# Why are we alive? **URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-we-alive/504200 **Category:** Great Debates **Created:** [July 25, 2009, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-we-alive/504200 "2009-07-25T04:36:02Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Showing post:** 100
### Author: ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin) #### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-we-alive/504200/100 "2009-08-06T14:45:30Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > A person who loathes themselves may feel that justice and good is served by punishing or hurting that which is loathsome. They are distressed (made more miserable) by the sense of the loathsome going unpunished. To alleviate that distress, to reduce their misery, to increase their (meagar) happiness, they self-harm with the goal of satisfying their inner need to attack that which they loathe and thereby hope to reduce their misery/improve their happiness. > [@begbert2](#): > > Rewards? Who said anything about rewards? I’ve been talking, **explicitly** , about emotional reactions. > … > I wonder why you’d swap in “rewards”, which seem external to the decision-making process, for “emotions”, which are internal. Hmm… I of course meant _internal_ rewards, that is, “good” emotions. I’m well aware of your position. > [@](#): > > You first. Prove that the electrical signals transmitted between our neurons have **nothing** to do with our emotions. At any level. Because that’s what you’re saying by attributing it all to the neurochemicals. Didn’t find any cites eh? All the sites on cognitive neurology said that emotion _influences_ behaviour but does not _dictate_ it, didn’t they? Well, sure, I can provide a cite on neurochemistry. However, I obviously don’t agree with the absurd straw man you just invited in – that anything neurochemical has nothing to do with neural signalling. :rolleyes: In fact, I’m going to add that paragraph to the list of **begbert2** classic quotes. > [@Oatley](#): > > The physiological state associated with every emotion has a specific neurochemical basis. Associated with this, psychologically active drugs can trigger and maintain the system in a specific mood state, making a person feel happy, frightened, or sad for no semantic reason. > [@begbert2](#): > > Step 1: Several options are being considered. Myriad motiavations are present. > Step 2: Emotional reactions to each option based on the myriad motivations are calculated. > Step 3: Thus normalized, the emotional reactions to each option are compared. > Step 4: The option with the most favorable emotional reaction is acted on. > > Oh, look. No more turtles. :smack::smack::smack: You still haven’t actually responded to my argument here, so let me try again. You won’t allow for the fact that we “just are” motivated by things like curiosity and aggression. You keep asking _why_ we’re motivated in that way, that there must be some underlying motivation (e.g. sometimes we act out our curiosity because it will make us happy). But it’s a turtles explanation because it requires as a given that we “just are” always motivated by happiness / reducing misery. I can turn your argument around and ask _why_ are we motivated by happiness / reducing misery? > [@](#): > > _Happiness_ rating, if you don’t mind. Let’s not leave the door open a crack for the false argument that I have excluded the emotional impact to things that don’t inspire euphoria. It was a slip. But I don’t know why you have such a problem with the world pleasure; it doesn’t imply euphoria (you can have a “pleasant commute” for example), and actually seems less loaded to me than “happiness”. But fine. > [@](#): > > You have specifically argued **against** having an internalized normalized rating system that our cognition reacts to directly to make selections from…so what does your “system that compares motivations and chooses an action” do instead, when it’s comparing apples and oranges? How does it choose between motivations when they conflict? Well, it’s complicated. Current thinking is that there are at least 3 decision-making mechanisms in the brain; the Visceral, Behavioural and Reflective. And these are not abstract; they have separate loci in the brain. The Behavioural layer is the only layer affected at all by emotions, and it is not dictated by them. And this layer is not at the highest level. If any layer can be considered to be “in charge”, it would be the Reflective. > [@](#): > > All I’m doing is proposing a viable explaination of the mechanism for the miracle, which has the advantage of seeming to be correct based on available data. What data? > [@](#): > > In either case, if the thing has a decision-making process, it has _some_ method of normalizing the values for comparison - either by explicitly assigning each a numerical value, or by implicitly enumerating them by going through all the options and always choosing one type of option over the others if it can. This is the typical kind of flip-flopping that creeps into the “there’s no such thing as a selfless act” debate. One minute you’re using words like happiness. The next minute you’re saying that you just mean the “best” option, and that any decision-making machine can be said to be seeking happiness, even, say, a chess computer. Well, those are two different things. Of course any decision-making system must ultimately make decisions so it must consider some options better than others. I’ve already said that many times. But to the hypothesis that that criteria is about inducing or preventing _a feeling_, a psychological state, whether now or in the future, this is simply not the case. If I punch some guy, it’s not to feel good: I’ll probably feel “shaken up” for quite some time afterwards. But yeah, for whatever conscious reason at the time, I obviously consider it a good idea. > [@](#): > > Ah! A fellow geek! I seriously never would have guessed. (Why the hell are you having such a hard time getting this?) I know, it’s odd isn’t it? And I’m not just an AI-geek; I’m now persuing a career in neuroimaging, and studying the brain and cognition. So…why can’t I agree with your theory? It’s a mystery… > [@](#): > > Again, I don’t _care_ if you call this normalized comparison factor a “Chipmunk Factor”. In _humans_ it’s called “emotions”. Well, that’s your basic assertion, and it’s incorrect. Again, where’s that cite? > [@](#): > > Dude. I could “arbitrarily” set the goodness value at “total revulsion at the idea”. Just come out and say whether the new positive emotional reaction to killing babies is enough to overpower the opposing negative emotional reactions to killing babies from all their other motivations or not. So again, you’ve refused to answer the question. Probably because the prediction of your own theory seems absurd even to you. But fine, I can answer it. Even with an arbitrary amount of pleasure for harming babies, a person will not necessarily become a killer. Such a decision would be made at a conscious level and involve conscious reasoning. Such reasoning is (obviously) not entirely motivated by happiness, so even if it were clear that the happiness of killing would far outweigh any feelings of regret, there is no reason to assume a person would kill. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-we-alive/504200)._