Has anyone got any thoughts on why pleasurable activities fundamentally feel nice and why unpleasurable activities don’t? Like, what are the causes of us preferring to feel good and not bad and not the other way round for example?
I think everyone can tell from birth whether something feels good or bad to some extent and can differentiate clearly between them, but how come we like feeling good and not bad?
I can’t quite accept that we are just somehow born to associate brain stimulation that is generally termed as pleasurable with a positive response and brain stimulation that is generally termed as painful with a negative response.
But then surely it can’t be something that was learnt, otherwise there would be so much more masochism in the world. Or maybe there is and I’ve just not noticed? In practice, it seems too consistent to be something that depends on experiences that could theoretically go any way.
Please, no posts saying it’s because of endorphins etc and stating the chemical and physical processes that go on when we feel certain ways. I just want to know why these processes make us feel good or bad, not just how, and why we want to feel good and not bad.
Does anyone know what I mean?
Is it just a way of being that has somehow evolved the way it has to keep us alive? Feeling bad usually results from your body being damaged or incurring some sort of imbalance and feeling good usually results from your body and its balances being preserved/maintained or carrying out an action that increases the chance of your body or life as a whole being preserved/maintained like running (away from danger) or having sex. And then Darwinism would work from there: animals that liked feeling good survived and passed on their ways and animals that liked feeling bad didn’t survive to pass on their ways.
Is it just something that is learnt? A baby already knows from birth, the difference between pleasure and pain and will cry when not feeling good and stop when feeling bad, but it will only grow up to prefer feeling good over bad once it has been taught this way?
I don’t see enough abstraction for a strong debate here. Asking why we like feeling good is like asking why black is black, it’s self-referential so there’s no way to objectively evaluate the question.
I’ll try though…
Good and bad are ways for our biology to influence our conscious free will. Decisions we make aren’t truly free when we make them based on what feels good or bad, we’re simply playing into nature’s control mechanisms.
And yes we’re born with them, babies immediately respond to pain and pleasure. It’s something so deep routed in our being that I don’t think we can meaningfully quantify feelings as abstract signals being fed to our brain. Then again some people do, and through meditative practices control the conscious reaction to our feelings. I also think there are few true masochists, some people just put more emphasis on the pleasurable adrenaline or endrophins released in response to pain. Oops, I wasn’t supposed to discuss chemical biology.
Pai Mei! What a dude. Nice avatar. If I get old, I wanna be him.
Anyway, apologies, I edited my post 3 times after you replied. And I’m still not entirely happy with it. I can’t quite seen to get my point across. I think there’s a difference between pleasure and feeling nice. Some things feel a certain way and some another way, we can group them into good and bad, but how come everyone feels positively towards the good feelings and negatively to the others. Why do we like reacting positively towards nice feelings etc…
I agree about playing to natures control mechanisms btw. I don’t believe in free will. I can never do anything I don’t want to do. If I try to, its because I want to. And my wants are just products of my experiences and my genetic make up - both of which are not in my control even if I try to control them.
Look at addictions and see that sometimes things that “feel good” can (and do) damage your body… anyway, he’s not so much a popular guy these days but i think Frued did alot to try and expalin your question…there’s alot of psychological history that goes into what we like and don’t like and many times our desires conflict and form ironic and paradoxical relationships… oh, and then there is the whole issue of mind/body dualism…
I know it feels different to feeling bad, but why do I want to feel good and not bad? What is a ‘positive’ reaction to a feeling?
How come everyone else wants to feel that way as well.
And yes, addictions are bad for you, but they make you feel good which makes you want to do them. And this makes Luke’s rather rude condescention quite redundant.
Is the feeling someone gets from experiencing pleasure the same as someone elses? Do some people feel pleasure in the same as I do when I feel pain and vice versa, but still want to feel good the same as I do?
Is this any clearer as to what I mean? Or am I missing something really obvious? If so, tell me why, don’t just condescend. Thank you.
I’ll go for Natural Selection too, but operating at two levels:
there is the basic feel bad for pain and feel good for getting food, etc, which is there from birth. A lot of animals have this trait, and would not survive a day without it.
But there is also the higher level feel good and feel bad, which has to be learnt by association, and which only appears in social beings. It could be one of the traits which made society possible. Without it how would individuals be taught to obey rules? Couldn’t it be the basis for primitive ethics? Good feelings are connected to “Good” things bad feelings are connected to “Bad” things. You might ask how did good feelings get associated only with “Good” and bad feelings only with “Bad”? Well, maybe it didn’t. But those societies which had very different mappings, probably didn’t survive for very long.
I know this thread is not about free will, but I’ll just say something. Pleasure or pain are a product of our free decisions, not the forces that make us choose A instead of B. For example, you know eating a fruit brings you pleasure. You have the choice to deny eating an apple and the pleasure, so that becomes a free choice; free will still exists. The pleasure or pain increases your likelihood to choose an option, but it doesnt completely force you.
hi! i’m a new user here and i want to post my view on good and bad. For me, the bases of being good and bad, same with beauty and ugliness, is our concept that is influenced from our parents or the environment that we’re in when we are still children.
Unfortunately, you are pretty much correct. Although, everyone does end up usually developing at least a few opinons/belifs that were/are not in any way influenced by that of their parents.
