Yes Colbert, you are partly right. But what are the psychological mechanisms which enable us to see certain things as ‘right’ and ‘wrong?’.
It is biological, but it is built on our thought process, which is controlled by different events in our lives.
Good and Evil are just labels we give to ‘events’. As Neitzsche points out, back in the day peasants often saw the ruling class as ‘evil’ because they were ‘on the other side’. Anything bad that happened to the peasants was considered ‘evil’ to them. But for the ruling class, their actions were ‘good’ and likewise any trouble with the peasants was ‘evil’.
I forget who said that objective and subjective don’t really exist, but this is perhaps true as it seems to imply the very duality that we’ve just shown to be obsolete through our definition of ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Perhaps the human mind feels the need to separate things into two categories, but this does not mean it is correct. Think of the good/evil duality as the pedels on a bike. They work in negation of each other to propell us forward.
Jump on the absurdist bandwagon Dan… good and evil are about as applicable as saying that a certain rock is smart. It just it, it exists… that seems to be enough for now.
gob the poor people were good and the rich people were evil because what the poor wanted to happen in order for them to be happy would have resulted in the most happiness occuring. the pain that would have been required for their happiness would have been the slight discomfort of people who extremely priveleged and relatively not in any pain. in order to make the rich happy, a much larger number of poor people would have had to be hurt much more than the rich would have had to be hurt.
what creates the most of your own happiness is not whats always good, but what creates the most happiness for all people.
and nothing in existence can be described in any way other than what events it caused (right? i just made that up). things that are blue caused an event, the bouncing of photons at a certain wavelength. even blue is not an instrinsic property, it is an event.
good and evil are even less intrinsic and more solely-event-based unless you are talking about what god has deemed to be intrinsically good or evil.
i think thats true, but perhaps is a different topic. contrast does make the division between things clearer, but it doesnt give any insight as to what exactly each of the contrasting properties are.
i definetely think that anything that creates more human happiness is always good and anything that hurts other people is bad, unless more good is created as a result.
(and at some point, like when you have to torture a child to make an entire country a little bit happy, you can try to reformulate this gray area after figuring out how the heck you got into that situation or anything remotely close to it. i think its literally impossible to ever get close to that utilitarianism-destroying scenario, id like to know any real world examples of it. but i suppose its impossibility might be irrelevant.)
No, blue is caused by how we perceive certain radations. Just like how good and evil are caused by how we view certain events. ‘Blue’ does not exist in any real sense.
im no philosophy student, i hate philosophy books. i really usually dont say things like that, im just pointing out that i think as far as good/evil is concerned, religion assigns properties to things that may not be based on what those things are in the universe that we perceive. i decided to go the extra step and make a big fancy interesting declaration that i suspected was incorrect for some reason “(right? i just made that up)”
pre marital sex isnt bad if nobody gets hurt. if the church can explain to me why it does hurt, then ok im listening. but if they say that even if it doesnt hurt its still bad because god said so, ill ask them why god didnt tell me this, he only told them.
god did tell me exactly whats good: dopamine, seratonin etc. those brain chemicals are the only thing in the world that i know can be classified as good and the deist god of natural selection made sure it was in there. things that create as much of them as possible are therefore also good. those things are only good in this way when they cause events. if they dont cause an event, they cant possibly trigger the brain chemicals.
blue is when light has a certain wavelength. light with that wavelength exists and i call it blue. that thing in my head that i know as blue? thats fucking magic i dont think anybody is ever going to begin to know where to start describing why the electricity in my brain takes this form in my (for lack of a better word) soul. i dont see it happening.
but good and evil are not like blue and red or hot and cold. the things that make me happy will not change based on subjective experience unless that subjective experience happens to be “oh wait, thats not what will cause the most dopamine, that thing will.” i will never change my mind about dopamine being good, and i will never change my belief that a specific thing creates dopamine unless my belief itselfwas contributing to the creation of that dopamine.
i might love everything about religion, rituals etc, but if something calls it into question, the thing that creates dopamine didnt stop creating dopamine (which would suggest that good and evil are purely subjective) but the belief i had will have been destroyed. and the belief being gone (not a change in what it is that causes dopamine) is what causes less dopamine to be created in my brain.
