A sense we have that many people are unaware of

Discussion in 'Alternative Theories' started by MattMVS7, Feb 23, 2018.

  1. MattMVS7 Registered Senior Member

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    I think we as human beings have a sense that many people are unaware of. I think our emotions allow us to sense value to give our lives value. For example, if you were in a dangerous situation and you felt fear, then you would be sensing danger. Unpleasant emotions allow us to sense that things, moments, and situations are wrong, bad, horrible, disgusting, etc. while our pleasant emotions allow us to sense that things are right, beautiful, and good. In other words, our emotions are a feeling version of value. They allow us to feel certain values whether that value be something horrific, horrible, disgusting, beautiful, or joyful. However, there are no sense organs to indicate that our emotions are a sense. Rather, we sense value through our emotions via our way of thinking.

    If, for example, we had the thought that it is a beautiful day to be alive, that thought would send the emotional signal to our brains to make us feel a pleasant emotion which would allow us to sense that beautiful value we thought of. The only real value we can have in our lives is the value we sense through our emotions since it would be no different than saying that the only real colors, sounds, and smells we can have in our lives are the colors, sounds, and smells we see, hear, and smell. Colors, sounds, and smells do not exist in the physical world. Sure, there are sound waves, but the actual sound itself is a mental state since it is a state of mind where we hear something. Likewise, good and bad are also mental states (our emotions themselves). This is my own personal definition of good and bad and it would be an absolute/objective good and bad that many people are unaware of.

    Many people dismiss and deny the idea of our emotions being a feeling version of value. But I think this is true and, who knows, humanity could also be in denial when it comes to my claim that intellectual and moral based values are not real values. Sure, we can make decisions that would help us and others, but that doesn't bring our lives any real value. It can only be us feeling happiness and enjoyment through our pleasant emotions that brings our lives real good value, joy, and beauty. There are the lower emotions and then there are the higher emotions founded upon morality, intellect, and character. I do not agree the higher emotions exist. I am going to present a logical argument which reveals everything I've just said and I will explain a bit more things as well:

    My Logical Argument: I am now going to present a logical argument that reveals how our emotions are a sense that gives our lives value:

    1.) There are pleasant and unpleasant tastes. Taste is a sense. There is no moral and intellectual version of taste.

    2.) There are pleasant and unpleasant smells. Smell is a sense. There is no moral and intellectual version of smell.

    3.) There is physical pain and then there is physical pleasure. This is a physical sense. There is no moral and intellectual version of physical pain or physical pleasure.

    4.) There are positive (pleasant) and negative (unpleasant) emotions.

    Therefore,

    Conclusion: Emotions are also a sense. There is no moral and intellectual version of emotions. Emotions are value judgments as I explain later on which means they are a feeling version of value. Since emotions are a sense and since they are a feeling version of value, then our emotions are a sense that allows us to sense values. This means there is no moral and intellectual based values or any real moral/intellectual based value judgments. Thus, it can only be our lower emotional impulse that gives our lives value and not our higher intellectual and moral impulse.

    We Sense Different Forms Of Beauty And Joy: You could have two objects. One object being a flashlight and another object being a watermelon. If you smell the flashlight, you will notice that scent. That scent has an artificial quality to it. In other words, it smells like something metal or something like rubber. If you smelled the watermelon, you will notice that scent. It smells like a fruit. Our sense of smell allows us to smell different scents just like how our positive emotions allow us to feel different things. In other words, positive emotions are like the sense of smell. When we feel a positive emotion from looking at a flashlight, we are sensing the beauty of that flashlight.

    That beauty will take on an artificial quality. So, the positive emotion you feel from that flashlight will feel like something metal or something like rubber, but, this time, in a beautiful and joyful way since positive emotions are what allow us to sense beauty and joy. This positive emotion will create an entire mental atmosphere for you that is beautiful and joyful. The same idea applies to feeling a positive emotion from the watermelon. That would create a joyful and beautiful atmosphere for you that is tropical. Therefore, not only are our emotions a sense, but they create our entire atmosphere for us.

    Emotions Are Value Judgments: Haven't you ever heard someone say to not listen to what your emotions tell you? Emotions tell you that certain things, people, or situations are disgusting, horrible, or beautiful. Furthermore, haven't you ever felt that someone in your life was a horrible or beautiful person? See, this is what I mean here when I say that emotions really are value judgments. Many people would deny this, but it is a fact. So, you can see why I do not trust humanity and their values since so many people are in denial and are delusional. They are not awakened to the truth. I will also point out a quote which shows how emotions are value judgments:

    With all of this being said, it is our lower, basic emotions which are the real chemical messages to our brains that things, moments, and situations in our lives are good, beautiful, bad, horrible, disgusting, etc. Our morality and intellect was never the real message of value to our brains. You could have, for example, a metaphorical version of hunger and thirst such as if you said to yourself that you were hungry and thirsty for fame and power. From there, you could say that your higher impulse was a form of hunger and thirst. But it wouldn't be any real hunger and thirst though.

