without further emotional input. — Brendan Golledge

Well, I wouldn't go that far either, although I'd be hard put to give much of an account of the role of emotion when I'm deep into doing electronics design. It's not something I've thought much about, and I suspect that if I were to pay more attention to the role of emotions in such a case, I'd see that emotions were playing a subtle role all along. If nothing else, I think there is a background of desire to achieve a design I'm happy with.

↪wonderer1 Yea maybe my word choice wasn't the best. I guess I think emotions provide the motivation for thinking, but I suppose a thinking process can work just fine once it gets going without further emotional input — Brendan Golledge

You sure about that? Is the sense of why and how something matters to us ever absent from a task? Is there ever such a thing as an absence of mood? Heidegger would say no. He refers to such concepts as affect, feeling, emotion and mood as attunements:

“Attunements are the fundamental ways in which we find ourselves disposed in such and such a way. Attunements are the 'how' [ Wie] according to which one is in such and such a way. Certainly we often take this 'one is in such and such a way'- for reasons we shall not go into now-as something indifferent, in contrast to what we intend to do, what we are occupied with, or what will happen to us. And yet this 'one is in such and such a way' is not-is never-simply a consequence or side-effect of our thinking, doing, and acting. It is-to put it crudely-the presupposition for such things, the 'medium' within which they first happen. And precisely those attunements to which we pay no heed at all, the attunements we least observe, those attunements which attune us in such a way that we feel as though there is no attunement there at all, as though we were not attuned in any way at all-these attunements are the most powerful.

At first and for the most part we are affected only by particular attunements that tend toward 'extremes', like joy or grief. A faint apprehensiveness or a buoyant contentment are less noticeable. Apparently not there at all, and yet there, is precisely that lack of attunement in which we are neither out of sorts nor in a 'good' mood. Yet even in this 'neither/nor' we are never without an attunement. The reason we take lack of attunement as not being attuned at all, however, has grounds of a quite essential nature. When we say that a human being who is good-humoured brings a lively atmosphere with them, this means only that an elated or lively attunement is brought about. It does not mean, however, that there was no attunement there before. A lack of attunement prevailed there which is seemingly hard to grasp, which seems to be something apathetic and indifferent, yet is not like this at all. We can see once more that attunements never emerge in the empty space of the soul and then disappear again; rather, Dasein as Dasein is always already attuned in its very grounds. There is only ever a change of attunement.

Offense is the feeling of hating facts. — Brendan Golledge

No, it's not. "Offense" means "Annoyance or resentment brought about by a perceived insult to or disregard for oneself or one's standards or principles." You should consider she might be offended by your lack of consideration for her things that matter to her more than she is of the holes in your clothes. But I guess that's not philosophy.

I think in lower animals, good = pleasure and bad = pain. — Brendan Golledge

No. As I noted earlier, your understanding of ethology - animal behavior - is lacking. Animal and human emotions come from the same place, although it's true that our more developed higher cognitive functions make human emotion more highly developed.

However, I think I have found a semi-objective basis for morality. — Brendan Golledge

Lots of people attempt this move. As you probably know, Sam Harris wrote a book on secular morality based around the principle of wellbeing (The Moral Landscape 2010) . As you've already suggested, if you can get people to agree upon a presupposition (or some foundational values) you can build a moral system from there. But the challenge is getting people to share those presuppositions. I'll leave this kind of task to the system builders. :wink:

I suspect the lion’s share of those intuitions are formed by early adulthood , which may explain why philosophers like Heidegger, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard were able to generate profound psychological insights while living essentially monastic lives. — Joshs

I wanted to revisit this, and ask about the reading habits of these three men, and whether there was a lot of similarity between the reading habits of these three and what you would expect of religious monastics?

Even someone who superficially appears socially isolated, may be interacting with diverse others via reading and writing. I'm not sure that comparing those three to monastics is very apples to apples, but you tell me.

I wanted to revisit this, and ask about the reading habits of these three men, and whether there was a lot of similarity between the reading habits of these three and what you would expect of religious monastics?

Even someone who superficially appears socially isolated, may be interacting with diverse others via reading and writing. I'm not sure that comparing those three to monastics is very apples to apples, but you tell me. — wonderer1

Both Heidegger and Nietzsche felt isolated from the ways of thinking of their time. Heidegger believed that Nietzsche and Holderlin were closest to his own philosophy, but that even they fell short, and Nietzsche believed that he was writing for an age to come. Certainly in Heidegger’s case, I think his core philosophy was developed in his 20’s, and the interaction he had with his students and colleagues over the course of his life had only the most peripheral effect on the further development of his ideas. The greatest influence on his new work was his old work, not the ideas of those around him. In this sense , his intellectual life was monastic by necessity, and I think this is true of most philosophers.