sorry that was really unfocused, i dont know if whats you were looking for, ill try harder if you respond again.
so do i agree with you when i say that whatever a human classifies as good is basically just whatever it is that causes dopamine to spew? because this is what his bodily caveman needs create when they are satisfied?
i believe that objective good can include one thing beyond the natural selfless pursuit of dopamine: other peoples pursuit of dopamine. and i think if horses and dogs understood that all of their neighbors feel pain and pleasure just like they do, they would agree with me. they are probably too stupid.
surely you can say that nobody sane is going to be indifferent towards the pain or happiness of their brother, the only thing stopping us from saying that objective good also includes selflessness is whatever it is that causes people to dislike strangers more than their brothers.
genes that caused animals to dislike strangers caused the person using them to be able to eat more food and have more children as he destroyed his rivals. thats really the only reason why we arent all living in a communist utopia right now.
what im saying is that the only source of us even coming up with the words good and evil are the fact that some events in the universe cause dopamine and seratonin to be spewed onto our brains. when this happens, a literally magical feeling explodes into the soul of my consciousness and i dont need to rationally explain why dopamine and seratonin are good, because their goodness (to humans) is obvious.
calling a selfless person who creates the most of this chemical a ‘good’ person is the same as calling the chemical itself good as far as im concerned. i dont know what else a person could possibly be describing as good if they arent describing something that causes brain chemicals.
what causes brain chemicals? well poor third world farmers like free irrigation and americans like learning about how celebrities have flaws and cellulite just like them.
I thought that you were trying to connect this to a utilitarian approach though. Maybe I misread.
I don’t mind dopamine release being labeled as ‘good’. I’m just pointing out that ‘good’ is subjective, and as such has no real place in a societal construct.
To criticize someone else’s decisions would in effect violate the view I’ve presented. I should note though, that I think certain basic human rights trump whatever ‘good’ or ‘evil’ constructs certain people develop.
I know this is presented lazily… I just don’t care.
From this, doesn’t it follow that the best life for man would be continual injections of … i suppose you mean something like endorphines?
Do you see a state where everyone is drugged and idle as the best good life for man?
(By the way, too much dopamine causes schitzophrenia. I don’t think you would want as much of it as possible.)
(Also, I’m not clear, do you want the chemicals to cause events, or the events to cause the chemicals?)
well not just dopamine, but the general state of your brain that is the most enjoyable. i mean, im sure doctors can identify whatever balance of chemicals and bloodflow is optimal, and those conditions only happen when certain physical desires are all satisfied. love, no hate or fear, nothing on the mind that the mind doesnt wish it had on it. when i try to describe it, it sounds like it might be some deep philosophical, buddhist stage of enlightenment, but i just mean the way your brain is when you are fully happy.
if they could pump this stuff into people without it ever negatively affecting their lives, without it ever costing money or requiring the pain or work of others, while still reproducing the species so that the guys with the drugs arent the last generation to ever live, i think its very possible that humanity might choose to stick to the machine.
i mean, a thousand years from now when humanity is basically finished exploring everything in the universe (i dont see this taking more than a thousand years) and is just struggling to find happiness wherever in the universe possible, what goal would be better than this machine? the only problems are logistical, pain would be required by some in order to maintain their happiness.
i want events to cause the chemicals. today the best way is not to do drugs because it will damage your brain and you need that to have the best life possible and to create the best life for your kids and for other people who are suffering…
im really thinking hard about these future drugs. im imagining my genetically engineered kid being born and i see him when hes 3 and im hooked up to the machine and as far as i can imagine i will obviously want to unplug and embark upon the challenging rewarding mission of teaching him about life.
i would get satisfaction from doing this, and according to a purely scientific, deterministic view of the brain, i should be able to identify and recreate this exact state. recreating this exact state with a machine should be as enjoyable as the thing that created it. but no, apparently, humans dont always want happiness. they want to struggle to achieve something.
i would have said that they want to struggle solely because that will result in more chemicals being released. but that doesnt translate into the machine and my three year old, because even if the joy caused by seeing him succeed is the same feeling id get from the machine, id still want to know that i accomplished it. that i know i accomplished it creates a different kind of happiness that cant be recreated with chemicals.
