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Detective L Detective L
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8 years ago Edited: 8 years ago, Detective L
I struggle with depression and I have this philosophical question that I need an answer for. Actually, it might even be a scientific question.

Now I need to know the answer to this very vital question. I am thinking that there is only one way love, joy, happiness, and inspiration can be experienced. That being, through our reward system (our good moods). The more our reward system is functional and healthy, the more of those things we will have in our lives since our good moods would be greater. But like I said before, there is the difference between words and phrases and our mental states.

So by depressed people focusing on words and phrases alone of love, joy, happiness, and inspiration, they are only fooling themselves into thinking they are in love, joyful, happy, and inspired while depressed when they never were since depression as well as anhedonia are what turn off our reward system (our good moods). Even if they focused on the mental state of their thinking while depressed and told themselves that this is a form of love, joy, happiness, and inspiration, then they would be fooling themselves here as well since they are not in the actual mental state of having those things.

So they would be fooling themselves through this whole world of personally creating our own meanings in life and personally defining them for ourselves which would have to be false since there is only one way to experience those said things I've mentioned. There is only one way to experience the mental state of visualizing objects (sight) and perceiving sound (hearing). If you were to become blind and deaf, then your thoughts alone cannot give you that mental state.

If a blind and deaf person thought to his/herself that he/she still has sight and hearing, then that would not give him/her sight and hearing. That would only give him/her nothing more than the labels (words and phrases) of sight and hearing.

So there is only one function that gives us our mental states of visualizing objects and perceiving sound just as how there is also only one way to experience touch, smell, taste, etc. So in that same sense, there is also only one way to have good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration. There is only one function of our brains that can give us that. There is only one mental state that can give us those things. That being, the mental state of our good moods as I've said before.

If you are going to say something to me such as that we can have good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration through our way of thinking alone even while depressed and not in a good mood, then you have to prove to me how this is the actual mental state of having those things and not just the words and phrases of those things.
Post Merge: 8 years ago

Here is a response from someone and my reply to it that gets the very idea of my topic across in a brief way:

Response:   I find it funny that some people prioritize abstractions ( words,concepts such as physicalism) above the empirical (qualia).  Qualia being our subjective mental experiences. In other words they hide from immediate reality (feelings/qualia) behind words. Symbols replaced reality!  The word "food" does not provide nourishment and nor does the word "water" quench one's thirst.  So what Matt is saying here is that words and phrases of good meaning, bad meaning, love, joy, happiness, inspiration, suffering, despair, anguish, sadness, rage, grief, etc. do not give us anything either. 

In that sense qualia is related to Matt's theory.

My Reply:  Yes, this is correct. I am thinking that even good and bad are qualia as well. They would be our good and bad moods. If we are depressed, then just the words and phrases of good meaning won't give us anything. I think science has yet to discover that good and bad are qualia. Currently, we think they are not. But I am thinking otherwise.
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wrote...
8 years ago
Well if one denies the existence of a soul and reduces a person to a creature evolved from globular masses then one cannot enjoy the level of happiness experienced by many who seek after God.
wrote...
Staff Member
8 years ago
What's most liberating to anyone experiencing clinical depression to stop thinking you're right all the time. Be comfortable being wrong. We all know feeling wrong sucks, and we assume that anyone who doesn't agree with us is either ignorant or an idiot. As soon as we stop caring about who's right and who's wrong, life becomes more simple. Try it out.
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