• Cristopher
    12
    There are many things we hold valuable. Family, friends, possesions. But why do we hold them valuable? Is there something integral to these things which creates inherit value? This question is important to ask if you ever care to sell something, since you can put a price on a value to gain something. (Economist aswell as does that sell their words in discussions) ((This discussion will attribute the "will" the "soul" and the "chatacter" of a human to their brain. This might be slightly incorrect since we have neurons outside of the brain, or greatly incorrect if you believe in the previously stated objects to be seperate, in the later case i can not derecommendate this post to you enough))

    A. Is it not true that the dead and unborm hold no values? Therefor only the living create evaluations of objects. What do the living posses that allow them cette evaluation? The soul, the spirit, the brain? Is it not the brain that decides all our decisionmaking? Must it not here again be the cause of evaluation?

    B. How now does the brain envoke the rest of the body to move (/change)? It sends signals to organs to put the body into a new state. This may happen through adrenalin, to give us a flight or fight response or through other Hormons and systems. It though ends with the expression of an emotion. Emotion as in its etymology: the thing avoking motion.

    C. If it is this state of emotion that makes us act, and only it that makes us act, isn't the deciciv factor for our reaction the intensity as in the amount of emotion? If we feel enough hunger what could make us refuse to eat? Well if we feel enough shame, or fear, or if we are buisy lusting after something else we may not eat. So then it is the most intense emotion that decides our action. All our priorisation then stems from emotion.

    D. If we prioritice something over another thing. Doesn't that mean that the value of these objects differs? Since if they were to be equally important (=of value) at that moment, we wouldn't prioritise one thing over the other, would we? So the things we prioritise are the things we hold more valuable. From C we know then that: the things that we feel to be of greater emotion is valuable. (Ex. If I fear i value wisdom. If I am hungry i value nutrition.)

    E. If values are defined by emotions. Your emotional state shows you your values. And the emotional state of many people shows us their values. We may define a culture (a set of many people) by similarities in their values, hence similarities in emotions. We then as the culture of philosophers might be classified by our "curiosity".

    F. Lastly if the emotion is relieved and our state is altered the value is gone. (If we ate and are filled we value food less.) So it is the things we can't be relieved of that define us as a person over a longer time. It is then what we do when we can't be help not to. To stand up for loved ones. To talk when we ought to be quiet. To question what is held to be true. If one wants to see a change in themselves and their behaviour. One then would seek to confront some emotions to eradicate them or to find new emotion for oneself.

    Personal: this idea of having value proportional to emotion is pratical if one cares to understand somebody. We all have our values and act by them. Sometimes we are confused, or atleast I am about the behaviour of somebody. Though in all these situations what estranges me from them is that I don't feel what they feel. To understand somebody one must share values. It is then difficult to understand people from foreign cultures. To eat togheter is a good way to see that we all share atleast a human culture, which includes hunger.

    I must say that this whole platform is to me an experiment or experience to see if I may find people of similar values. If one strongly shares values one can form an alliance to fight. & it is that thought of an army surpasing any individual that lets me thing about the value of streangh in numbers.
  • Kenosha Kid
    3.2k
    Hi, I enjoyed your post. I don't necessarily agree with the primacy of emotions in the causes of value, although I expect emotional relief or anticipation are important factors.

    In terms of what we possess as humans, the most important factors seem to me to be need and means. The more we need it, the higher we value it. The greater our means of getting it, the less we will value it. The most important needs in Maslow's hierarchy are the biological ones for survival of the individual: food, drinking water, warmth, safety. The next are sexual and social required for the survival of the genome: a mate, children, a social network. These all have biological drivers, the manifestations of which are observable in laboratory conditions, the origins of which are understood in evolutionary theory, and the mechanics of which are fairly comprehensively detailed in biochemistry.

    On (C), can you not think of examples where you acted dispassionately? Do you not e.g. work most days irrespective of your emotional state? We "act" all the time. The rollercoaster of emotions required to get me through a typical working day if action depended on emotion would make me seek a doctor, I think, and their bizarre Mon-Fri regularity followed by Sat-Sun discontinuity would trouble me even more.
  • Cristopher
    12

    When you think of emotion you might think of great distresses or passions. I use the word emotion also for very minute changes of your biological state. So that even the most minute actions like taping your finger, dreaming or looking at something are caused by emotion. Not by passion but emotion.