so pure, unadulterated happiness is the only thing needed up until you get bored and want to accomplish a challenge. wait no, maybe if they could recreate pride somehow. put you in virtual reality, perpetually repeating your amazingly glorious victory over the inhuman spider monsters that you learned about in school, but now totally believe that you accomplished.
if i never knew i had anything else to accomplish, or that i wasnt repeating the same glorious 5 minutes of cheering with my comrades over and over again, id love it. a lot.
would you be angry if you were in this glory loop your whole life and were unplugged minutes before you died? and you knew for sure that your happiness would have been much less if you had not been plugged in. weird. id like to say i wouldnt be. did anybody read Boring Paradise in creative writing?
I have read of philosophers who said man’s happiness consists in knowing, and others who said happiness consists in loving.
I’m not sure happiness as futile emotion is an improvement over either of those schools.
well loving creates the emotional chemicals that im talking about, and knowing creates pride, which is probably also represented by chemicals and whatever other physical brain characteristics that can be recreated.
really the only thing im saying is that the pride and love which you describe can be recreated. but i dont know that, i just cant see what the problem would be if you could completely immerse somebody in a virtual reproduction of whatever it is youd say is more valuable in the real world.
if knowing things and loving someone made you nauseous instead of happy, would you still do it? i know i wouldnt.
As for the pride of knowledge, Paul mentions it in scripture, but a later author noted:
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking deeply sobers us again.
As for love, it is Paul’s remedy for pride. But shall I ask here what is the sound of one hand clapping? Or what is the meaning of a love without a beloved?
But this does not answer your unanswerable question. What kind of man would be made nauseous by knowledge or by love?
a guy who would love and gain knowledge for the same reason as us, it makes him feel good. except it doesnt make him feel good, so he isnt going to do it. thats what i was trying to point out, it is the chemicals in our brain that satisfy us when we love and when we learn things. if we didnt achieve those chemicals, we wouldnt do it.
what if you live in a world where interaction with any other living creature causes the electricity in your brains to arc across the extremely conducive atmosphere and painfully zap each of you? what if the zaps either exactly counteract or completely override the joy of love?
youd probably feel good if you ever overcame that hurdle somehow and learned to love someone, but the thought would never occur to you and you can be plenty happy without it. you probably wouldnt wish to interact with those strange, pain causing objects that you see only from a distance. i dont know, thats kind of a stretch, and im sure any of these creatures would always wish they could love if they knew how it works for humans.
similarly, what if you live in a horrible fascist dictatorship as an extremely wealthy child, and every time you learn about the truth, you learn about the horrible atrocities that are going on and will surely continue no matter what you do. if you felt truly, fully powerless, and knew you couldnt do anything to stop the pain, would you want to continue learning about it? (bear in mind, we want to continue learning because we think we can change it someday)
i dont get it. what if i learn two math-less paperbacks worth of physics and come up with crazy theories that i end up fully believing and i waste a bunch of people’s time in the natural sciences board trying to prove them. im intoxicated and i think its a good thing. learning all that math would sober me up and prevent the theories, i suppose that would be less dangerous, but much more boring and possibly less creatively fruitfull. (i dont really see the connection to pride either)
Maybe, if I truely felt powerless, I would just try to learn the shortest and safest way to get to another state which is not a “horrible fascist dictatorship”.
What is psychologically and physically and spiritually healthy.
Psychology has many self defeating patterens that have yet to be defined.
Why is it considered good to trash talk your opponet in political science? Even though trash talking allows people to think all poloticians are bad. Isn’t that a self defeating patteren?
Then what about people that become caloused to marital type love because of refusing to forgive and work out problems? They end up endlessly seeking instant gratifications of sex and drugs to fill the hole (but are really presenting temporary distractions). I think the Bible calls the answer finding contentness. But in such a self indulgent economy, that psychologically plays off impulsive behavior,… this is hard to understand.
There is no “good” or “evil”. Each has such a subjective foundation that it is impossible to logically categorise any particular act or event or happening as good or evil. In order to correctly understand a concept that concept must have a fixed point of reference. Not possible in this case.
The winning debater side. 
give me five.[/img]