Is humanity inherently good, evil or neutral?

[thestrangequark]

^If that is your point then why is my analogy "neither here nor there"? It was totally apt, if I do say so myself!

As to whether artificially attained emotions are any less genuine than naturally occurring ones, I'll think one that for a moment.

Ahh... I see where the disconnect happened. When I said "its neither here nor there." I was referring to my own statement that the artificially created scent of a rose is not as good as the natural scent of a rose.

Got it. Oh, the vagueness of internet dialogue!

But on the point of the artificially attained emotion. My opinion is that we are used to having a cause to why we feel a certain way. eg. "She said yes when I asked her to marry me." or "My husband cheated." If we started shooting chemicals in body, then to what do we really attribute as the cause of how we feel?

Just out of curiosity, are you trying to prove a point with this question? That being, that there must be something other than chemistry involved? It's just that it's such a stupendously hypothetical question.

Anyway, you've kind of asked two questions here: whether artificially created emotion is as "real" as genuine emotion, and whether emotion attached to inappropriate stimuli is as "real" as emotion attached to appropriate stimuli. Let's look at the first from a sensory perspective. Just like our body reacts to a stimulus, like say, a bare hand on a hot flame, by sending signals to the brain that cause us to react by feeling pain and pulling away, we also react to emotional stimuli -- someone saying "I love you," or "Fuck off," with specific brain processes either learned or innate. Our mental processes are very complex things, but if we learned to exactly duplicate the physical processes in the brain that create these emotions, then yes, the feelings would be just as real. I have type 1 diabetes, doctors learned to create artificial insulin that I inject into my body, and it lowers my blood sugar by allowing glucose to be metabolized by my cells, just as my own insulin would, had I any. The only difference is that people don't yet understand exactly how the brain works and cannot accurately recreate the processes.

Now, you gave a specific example of a blow up doll, and asked, if one could artificially induce feelings of love that an individual would learn to associate with that doll, then is it real love. In answer to that I'd consider those people who have what we would consider inappropriate emotional responses to certain specific stimuli. Most of us are repulsed by corpses, but necrophiliacs are sexually aroused by them, for example. To use a more common example, some people feel intense anxiety in situations that "ought to be" fun or comfortable. Are their feelings any less real because they are attached to an inappropriate stimuli? Certainly not.

So, to answer an extremely hypothetical question in brief: were we able to exactly reproduce the chemical and physical processes in the brain that we call "love" or "hate" or whatever, then yes, the feelings would be real.

 

[Captain_Nick]

I have a question

Much has been said about the nature of life in this thread (and very little understood by my good self)

What have you achieved exactly?

Or to put it another way, why are you talking about life when you could be living it?

 

[thestrangequark]

^Why can't one do both?

 

[Captain_Nick]

I didn't say you 'can't', I merely asked why you would want to.

My posing the question kind of answers it - couldn't be arsed living through the work on my desk this morning.

 

[thestrangequark]

I didn't say you 'can't', I merely asked why you would want to.

I enjoy intellectual stimulation.

 

[Skellington]

What have you achieved exactly?

It would be a pretty sad and unenviable life that could be defined in a concise and accurate answer to that questiion, wouldn't it?

 

[Captain_Nick]

What have you achieved exactly?

It would be a pretty sad and unenviable life that could be defined in a concise and accurate answer to that questiion, wouldn't it?

There is no point in making jokes if you are going to give away the punch line. Let them come to realisation themselves.

 

[JarodRussell]

I have a question

Much has been said about the nature of life in this thread (and very little understood by my good self)

What have you achieved exactly?

Or to put it another way, why are you talking about life when you could be living it?

Posts like this one need to feature this:

It's mandatory.

 

[thestrangequark]

What have you achieved exactly?

It would be a pretty sad and unenviable life that could be defined in a concise and accurate answer to that questiion, wouldn't it?

There is no point in making jokes if you are going to give away the punch line. Let them come to realisation themselves.

It is just as sad and unenviable life that cannot contemplate their world. Therefore, I'll take the question seriously: thinking is fun.

 

[Captain_Nick]

I have a question

Much has been said about the nature of life in this thread (and very little understood by my good self)

What have you achieved exactly?

Or to put it another way, why are you talking about life when you could be living it?

Posts like this one need to feature this:

It's mandatory.

What does God need with goodness?

 

[infinix]

So, to answer an extremely hypothetical question in brief: were we able to exactly reproduce the chemical and physical processes in the brain that we call "love" or "hate" or whatever, then yes, the feelings would be real.