    Maslows work is very important mostly for his hard work in gathering data. The Idea of the pyramid might also be otherwise differently interprated: if you imagine the hierarchie to just follow the intensity of any given emotion. Some emotion like hunger may rise very quickly. Because you need to eat acouple of times a day. Likewise sleep (tiredness) rises quickly in the evening. Other things like sex (lipido) may rise only to extreemes every once in a while. The hierarchy of problems could therefor be seen not as absolut values but rather derivatives (rates of changes) so that at the bottom the emotions rise very quickly and on the top the rise very slowly.

    One would need to seek a doctor if one isn't able to extinguish once emotions. If one is infinitly hungry or stressed.

    I think I work because of the threat to be fired (poverty and debt) and the desire to see my co_workers. These i count as emotions but not passions.

    Emotional relief and anticipation is interessting.
    I think the anticipation is just like any imagination or projection towards the future made out of thought. The whole idea of the human animal to poses thought is to make these kind of hypothesis (projections estimations) to use their energy efficiently. Though thought might be primarly driven by uncertainty : see my prior post about questions and fear. This drive would be emotional.

    Emotional relief on the other hand is very interessting. If we eat is it to be filled or because we are hungry? I think because we don't use future information as a basis. It makes more sence to say that the emotion is the driver. Like a child that is bored and tries to spell words backwards. It doesn't know if it will get any relief from it's boredom through this. All it knows is that it is bored.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.2k
    B. How now does the brain envoke the rest of the body to move (/change)? It sends signals to organs to put the body into a new state. This may happen through adrenalin, to give us a flight or fight response or through other Hormons and systems. It though ends with the expression of an emotion. Emotion as in its etymology: the thing avoking motion.Cristopher

    Maybe you could elucidate this; it appears quite confused. It seems like you are saying that movement of the body, and emotion, are one and the same thing.
  • Cristopher
    12


    I may be confused that is a constant. I dont doubt my ability to make mistakes.

    But to elucidate: What you body simply is, is a machine that takes an input with your sensory organs and gives an output through organs like the muscles. To communicate inbetween these two we have a change in biology. This change can be seen in the brain and in hormonal changes. The "feeling" as we are aware of it is just the expression of these changes. I am hungry because of my biology. I can be stressed because of my biology.

    What i say is that emotion precedes your motion. Though ofcourse i do not include any motion inflicted but only the motion originating in the body.

    Any change now is an motion so you may say that it is a fluent change between external and internal motion. Which is why i do not define emotion souly as internal motion but as the change envoked by the brain as a neuron cluster. So just what the impulses provoke.

    I hope that makes some things visible. Maybe your flaws maybe mine. I would appreciate, if you see mine, to tell me them. Kind regards C.D.W
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.2k
    What you body simply is, is a machine that takes an input with your sensory organs and gives an output through organs like the muscles.Cristopher

    If the human body is simply responding, or reacting to sensory stimulation, then how do you account for intention, which is the desire to change the stimulation to something imagined as better? Do you see that there is an element of imagination here, which is not really a response to sensory input?
  • Kenosha Kid
    3.2k
    Ah okay. So you've said that emotion is anything that invokes motion, i.e. action, behaviour. You've also said that our values are derived from our emotions (in E). So your formulation is that emotion is a common cause of values and behaviours, so we can derive a value of an actor based on their behaviour? This relies on a one-to-one mapping between emotion and value, and between emotion and behaviour?

    It's a shame we can't easily do diagrams :D

    Emotional relief on the other hand is very interessting. If we eat is it to be filled or because we are hungry? I think because we don't use future information as a basis. It makes more sence to say that the emotion is the driver.Cristopher

    This is my partner's field of expertise. You're right afaik. Things like heroin addiction are extreme examples. The first hit might have been very pleasurable, but the craving of an addict is painful and the satisfaction of it a relief from that withdrawal. Most anticipated pleasures, like sex, chocolate, and adrenaline, are watered down versions of this: after a few experiences, the brain sets up a reward system driven by some kind of craving. It isn't the pleasure of the thing itself we anticipate, but the pleasure of relief from our current discomfort. Which, as you say, makes more sense that acting now on future experiences of pleasure.

