Right…

What doesn’t make sense, is that there isn’t one thing that makes an emotion positive (/negative). Sometimes, I really enjoy falling asleep to tranquil classical music; it creates a positive emotion in me. At other times, I enjoy almost getting angry, or upset, listening to vicious rock music. I also get a positive emotion when enjoying the juicy sweetness of big fresh oranges, though that emotion in itself is quite different from the pleasure I experience when indulging in rich chocolate fudge cake. Different again is the pleasurable jolt of glancing the person you love. All these positive emotions are quite different sorts of happiness/ pleasure/ enjoyment.

The same disparity can be seen in pains. A paper cut can feel like the worst pain ever… then you loose someone you love. And how does that compare with the fear felt when your own untimely death presents itself to you? Or the shame of acting improperly towards someone, and being publicly “found out”?

We might try and rank these emotions from most to least desirable. In life, we do just that whenever we have to make a judgement about how we should act. But how do we rank emotional outcomes when there is such disparity?

It might seem we’re influenced by how long those emotions last, or by how pleasurable the later side effects of those emotion are. But considering only the present experience of an emotion, it seems impossible to rationally apply any sort of rank whatsoever. Bentham suggested it was simply a matter of intensity of pleasure pain… but is it? Really? Isn’t the pleasure of tranquil meditation simply a different type of pleasure from that we experience listening to angry rock music? I can’t see the significant common quality. All that seems the same is that in both cases, we desire the emotion, and judge it to be “positive”.

So do we rank emotions simply by how much we desire them (or desire not to feel them)? Are our desires therefore arbitrary? I can desire things for many different- and crucially, separate- reasons, and the separateness of these reasons denies the possibility of comparing them on any scale of value. Comparing two types of pleasure to discover which is “greatest” is akin to comparing 10cm and 10 degrees Celsius to deduce which is bigger. Impossible. They’re just not the same type of thing- their values lie in different qualities.

So, how do we do rank emotions? Why do we value “positive emotions” at all, and what puts this in contrast to out distaste for “negative emotions”? Mustn’t there be some common unit if there is to be any sense made of any of our choices whatsoever?

And why is it that even though no one I ask can answer these questions, we’re all (me included) still fairly content to go on in ignorance? We can’t even justify our fear at the potential breakdown of morality until we’ve fully investigated the evidence for the meaninglessness of that morality. If we knew exactly why we went on, we’d have cracked the whole conundrum! But as it is…
*Walks into a wall

**Can’t decide if it really matters, if I'm being philosophically consistent, but gets some anti-bump cream just in case

Dostoyevsky on the problem of evil

This extract is said by Ivan (Dostoyevsky) in Chapter 35 (/4) of the Three Brothers Karamazov.

“With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly…— but… what comfort is it to me…? — I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself… Surely I haven’t suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else... I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? … in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It’s beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? … And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers’ crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn’t grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old… I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.’ When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’... But what pulls me up here is that I can’t accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures… I don’t want to cry aloud [‘Thou art just, O Lord’] then… I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to ‘dear, kind God’! It’s not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? …What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? ... And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. I don’t want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs!… Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From love for humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering... Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket”

phosphorescence antidisestablishmentarianism

There, now my blog has a googlewhack. It really does have everything you'd need from a blog. Oh why oh why does no one care ? :-( hee hee

Goodness poem

This poem is not good at all. I spent far too long writing it (about an hour!) and am not really sure why I’m posting it here, except for my prediction that it will not be read! Then again, me writing this forward shows I’m not wholly confident of that fact. Anyway, I want to start writing poems again, and putting them on here and having any comments that might come along might spur me on. I think it expresses a bit of my confusion at morality which is troubling me at the moment, and my further confusion at other people’s finding no problem with it what so ever. It’s far more difficult than nearly everyone seems to give it “proper” credit for.

Simple Goodness

Actin’ proper
Ain’t s’ hard;
Jus’ do what’s right and
Be on yer guard.

Follow yer conscience!
Follow yer ‘eart!
Follow yer ‘ead, lass
(t’sensible part)-

T’part that’s for others.
T’part that’s for pleasure.
T’part for the “now”.
That part that’s for ever.

Then it ought’a be clear
What’s to do and what’s not.
But I see yer fumbling.
There’s some’et y’ain’t got…

Look:

If it ‘urts other people,
Or if it ‘urts you,
Or t’dear bless’d creatures,
It ain’t right to do!

If it violates Jesus,
Or t’law o’ the Land,
Or that of commonsense,
Or it’s otherwise banned,

Or it just dun’t feel right,
Or yer told it’s a sin,
Or yer duty’s in question,
You just shouldn’t a’ been

Tryin’ it in the first place!
Yer’ll know if it’s right;
There’s books for’t instruct yer!
Reading ‘em might

'av 'elped yer conundrum!
But alas, yer moved wrong.
("In movin' at all?")
Well, it won't be long

'Till all the world grabs yer
And blasts out yer sentence:
"Eternity outcast;
No chance for repentance"
...

"Phew", she breathes.