    The real hunger and thirst is through our lower impulse which would be the feeling of hunger you get when you need to eat something or the feeling of thirst you get when you need to drink something. That is the real message to your brain that you need to eat something or drink something and not what comes about through our higher impulse alone. It would be no different than if you said to yourself that you are water and lightning since you flow through life with ease and you strike down your enemies. You wouldn't be real water and lightning. Rather, you would just be having a metaphorical version of water and lightning going on here. Therefore, the moral and intellectual based good and bad was a metaphorical version of good and bad all along and was never any real good and bad value in our lives.

    To conclude this, sadly, positive emotions are very fleeting things which means the good value, joy, and beauty in our lives is also very fleeting. Therefore, people who struggle with a depressive mental illness due to no fault of their own or people who go through much misery and hardships in their lives would be living lives that have little to no good value regardless of what they believed otherwise and regardless of what contributions they made to the world. It is often times beautiful things in life that are fleeting. For example, a rainbow only lasts for a little while before it fades away. The good value and beauty in our lives is no different than that rainbow. With all of this being said, this claim I am making is to support the hedonistic philosophy which states that pleasure (positive emotions) are the only real good things to our lives and displeasure (negative emotions) are the only real bad things in our lives.
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2018
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  3. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    Interesting.
    Do we feel emotion in the heart in your view?
    Alex
     
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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Senses are mechanisms by which we sense EXTERNAL stimuli.

    Emotions are responses to INTERNAL mental states.

    Emotions are not senses, by definition.
     
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  7. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    I'm with you so far

    Keep going

    Your starting to wobble. Pleasure and pain are nerve responses expressed in the brain and have widely different values between persons

    Oops you come off the rails

    Since the 3 senses you started with are detected by nerves and expressed in the brain

    If you're conclusion is to hold water - what part of the nervous system detects emotions? and is there a segment of brain which expresses the emotion when the signal arrives?

    I'll help you out, some of the answers are found here

    *****
    https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201601/what-are-basic-emotions

    It is said that basic emotions evolved in response to the ecological challenges faced by our remote ancestors and are so primitive as to be ‘hardwired’, with each basic emotion corresponding to a distinct and dedicated neurological circuit

    ********

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  8. MattMVS7 Registered Senior Member

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    I might have actually been wrong when I said that our basic emotions are a sense. But I still think they are a feeling version of value and that they are the chemical message to our brains that things are good, beautiful, bad, horrible, or disgusting. Our morality and intellect alone cannot be any real message of value to our brains. It can only give us the thought of certain values, but not any real message of value to our brains.
     
  9. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Feelings do not have intrinsic values

    Feelings are made up on the spot so to speak

    They are extremely flexible. If they had substance they might start of the size of a elephant but end up flea size

    No single value spans that range

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  10. MattMVS7 Registered Senior Member

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    I think they do because, as I mentioned earlier, our basic emotions are value judgments. Haven't you ever heard someone say to not listen to what your emotions tell you? Emotions tell you that certain things, people, or situations are disgusting, horrible, or beautiful. Furthermore, haven't you ever felt that someone in your life was a horrible or beautiful person? See, this is what I mean here when I say that emotions really are value judgments. Many people would deny this, but it is a fact. So, you can see why I do not trust humanity and their values since so many people are in denial and are delusional. They are not awakened to the truth. I will also point out a quote which shows how emotions are value judgments. Although, I disagree with the idea of our reasoned thoughts being real value judgments since they are not the real message of value to our brains:

    "Emotions are value judgments too. For example, if you are physically hurt, and the doctor treating you causes you pain during treatment, do you become angry and bite him? No, because you are able to override your instinctive anger and fear at someone causing you pain with your ability to reason that the treatment is necessary and the pain is temporary. But a dog can't reason, and will bite to stop the person causing the pain. Both the instinctive emotions AND the reasoned thoughts are value judgments."

