My reward system theory

Since our reward system (pleasant emotions) are the only rewarding experiences we can have and since optimism is always a rewarding experience for us as human beings, then optimism can only be our pleasant emotions themselves and not our attitudes alone or anything else. The term “rewarding experience” has been defined through science as only being our reward system (pleasant emotions) and not our thoughts or anything else alone since our reward system is the only function of our brains that can give us a rewarding experience. Therefore, optimism can only be our pleasant feelings/emotions while pessimism can only be our unpleasant feelings/emotions.

Optimism is love, joy, happiness, etc. while pessimism is depression, rage, hate, despair, etc. Therefore, love, joy, and happiness can only be our pleasant feelings/emotions while depression, rage, hate, despair, etc. can only be our unpleasant feelings/emotions. To have good meaning in one’s life is always an optimistic statement which would mean that would have to be a rewarding experience as well. Therefore, our pleasant feelings/emotions are the only things that can give good meaning to our lives. To say that something can be of good value and worth to you even though it is not a rewarding experience for you would be no different than saying that something can be a rewarding experience to you even though it is not a rewarding experience for you. Therefore, that would be a false (contradictory) statement.

Since the moral version of good and bad is defined as being something subjective, then this moral version of good and bad no longer exists anymore. It is fake. Good and bad are now objective (scientific). They are now scientific terms. Our pleasant emotions would have to be the experience of the scientific version of good and our unpleasant feelings/emotions would have to be the experience of the scientific version of bad.

The fact is, there is a psychological basis that determines if one has good or bad meaning in his/her life that people are ignorantly leaving out and saying that a severely crippled depressed person who can hardly function is still living the good life since he/she has told his/herself he/she was still living the good life.

It would be no different than telling a blind and deaf person that he/she can still see and hear since he/she has told his/herself he/she can still see and hear. When you are in a hopeless, bland, and “dead” mindstate due to your depression and/or anhedonia, then that is the mindstate of perceiving neutral (neither good or bad) and the scientific version of bad meaning in your life. But when you are in the vibrant, “alive,” transcending, and vigorous mindstate of experiencing your pleasant emotions (good moods), then that is the mindstate of perceiving the scientific version of good meaning in your life.

The moral version of having good and bad meaning in one’s life would say that it doesn’t matter what mental state you are in. That if you tell yourself you are living a good or bad life, then that makes it so. But having good or bad meaning in one’s life solely depends on what mental state you are in. There is always a scientific (psychological) basis that determines whether we have good or bad meaning in our lives. I already explained it in my previous paragraph above here. That psychological basis is not our thinking. It is our moods.

Emmm… naaa.

First, “optimism” is a subconscious calculated stance - the willingness to strive against the odds. It doesn’t really have much to do with reward stimuli. By the attempt to maintain a positive outlook, one often feels a little better and thus increases his odds for accomplishment (higher serotonin levels). So optimism is definitely an “attitude”.

And “rewarding experience” in psychology refers to both emotional responses and certainly more often, immediate sensory stimuli (such as appealing tasting food, smells, or comforting touches). Emotions are a more complex issue than merely good and bad feelings. And either way, optimism isn’t an emotion, but a stance or attitude, although perhaps taken due to emotions and also contributes to emotions.

And that sentence doesn’t seem to make sense. The “moral version of good and bad”?? The argument from typical religious morals is one of objective good and bad, not subjective.

As for optimism always being a rewarding experience, we know what characteristics optimism has. For example, if we express optimistic tones and expressions, then they are vigorous, vibrant, and “alive” tones, acts, and expressions. So to have the mental experience of optimism would also mean that you would have to be in a vibrant and vigorous “alive” mental state. That mental state can only be achieved through your pleasant emotions (good moods) as I’ve said before. As for pessimism, that would be achieved through the mindstate of you experiencing your unpleasant feelings/emotions. It would be you being in a hopeless and depressive mindstate, an enraged mindstate, a sad mindstate, etc.

But if you have chosen to express vibrant and vigorous acts, tones, and expressions that were forced and not optimistic at all, then that is not the same thing as optimism. That is not the same thing as them being optimistic acts, tones, and expressions. Therefore, an anhedonic and/or depressed person who claims to live an optimistic lifestyle would be lying. He/she would be living a forced lifestyle. His/her mental experiences of choosing to help others and performing actions would be forced mental states and not optimistic mental states at all.

Nah… you have the cause and effect concepts backwards (“cart before the horse”). The optimism causes the vibrancy, not the other way around. At times by pretending vibrancy or being medically influenced, the mind can be fooled into accepting an optimistic stance which then makes it more genuine even though originally artificially created. The emotions can encourage the rationality toward chosen presumptions. Optimism and pessimism are presumptions (“biases”, “attitudes”), not emotions.

It would be difficult for an anhedonist to know whether he was being optimistic because he would be trying to sense whether he felt hopeful and could not sense it. So if he is claiming it, it must be that he is guessing that he is being optimistic because he is expecting good things to eventually come even though he is suspicious that they won’t. He is “holding faith” toward a positive result and he knows it. Feelings don’t have to be involved.

