This has turned into contradiction, not a discussion.
It can even get a bit disturbing, when someone says they can’t relate to a certain feeling for instance. We only have words that describe sensations. If you aren’t feeling, maybe it’s not a meta conversation that you really need.
The CFI forum search is linking to this guy. He went for a long time. He kept finding things about life being an illusion, and he “couldn’t shake it”
That’s not answering the question.
No it’s not.
Not really no, the fact is you’re just making assumptions without evidence. Thinking that just because you react a certain way doesn’t mean everyone else will. Everything you’ve said is a guess, not a fact.
That’s just straw manning at this point.
Depends on the child.
Producing endorphins doesn’t guarantee feeling good nor does it describe what it means to feel good.
It’s not. You keep insisting he’s saying something that he in fact is saying the opposite of and I keep showing you instances of where and how that is.
That forum post sounds like what the guy is trying to get at except he’s trying to have his cake and eat it too. You can’t say things or events don’t make you feel X while saying nature and music do and then chalk it up to our belief systems doing it.
[quote=“inthedarkness, post:84, topic:10660”]
Producing endorphins doesn’t guarantee feeling good nor does it describe what it means to feel good.
Yes it does and did answer the question, to our current state of knowledge.
en·dor·phin
/enˈdôrfən/
noun
plural noun: endorphins
any of a group of hormones secreted within the brain and nervous system and having a number of physiological functions. They are peptides which activate the body’s opiate receptors, causing an analgesic effect.
Analgesic
Any member of the group of drugs used to achieve analgesia, relief from pain
[
Opium poppies such as this one provide ingredients for the class of analgesics called opiates.
An analgesic drug, also called simply an analgesic, pain reliever, or painkiller, is any member of the group of drugs used for pain management.
Analgesics are conceptually distinct from anesthetics, which temporarily reduce, and in some instances eliminate, sensation, although analgesia and anesthesia are neurophysiologically overlapping and thus various drugs have both analgesic and anesthetic effects. Wikipedia
Do you know the difference between conscious and unconscious?
Homeostasis is a subconscious process . The mind doesn’t need to know where organs are located.
All it does is “regulate” hormone balance.
Hormones are responsible for key homeostatic processes including control of blood glucose levels and control of blood pressure. Homeostasis is the regulation of the internal conditions within cells and whole organisms such as temperature, water, and sugar levels. Homeostasis | You and Your Hormones from the Society for Endocrinology
The unconscious mind consists of processes in the mind that occur automatically and are not available to introspection. Although these processes exist beneath the surface of conscious awareness, they are thought to exert an effect on conscious thought processes and behavior. Wikipedia
Yes it is…
Where are you going ?
I am going to fish.
Oh ! I thought you were going to fish ?
Not at all, I am going to fish …
Sarcasm.
I went to sarcasm.
Trying to the fun moderator/participant.
No it doesn’t, again. You haven’t described what good feels like.
Again no, I have shown lines that explicitly show your interpretation of his words is wrong.
Again yes. I show logic and reasoning
You might want to check out this blog that I discuss here
We don’t say everything is anything - Religion and Secularism - CFI Forums (centerforinquiry.org)
The blog author, Richard Carrier, is addressing a religious person who is making bad arguments for why science is wrong. They are similar to the arguments you make, in that you keep saying “you haven’t proven” when actually, science has a ton of evidence that leads to the conclusion that humans have feelings that can be described accurately. It’s not as simple as pointing to some “good feeling” that is on display in a museum, but that doesn’t disprove it.
Carrier writes long-form blogs, so skip to the last section if you want, " An Example of How Naturalists Actually Explain Consciousness"
We can now observe brain function and see what lights up when someone is lying and what lights up when they are recalling something, like a memory of something pleasant. If you then say that is “just programmed”, or “society told them to think that”, then you have made a crude description of how brains work but left out what it implies. You have not proven that brains can be easily manipulated or that there is some other “self” that exists separate from our body/brain/mind. So describing the feeling of “good” is validated in the same way we define anything, through the abstraction of language and all the tools we have for sharing our experience of being human.