    One last thing here. I do not agree that there are the higher emotions which are the emotions founded upon morality and intellect. I think it can only be the lower, basic emotions that are the real emotions. Just as how there is no moral and intellectual form of, for example, physical pain, physical pleasure, sight, hearing, smell, taste, heat, cold, hunger, and thirst, there can also be no moral and intellectual form of emotions. Pleasant (positive) emotions are the message of good and beautiful value to our brains and unpleasant (negative) emotions are the message of bad, horrible, and disgusting value to our brains. Unfortunately, positive emotions are very fleeting things. There are many people who struggle with depression due to no fault of their own and there are many people who struggle with misery and much despair in general.
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2018
  11. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    *****
    Are emotions perceptions of value?
    Jérôme Dokic &Stéphane Lemaire
    Pages 227-247 | Received 13 Mar 2013, Accepted 29 May 2013, Published online: 03 Sep 2013
    AbsracAb

    A popular idea at present is that emotions are perceptions of values. Most defenders of this idea have interpreted it as the perceptual thesis that emotions present (rather than merely represent) evaluative states of affairs in the way sensory experiences present us with sensible aspects of the world. We argue against the perceptual thesis. We show that the phenomenology of emotions is compatible with the fact that the evaluative aspect of apparent emotional contents has been incorporated from outside. We then deal with the only two views that can make sense of the perceptual thesis. On the response–dependence view, emotional experiences present evaluative response-dependent properties (being fearsome, being disgusting, etc.) in the way visual experiences present response-dependent properties such as colors. On the response–independence view, emotional experiences present evaluative response-independent properties (being dangerous, being indigestible, etc.), conceived as ‘Gestalten’ independent of emotional feelings themselves. We show that neither view can make plausible the idea that emotions present values as such, i.e., in an open and transparent way. If emotions have apparent evaluative contents, this is in fact due to evaluative enrichments of the non-evaluative presentational contents of emotions

    http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00455091.2013.826057?scroll=top&needAccess=true

    *****

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    This uses big words but in essence states what I understand about emotions

    There are more abstracts but for the articles you have to pay

    I respect your views but disagree

    Won't do any more unless something interesting comes up

    I won't be looking so it would have to be serendipity

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  12. MattMVS7 Registered Senior Member

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    I'm not exactly sure what was just said since it is beyond my comprehension, but I will just say this. For me, my basic, pleasant emotions are profoundly beautiful and joyful states to be in. It's as though they truly are the experience of joy and beauty itself and not just simply a matter of me thinking them as being such. It's truly as though they really are the chemical message to my brain that things, moments, and situations are good and beautiful in my life. I have great insight into myself and into my own personal experiences. So, I could be right when saying this. I am able to, for example, detect the slightest symptoms when I have some sort of physical ailment that has not yet become severe. With such great insight into my own personal experience, I could be right when saying that our basic emotions are the real message of value to our brains and that our morality and intellect is not the real message of value to our brains.

    I have, in fact, compared my moral and intellectual value judgments to my basic emotions. I can honestly tell you that, for me, my moral and intellectual value judgments are nothing in comparison. Me thinking and believing that nature and this universe is something good and beautiful is nothing but empty words without the positive emotions. This has been my own personal experience when I have struggled with much misery in my life. During these miserable moments, nothing I thought or did made my life anything good and beautiful. It is only once those feel-good biochemicals restored that all the joy, good value, and beauty returned all on its own back into my life again.

    That is, it is only once I have fully recovered from those hopeless moments that all the beautiful value returned back into my life again all on its own. This clearly tells me that our basic emotions really are the chemical message of value to our brains. I could also clearly tell that those miserable and hopeless moments I've been through truly were the most profoundly horrible states to be in and not a matter of me just thinking they were something profoundly horrible. This tells me, too, that misery and hopeless emotional states are the chemical message of horrible value to our brains. With all of this being said, I really think hedonism was the correct worldview all along. According to hedonism, pleasant emotions are the only good things in life and unpleasant emotions are the only bad things in life. Here is the link to hedonism:


    http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_hedonism.html
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2018
  13. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    I have no doubts about your personal feelings and emotions

    However if feelings and emotions have a built in value they would be like gravity

    They would act the same with everyone

    They don't because they don't

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  14. MattMVS7 Registered Senior Member

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    Sure, many people do act as though pleasant emotions are the only good things in life like how I do. But then there are people who act as though they aren't. As a matter of fact, there are masochists which would be the opposite of hedonists. They claim they love feelings of misery and despair and that it brings their lives good value. But just because people act certain ways does not mean that these people are speaking the truth. For example, there are people in this world who believe and act as though certain values are true. But said values are false. An example would be with people who believe in Thor or believe that we must repent our sins lest we be cast into an eternal lake of fire (the fundamentalist Christian values). The masochists could be delusional and in denial of their personal experience regardless of what they do, think, and how they act.