Optimism: exaggeration of the positive.
Pessimism: exaggeration of the negative.

Physiologically, optimism is denial of pain through attachment to the positive (one detaches from pain by attaching to the positive, thereby exaggerating the positive), whereas pessimism is denial of pain through attachment to the negative (one over-attaches to pain, thereby exaggerating the negative.) What is lacking in both cases is detachment proper.

JSS says there is a need for hope. There is no need for hope. In fact, it is precisely this need for hope, which is a left-brain activity, that holds mentally ill people back. What is necessary is detachment. Failure to do so leads to over-attachment, most notably, to over-thinking and hyper-rationality. The solution lies in the right brain, not in the left brain.

So you’re saying that their real HOPE is to use their right brain and be detached.

… as long as they don’t have any hope, because that would hold them back…

Actually, I think having good meaning in one’s life is all about the rewarding experience. Think about it. If your family is of good value and worth to you, then they are a rewarding experience to you. They are rewarding to you. If a person puts his/herself through nothing but pain and misery to earn a trophy and to aid the team, then both the idea of the trophy and the idea of the team are rewarding to this person. But as we all know, something can only be rewarding to us if it is a rewarding experience to us. That is, if it stimulates our reward system and gives us the experience of pleasant feelings/emotions. Something cannot be rewarding to you if it does not give you the experience of pleasant feelings/emotions. If you were depressed and/or anhedonic, then nothing and no one can be rewarding to you. It would be no different than handing a gift to a blind and deaf person and saying:

“Here is your sight and hearing.”

So with that being said, if a person had nothing but pain and misery, then the idea of the team and the idea of the trophy would actually be of no good value and worth to him/her. Since he/she is going through nothing but pain and misery and is not deriving any pleasant feelings/emotions from the idea of the trophy and the team, then he/she would only be fooling (deluding) his/herself into thinking that the idea of the team and the trophy have good value and worth to him/her. It would be contradictory (false) for him/her to say that the idea of the trophy and the team have good meaning to him/her since to say:

“This is not a rewarding experience to me. But it is still of good value and worth to me anyway.”

Then that would be no different than saying:

“This is not a rewarding experience to me. But it is still a rewarding experience to me.”

Therefore, that would be a false (contradictory) statement.

Well, I will concede that the only true “meaning of life” is to Maximize the Integral of Joy Over Time, MIJOT. That means that one must carefully strategize ones future so that the total sum of experienced joy accumulates as high as possible for as long as possible.

So the idea of reward vs punishment can be used, as long as it is understood how it fits into the long term scheme of ones life. The wiser anhedonist must design a future wherein he acquires more ability to sense reward/pleasure/joy without taking away his future existence (drugs leading to death don’t count). Merely accepting his fate of being a miserable soul until he dies, isn’t wise.

But even MIJOT must be rewarding to you in order for it to have good value and worth to you. So even it has to be a rewarding experience to you in order for it to have good value and worth to you. So you must derive pleasant feelings/emotions from it in order for it to have good meaning to you.

As I said, that is the whole purpose of it. If you don’t experience joy from it, it isn’t MIJOT.

Well, where my theory was getting at is that there is a scientific version of good and bad that humanity and science is currently unaware of. Since stimuli reach the brain and allow us to see and hear, then hearing and sight are scientific terms. So in that same sense, since stimuli reach our brain and allow us to perceive good or bad meaning from them through our pleasant or unpleasant feelings/emotions, then good and bad are also scientific terms.

Notice how if I were to somehow shut down a person’s sight or hearing, then he/she would no longer be able to see and hear? This also applies to our perception of good and bad meaning in our lives. If our reward system is turned off in which we cannot experience our pleasant feelings/emotions, then things and people in our lives cannot give good meaning to us. So this clearly shows you here that good is a scientific term. Since our reward system (pleasant feelings/emotions) are what allow us to perceive good meaning in our lives, then our pleasant feelings/emotions are the scientific version of good while our unpleasant feelings/emotions are the scientific version of bad.

Here again, the scientific version of good and bad is a feeling/emotional version of good and bad and is not a moral or any other version of good and bad.

A hypochondriac fears death to such an extent that he will never try any medical procedure that risks his life. He needs to be told, he needs to be promised and reassured, that everything will turn out just fine before he can attempt anything. In short, he needs hope. This is different from a brave person who is capable of tolerating, who can be ready for, a negative outcome.

Hypochondriacs have an addiction to hope/certainty . . . they misinterpret their mental illness to be physical illness because that gives them the hope of treatment.

I’m making an important distinction here and you are being too literal.

An experience is rewarding insofar it is an experience of control. It is unrewarding otherwise, if it is an experience of lack of control. Control and lack of control are separate from pleasure and pain. One can be in control while in pain just as one can be lacking control while experiencing pleasure.

If you can posit a goal and achieve it, that would be a reward. If your goal is to endure pain and if you endure pain, that would be a reward.

Pain is really only a pain, i.e. it is really only problematic, if it accompanies loss of control. Otherwise, it isn’t perceived as problematic.

