I've always thought this a strange argument. Knowing how we feel the most positive of emotions means they're not real? Very odd. Does this mean that a beautiful vista stops being beautiful if we know our eyes work?https://twitter.com/ctlansdown/status/1004328190180020224 …
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Replying to @HPluckrose
They're real in the sense that they exist, but within the materialist/physicalist/naturalistic framework, they not different in kind from the positive emotions you get from, say, heroin. They exist, but have no significance beyond their existence and the enjoyment of them.
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Replying to @ctlansdown @HPluckrose
That is to say, under that framework, the emotions only say something about the one experiencing them, not about the world outside of him.
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Replying to @ctlansdown @HPluckrose
Does the love you feel for your family not matter bc that love in actually is simply the felt response you get when the chemical oxytocin does its thing in your brain?
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Replying to @MatthewGalanty @HPluckrose
Right. If there is no external reality to which the feeling corresponds, it is meaningless. (If you are going to say that it has the meaning you give it, that's just a matter of you playing make-believe, and you can stop any time you want to.)
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Replying to @ctlansdown @MatthewGalanty
I don't know what you mean. The combination of feelings experienced inside an individual in relation to the thing being experienced is what we all experience when we feel, eg love. We might also give this an extra layer of meaning - religious, philosophical, poetic etc.
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Replying to @HPluckrose @MatthewGalanty
An alternative possibility is that (e.g.) your love for your child reflected a reality external to yourself that your child was good, and your feeling was merely a recognition of this objectively true reality.
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Replying to @ctlansdown @HPluckrose
Your love for your child is a reflection of an external and obectively true reality, regardless if you believe in Allah, God, or The Buddha.
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Replying to @MatthewGalanty @ctlansdown
Yeah. Don't make your love conditional on what you think a god wants you to feel about your children. You know your love is real & powerful & strong but ppl have killed & abandoned loved ones due to religious zealotry before. Don't let it poison what is real.
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The point isn't a love that is conditional, but inherent not only to our individual nature but to the ultimate nature of reality.
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I really wouldn't do that either. If the ultimate nature of reality is indifferent to your baby, which seems very likely, this doesn't mean you should be.
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I gave up nihilism and despair for Lent. :)
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