    I mentioned earlier that humanity is often times delusional and in denial. From my own personal experience, positive emotions are the only way we can love, like, enjoy, and perceive good value in things and situations. Therefore, as for masochists, they would have to have had a pleasant/positive emotion on some level allowing them to love, like, enjoy, and perceive good value in having misery in their lives. Otherwise, they would just be delusional. They think they can love, like, enjoy, and perceive good value through their toughness and character alone when that is not true. Lastly, as for people who act as though they have higher emotions through their sense of morality and intellect and display acts of emotion through their intellect, character, and morality, this could be no different than how a robot can act emotional, but has no real emotion.
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2018
  15. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Your making my case

    And you kept making it

    And I bet if any of the person's you mentioned fell out of a hot air balloon at hight they would fall to Earth at the same rate

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    Contrast that with emotions

    Case closed

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  16. MattMVS7 Registered Senior Member

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    I have to disagree no matter what anyone says to me otherwise. I know what I have experienced. Especially with those horrible crippled nightmare states I talk about in my book which were far worse than the crippled states of my waking life. Most people would tell me that I am just weak, childish, cowardly, and selfish for giving up on things in my life in the face of misery and hopelessness, for me to claim that these feelings were so horrible, and for me to say that my life was the worst hell devoid of any good value and beauty during those moments. I think this is false because, again, these were not just emotional states and nothing more. They were truly the experience of something profoundly horrible.

    It could be the case that we create our reality of experience by the type of worldview we have. Since the worldview I have says that our basic emotions have a built-in value, then, for me, this could really be the case since this would be the type of experience I have created for myself. In which case, having a different worldview should render my basic emotions as no longer having any built-in value. In other words, they should now become nothing more than just emotional states. Instead, the experience of beautiful and horrible value would come about through my morality, character, and intellect rather than through my basic emotions. I am not sure if this is the case and I keep an open mind to it.

    But if other people are going to make the claim that my basic emotions will always be the same experience for me no matter what type of worldview I have and that this is all just a matter of me needing to toughen up and deal with them in order to make my life something beautiful despite feeling them, then I really have to disagree with this. I think only a crazy person would think this because it is simply beyond my comprehension how anyone could think that my life can be something beautiful during such profoundly horrible hopeless/miserable states. If my basic emotions are going to be the same experience for me no matter what type of worldview I have, then I disagree with the notion that they do not have any built-in value.
     
  17. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    You appear to be missing the point

    Your emotions are never going to be the same from minute to minute let alone over your lifetime

    If if if they did have a value THEN yes your life would be the same same

    Gravity will remain the same over your lifetime so don't fall out of hot air balloons at hight expecting its value to change so you land gently

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  18. MattMVS7 Registered Senior Member

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    So, are you saying to me that my basic emotions, for me, really do have the built-in value, but only because this is the type of experience I have created for myself through my worldview and that, if I were to have a change in my worldview, that this should change my whole experience to where my basic emotions are just simply emotions and no longer the profoundly horrible or beautiful experiences they once were?
     
  19. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Emotions do not have any built in unchangeable value

    YOUR emotions are made up on the spot from moment to moment

    How much they fluctuate within you really does depend on a myriad of factors happening with you at your NOW moment

    What ever you do which causes your emotions to change, a trigger (even triggers are changeable) remains personal to you and to the NOW moment

    Emotions just are - no values built in - very personal

    You can't even extract emotions (they have no Physicality) for comparison

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  20. MattMVS7 Registered Senior Member

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    But do they have a built-in changeable value? I take it you are already saying that they have no built-in value of any kind. That's what I was asking earlier was that if I have created my own built-in values through my worldview into these basic emotions and that if this could change if I had a change in my worldview. You said earlier that my emotions won't be the same experience for me throughout my lifetime and that's the reason why I was asking this question. As it stands though, I have yet to have some sort of personal experience that convinces me that moral and intellectual based values can be real values in my life.

    So far, I haven't. As a matter of fact, I do not recall a single given moment in my entire life where they ever were. Sure, I did do things that my mother told me were good regardless of how I felt and I did refrain from doing certain things that my mother told me were bad when I was a child, but I never recall moral and intellectual based values ever being real values in my life. I am 29 years old now. I have always lived my life having fun and enjoying my life and hobbies as though this was the truly good and beautiful life to live.
     
  21. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    From the first sentence / question I have highlighted the answer

    As for the rest of your post - go to bed and rest at your normal time

    Re read all what you have posted and all replies you have received

    Take notes - compare answers - make more notes

    Read other sources from Google

    Work it out

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  22. MattMVS7 Registered Senior Member

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    One last thing here. I know you would disagree with the idea of our basic emotions having built-in values, but go ask other people and scientists in this world. They would say otherwise. They would agree with my idea that our basic emotions have a built-in value to them. As a matter of fact, I have engaged with one skeptic/neuroscientist who agrees that our basic emotions are value judgments. His username would be Nikki Nyx of the Skeptics Society Forum.
     
  23. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    OK

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