Naked Science Forum
On the Lighter Side => New Theories => Topic started by: TranscendedRealms on 23/03/2018 19:14:49
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There are the lower, basic emotions such as a feeling of excitement from getting a new movie, feeling sexually aroused, or a feeling of panic from being in a dangerous situation. I think we call these emotions the instinctive emotions.
These emotions are actually the perception of value. In other words, they are mental states where we perceive things, moments, people, and situations as beautiful, horrible, good, bad, or disgusting depending on which emotion we feel. I have come up with a formula that attempts to translate emotions into value.
Our pleasant emotions are the reward wanting and liking in the brain. When you want and like something, this means it matters to you. When something matters to you, this means it is something good or bad from your perspective.
Our pleasant emotions allow us to perceive things as good and beautiful while our unpleasant emotions allow us to perceive things as horrible and disgusting. Therefore, my formula that attempts to translate emotions into value would be "Positive and negative emotions are the reward wanting and liking as well as the disreward not wanting and not liking=something mattering to you=it having value from your perspective."
From there, I continue to explain how our morality, character, and intellect alone cannot be any real source of value in our lives by using a hunger and thirst analogy. There is no intellectual and moral form of hunger and thirst just as how there is no intellectual and moral form of value. Value is the same thing as our instinctive emotions just as how hunger and thirst is the same thing as the feeling of needing something to eat or drink.
As you can see here, I have a purely biological perspective on value. I think value is reduced to our biochemical emotions and I do not agree with the idea that we can have value in our lives through our character, deeds, intellect, morals, and obligations/responsibilities alone. One last thing. I will present the study that shows how our positive emotions are the reward wanting and liking:
We have found a special hedonic hotspot that is crucial for reward 'liking' and 'wanting' (and codes reward learning too). The opioid hedonic hotspot is shown in red above. It works together with another hedonic hotspot in the more famous nucleus accumbens to generate pleasure 'liking'.
‘Liking’ and ‘wanting’ food rewards: Brain substrates and roles in eating disorders
Kent C. Berridge 2009 Mar 29.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2717031/