Pain is not uniquely associated with negative value judgment. That’s merely a false opinion held by those who are incapable of controlling pain.

To endure pain means to control it, it does not mean to surrender to a painful loss of control. Those who are incapable of controlling pain tend to misinterpret the phrase to mean the latter.

Those who can find value in pain, then, aren’t self-deceivers, they aren’t because the value they find in pain is the value in controlled pain, not in uncontrolled pain. It is the uncontrolled pain which cannot be honestly valued, not the controlled pain . . .

So no, no need for joy, no need for hope . . . human brain is much more powerful than that.

But reward can only come from our reward system since this has been defined by science. The term “rewarding experience” has been defined by science as only being our pleasant feelings/emotions and not our thoughts alone or anything else alone. So the opposite (disreward) would have to be our unpleasant feelings/emotions themselves.

Matt is capable of perceiving two phenomena: pleasure and uncontrolled pain. The latter he calls “pain” because he has no need to qualify it given that he only perceives one shade of pain. I qualified it to make it clear what shade he’s capable of perceiving. His conclusions then follow: pleasure is good (or at least, can be good, he doesn’t say pleasure is always good) whereas pain is bad, always bad. And this is, of course, correct! uncontrolled pain is always bad, no exception.

However, the problem occurs when he enters a discussion with an individual capable of perceiving more than one shade of pain. Incapable of perceiving differences between various shades of pain, he equalizes all of them. So to him, there is no distinction between uncontrolled pain and controlled pain. This is why, when I say that there is value in pain, meaning that controlled pain is a good thing, he accuses me of being self-deceiver, because he confuses controlled pain with uncontrolled pain . . .

In order to be able to perceive the difference between controlled pain and uncontrolled pain one must be capable of controlling pain . . . one must expose oneself to pain over and over again until one learns how to control it and finally get to know the difference between controlled and uncontrolled pain.

If he cannot do that, he will be forced to use his intellect to deny what I am saying . . .

Reward comes from successful control, in particular, self-control, and successful self-control means controlling your drives, making sure your actions are in alignment with them. For this reason, you cannot obtain reward from accomplishing any goal. Only accomplishing those goals, or rather, that goal, which are/is in alignment with your drives is experienced as truly rewarding.

First off, I am saying that our pleasant feelings/emotions are always good no matter what since they are the scientific version of good. Our hearing and sight are scientific terms and they cannot be anything else either. Also, I know the difference between controlled and uncontrolled pain. The controlled pain has the mindset (attitude) of living with, accepting, and dealing with the pain and misery while uncontrolled pain is having the mindset of not accepting and not dealing with the pain. But the difference here would be just having two different attitudes and a different lifestyle and such. That does not change the scientific version of bad. Since our unpleasant feelings/emotions are the scientific version of bad based up on my theory, then nothing can change that either. It would be no different than how we cannot change our sight and hearing into smell or taste.

No. I am quite sure the term “rewarding experience” has been defined by science as only being our reward system (pleasant feelings/emotions) since our reward system is the only function of our brains that can give us a rewarding experience. All other versions of rewarding experience that others say we can have in our lives is fake. Also, it is our brains that allow us to perceive good meaning in our lives in the first place. In other words, it is our mental experiences that allow us to perceive good meaning in our lives. So even if other people and objects in of themselves can somehow be defined as being a reward to you, that in of itself will not give your life any good meaning. They have to actually be a rewarding experience to you in order for you to perceive good meaning from them. That rewarding mental experience can only come from our pleasant feelings/emotions as I’ve stated before.

First off, you are talking about a necrophobic, not a hypochondriac. Secondly, you seem to have such a serious issue with your word usage, conflating many concepts, that I have too hard of a time trying to figure out what you actually meant to say. I am pretty certain you are conflating “hope” with “hopefulness”, ignoring the concept of sensing actual, real opportunity. No telling what other words you use too differently to track.

I really don’t think that Science has much to do with that definition. And when a person believes that what he sees is going to cause him to become a millionaire tomorrow, he feels a “rewarding feeling”, even though the emotion was triggered by cognitive thought. So I don’t see what the difference between your version of reward and any one else’s is, science or not.

That’s because there is no “rewarding feeling” through our thoughts alone without our pleasant feelings/emotions. We have the main functions and we then have the sub functions of our brains. All our thoughts are all the same experience in the sense that they are all thoughts. But they are all different experiences in the sense that they are all different thoughts. I can also apply the same concept to our sight, hearing, and our pleasant/unpleasant feelings/emotions. But one main function of our brains cannot be another main function and neither can one sub function of a certain main function be the sub function of another main function. Therefore, no thought alone can give us a “rewarding feeling” since this “rewarding feeling” belongs to one of the sub functions of our pleasant feelings/emotions main function.

Well, if you are trying to say that thoughts have to have a perceived relevance in order to inspire meaningful feelings of good or bad, I certainly wouldn’t argue against that. “2*2=4” doesn’t inspire much feeling one way or another until you realize it was referring to the 2 million dollars you just won, being doubled.