If you argue against naturalism, please present a complete argument. The linked blog provides many points that you should address in making that argument. We are physical beings in a physical world, so our physical bodies with brains create physical sensations that are influenced by our physical surroundings. If you reduce that to, “our feelings are programmed by society”, you need to describe a lot more of the steps of how that happens, or it doesn’t mean much.
And I showed you examples where your logic and reasoning isn’t supported by the facts.
This is a guy who literally thinks your mind creates reality:
Ok, you describe what “good feels like”. Do you never feel good?
This is getting bizarre.
Emotions arise from activations of specialized neuronal populations in several parts of the cerebral cortex, notably the anterior cingulate, insula, ventromedial prefrontal, and subcortical structures, such as the amygdala, ventral striatum, putamen, caudate nucleus, and ventral tegmental area.
Feelings are conscious, emotional experiences of these activations that contribute to neuronal networks mediating thoughts, language, and behavior, thus enhancing the ability to predict, learn, and reappraise stimuli and situations in the environment based on previous experiences.
Contemporary theories of emotion converge around the key role of the amygdala as the central subcortical emotional brain structure that constantly evaluates and integrates a variety of sensory information from the surroundings and assigns them appropriate values of emotional dimensions, such as valence, intensity, and approachability.
The amygdala participates in the regulation of autonomic and endocrine functions, decision-making and adaptations of instinctive and motivational behaviors to changes in the environment through implicit associative learning, changes in short- and long-term synaptic plasticity, and activation of the fight-or-flight response via efferent projections from its central nucleus to cortical and subcortical structures.
That’s actually shown to be pseudoscience. The “lighting up when someone is lying” doesn’t actually prove someone is actually lying. Also again without being able to measure what pleasant is you can’t meaningfully use words like “memory of something pleasant”.
I don’t have to, that’s just how it works. It’s sort of like why the laws of physics are the way they are. And brains are VERY easily manipulated, just look at everything in psychology. The fact that repeated exposure facilitates liking is one thing for example.
But again you are avoiding the fact that you can’t describe what “good” is or feels like anymore than someone can describe what red it. You can point to wavelengths of light but that doesn’t explain to a colorblind person what red is.
I’m not denying naturalism though.
If we can’t use words, then maybe this conversation was over before it started. If you’d like, I can get some friends together and we’ll bring our instruments and some of us will do interpretive dance and we’ll convey some feelings. Or, you could think about how obstinate you are being and we could get off of square one here.
Which uses data about our physical beings to connect hard data, like brain scans, to soft data, like what people report about their experiences. Unlike you, who says nothing can be known.
Directly discussed in my link.
From my younger days I can recall many days filled with pleasant memories.
Those are engrams.
I’m just arguing that saying “Good” doesn’t tell me what it feels like.
I’m not saying nothing can be known. But even brain scans and the like have to be linked to reports from people. If people report something contrary to the scans how can we know who is right?
Try again, you haven’t told me what red is. If I never saw it how can you tell me what it is without pointing to it?
But more to the main point about what he wrote, much like him, you haven’t explained to me how beliefs create emotions let alone change them. Aren’t they just words? Words just carry the meaning we give them, without that they are inherently empty. So how can something inherently empty of meaning create emotions?
Do you think somehow brains are being scanned without people also reporting what they are feeling?
Because we do give words meaning. Why do we have dictionaries and encyclopedias?
But how does the inability to completely describe it, justify assuming it doesn’t exist?
Which it sounds like what you are trying to argue.
How do we give them meaning though? People say that it’s not the thing or event but our belief about it that affects how we feel, but that just begs the question of how the belief makes us feel. To say the event or object is neutral and not the result of the emotion then invites the question of how the belief does it when words are inherently neutral (neutral in the sense of import or value, not in terms of communication). What makes the belief make us feel?
Or as Gary (the guy) put it: words are just grunts that we assign significance to.
I’m not denying they are, just what they think it might mean. Self reports are good, but they’re still flawed.
I’m not denying it exists, just that it can’t be described like any other sensation, so it’s always a matter of faith when someone says they feel something and we just believe them.