If we put an bracket around "love" and try to define that, then I agree that love is equally compelling regardless of how it came to be. But what I'm getting at is the situation that the emotion is completely induced artificially. In your example of necrophilia, as hard as it is to understand why anyone would be sexually aroused by a corpse, at least the person is naturally aroused by the corpse.

You bring up the concept of conditioning and that is somewhat I was trying to get at. So an extreme example would be if a person, say Jack, was conditioned into "loving" another person, say Diane, through injections of serotonin.
For the sake of argument, let's say this was unintentional. Jack thought he was taking insulin shots but the insulin was laced with serotonin without his knowledge.

The feelings of love may be genuine to Jack. Heck, Diane may not care either as long as Jack loves her. But to those who observed the process, how do we judge it? Can we really call what Jack feels for Diane true love especially if Jack wouldn't have loved Diane without those injections as a third party? Or would you suggest that the observer's point of view is irrelevant?

Additionally, if the situation was forcefully induced without Jack's consent, would your opinions change?

 

[thestrangequark]

^The thing is, this is so extremely hypothetical, it almost seems nonsensical to try to answer it. I doubt very much that injecting serotonin every time Jack saw Diane would necessitate his love for her. Serotonin is "injected" into my brain when I see my friends, and I haven't fallen in love with them.

 

[infinix]

^The thing is, this is so extremely hypothetical, it almost seems nonsensical to try to answer it. I doubt very much that injecting serotonin every time Jack saw Diane would necessitate his love for her. Serotonin is "injected" into my brain when I see my friends, and I haven't fallen in love with them.

Well, I'm not sure what protein is responsible for love. I'm just using serotonin cause it was an easy choice and it has already been brought up before.

Please replace serotonin with which ever chemical is responsible for producing the feeling of love.

 

[thestrangequark]

^But that's the thing, no one knows, and it's more complicated than that. There are chemical processes and physical processes: the structure of the brain, the way the neurons fire, etc. How does it relate to morality?

 

[scottydog]

^I wish I knew more about brain chemistry, but I don't.

It's good to see "Neutral" winning in the poll by a narrow margin. I'm pleasantly surprised more people are saying "Good" than "Evil". Cool.

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ But the real answer has to be "good," otherwise civilization couldn't exist.

Or to put it another way, why are you talking about life when you could be living it?

The unexamined life is not worth living.

 

[scottydog]

^^ But the real answer has to be "good," otherwise civilization couldn't exist.

The key word in the thread title is "inherently". If people were inherently good, we wouldn't need to teach kids to share and not to punch the kid sitting next to them. Niceness would come naturally, which it doesn't.

The fact that we are malleable and teachable also tells me that we aren't inherently bad, either. We can learn to be civilized and kind. We can also learn to be unspeakably cruel.

Humans can swing both directions with equal ease. That's why, for me, the answer is neutral.

But I do like the optimism show by those of you who voted for 'inherently good'.

 

[F. King Daniel]

There's difference between how it works "behind the scenes" and how you live. Love is a good example. It's just a tool to achieve reproduction, the grand goal. The brain registers another human being that's a potential partner and starts the full program, basically drowns you in Serotonine, the "happy hormone", etc... that's simply how it works.

So every human interaction is boiled down to chemistry and eventually we will come up with means to produce and introduce those hormones artificially into ourselves?

I guess you subscribe to utilitarianism?

This is where I bring up those experiments about mice with electrodes wired to their brains, who sat and stayed on the button that provided current/pleasure until they starved to death.

Assuming any of that's true. Sci-f ran with it and created "wireheads"

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ But the real answer has to be "good," otherwise civilization couldn't exist.

The key word in the thread title is "inherently". If people were inherently good, we wouldn't need to teach kids to share and not to punch the kid sitting next to them. Niceness would come naturally, which it doesn't.

Granted that most children have to be taught to some degree, where did those teachings come from? Other people. Niceness certainly does come naturally, to many people.

The fact that we are malleable and teachable also tells me that we aren't inherently bad, either. We can learn to be civilized and kind. We can also learn to be unspeakably cruel.

True, but remember that despite all the unspeakable cruelty, the greed, the murder, the war and all the other famous abuses of History, that civilization has not only endured, but thrived and prospered and advanced-- so the capacity for goodness in Mankind far outstrips all those horrors.

 

[Amaris]

^ Exactly.