    This is qualitatively different though from anticipating new things, like a child's anticipation of going to Disneyland for the first time. That said, and this relates to MU's point, we can anticipate based on indirect experience: a love of Disney films; excitement generated by friends who have been; and imagination which, while not external, is still experienced, i.e. "sensed".
  • Cristopher
    12

    I see any sort of intention as just another emotion. The difference between responding and reacting is as the words say: sensing and acting, is that one does not act on every emotion.

    Stimulation can be seen as always primarly negative. But every stimumus would through it's relieve be turned into a joy. Like hunger into the pleasentries of eating. And thirst into the pleasentries of drinking.

    The desire for change is like any other desire, an emotion.

    Neuroscience is still very much open for interpretations about determinism will e.t.c. yet i approache it with this angle & hypothesis and it seems to give me better results when organizing and designing for humans.

    I don't believe in any kind of soul.

    I hope i got your concerne right. I might not have. If so i apologize in advance.
  • Cristopher
    12


    So you have 3 sets
    Behaviour
    Emotion
    Senses

    Not all senses lead to emotion not all emotion lead to behaviour. Because some are directly expelled and deleted.

    Movement tries to reduce emotion.

    Value is equal to emotion by this hypothesis so they are in the same groupe.

    Information is lost throught the process.
    One can not know from the behaviour directly the emotion. One can not know from the emotion the sense. But what we can know is what emotion is sparked from a sense and what action is sparked from emotion.

    It is very cool that your partner works with these sort of things. I am not en expert i just use models for UI and predictions.

    I agree with all you say in the second part and it is very much to my taste. Kind regard C.D.W.
  • Kenosha Kid
    3.2k
    Since emotion and value are equal (I assume you mean interchangeable in terms of correlation), I gather the importance of sense is merely in providing context to understand the values that drove a behaviour in another?

    I think, with the above definitions, and with the above caveats, this is uncontroversial. I think there's probably a dichotomy in the definition of value. It would be interesting to touch on the difference between reactive and proactive behaviours. If I vote down a motion to evict all Big-enders from our hallowed city, that is proactive, from which one can infer that I value diversity above uniformity. Nonetheless, if I jump out of my skin when I turn a corner and encounter a gang of Big-enders, that is reactive, from which one can infer a very different kind of value.

    But if I understand you right, (A)-(E) say that observing the behaviours of people in given contexts shines a light on their values, or else that what we value determines our actions.

    (F) is then saying that temporary emotions, such as hunger, do not really say anything about us at all. It's how we behave over time that matters. But how we behave over time may include a series of consistent temporary emotions. If I consistently jump out of my skin when encountering Big-enders, and I consistently sate that emotion by crossing the street to avoid them and walking with other Little-enders, am I not a racist? That contrasts me with Little-enders who quite happily hang out and chat with Big-enders, even if our votes on the eviction motion go the same way.
  • Outlander
    2.1k
    All I know is a $50 steak tastes $45 better than a $5 one.
  • fishfry
    3.4k
    Value can be subjective but based on fact. One person makes their living running a grocery store. Another person wants dinner. The hungry person values food more than money; the grocer values money more than food. That's the basis of commerce: Two rational actors can have different preference functions; hence markets exist.

    One person values long term appreciation. Another needs a place to live. The former buys a house, at great initial expense. The latter party rents it, often for less money than the owner's monthly mortgage payment. Yet both parties are happy. They are both acting purely rationally, yet with different preference functions.

    Just look at pro sports. One person values a high draft choice because they're building for the future. The other values an experienced player because they're aiming to win right now. So they trade. Different preferences, but entirely rational. Economic actors have different preference functions because they have different circumstances and objectives.

    If everyone had the same preference function, no market could exist. No free exchange of goods and services would occur.
  • DrOlsnesLea
    56
    Note on training of the nervous system by cognition. Emotions change.

    Therefore, Kantian ethics is still superior? Keywords are information and thinking.
  • 3017amen
    3.1k


    Nice! Another consideration in the equation could look something like this. If the answer to the question is yes, then one could explore the concepts of, say; (metaphysical) will, intention, motivations, needs, sentience itself, subjective truth's, etc..

    If the answer to the question is no, then alternatively one could explore the concepts of pure reason/a priori, abstracts, timelessness, eternal truth's, objective truth's, and so on.

    The concept of human value then, could comprise all of that and more (i.e., biological value/needs). Otherwise, we are talking basic ethics kinds of stuff, which in turn, draws from sentient existence. And that leads to questions about consciousness/self-aware Beings who wonder about such existence.

    Just some more food for thought.
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