I believe that happiness is the only good and unhappiness is the only bad. For example, if someone likes learning, it's not the learning itself that's good, it's just that learning created happiness and happiness is good.
Life (and even stuff that aren't alive like viruses) wants to perpetuate itself. Organisms adapt to the environment to do what is most effective for survival. It's like how in AI there's positive and negative feedback; survival and reproduction are positive and death is negative. Survival, reproduction, and death, despite being used to determine what exists, have no intrinsic value because they themselves cannot be felt. What is felt are feelings (pain, anger, happiness, sadness, hunger, etc.) and these feelings are assigned by the bodies of living things to happen when a stimulus occurs. For example, if an animal is injured, it feels pain. The injury is not what is bad, the pain is what is bad because feelings (and thoughts) are the only things that are experienced.
Unhappiness comes in several forms such as pain and sadness; it is biologically wired to be negative. All animals capable of feeling unhappiness use it as a source of negativity. Sometimes it's to avoid predators, other times it's to stop the organism feeling it from performing behaviors that would make it less likely to live.
The same is true for happiness, which also comes in several forms like euphoria and satisfaction. It is used to illicit behaviors that are likely to lead to survival or reproduction.
Thoughts are unique because, despite being experienced, they are not felt and therefore have no value.
Happiness is good because biology defines it as such. Unhappiness is bad because biology defines it as such. If it was theoretically possible to change biology, there could be multiple goods and/or multiple bads but until that happens, this is how it is.
This is all to say that I believe happiness should be maximized and unhappiness should be minimized.
I was gonna write something else, but I spent so much time typing all this background info that completely forgot what my original intention with this post was. I'll update later if I remember.
Life (and even stuff that aren't alive like viruses) wants to perpetuate itself. Organisms adapt to the environment to do what is most effective for survival. It's like how in AI there's positive and negative feedback; survival and reproduction are positive and death is negative. Survival, reproduction, and death, despite being used to determine what exists, have no intrinsic value because they themselves cannot be felt. What is felt are feelings (pain, anger, happiness, sadness, hunger, etc.) and these feelings are assigned by the bodies of living things to happen when a stimulus occurs. For example, if an animal is injured, it feels pain. The injury is not what is bad, the pain is what is bad because feelings (and thoughts) are the only things that are experienced.
Unhappiness comes in several forms such as pain and sadness; it is biologically wired to be negative. All animals capable of feeling unhappiness use it as a source of negativity. Sometimes it's to avoid predators, other times it's to stop the organism feeling it from performing behaviors that would make it less likely to live.
The same is true for happiness, which also comes in several forms like euphoria and satisfaction. It is used to illicit behaviors that are likely to lead to survival or reproduction.
Thoughts are unique because, despite being experienced, they are not felt and therefore have no value.
Happiness is good because biology defines it as such. Unhappiness is bad because biology defines it as such. If it was theoretically possible to change biology, there could be multiple goods and/or multiple bads but until that happens, this is how it is.
This is all to say that I believe happiness should be maximized and unhappiness should be minimized.
I was gonna write something else, but I spent so much time typing all this background info that completely forgot what my original intention with this post was. I'll update later if I remember.
