The study doesn't make any claims about the validity of the "actually" profound statements, because the validity or lack thereof is irrelevant to the study. Those statements simply have actual semantic content, as opposed to the meaningless bullshit statements, which don't communicate anything and therefore can't even be assessed for their validity.

Right, but if you ask people whether a sentence is 'profound' or 'bullshit', then it's pretty unclear which of those two categories you should put a sentence in if it makes sense but is also clearly false. Such a sentence doesn't really fall into either category. "The moon is made of cheese" has semantic content, but it's not very profound.

Pain hurts by definition. Even if the pain is imagined, it still hurts, by definition. If you are imagining something that doesn't hurt, you are not imagining pain, by definition. Pain hurts, even if it is all in your head.

Same as 'irrational fears are scary despite being irrational', or 'imaginary fears are scary despite being imaginary'.

Pain is always all in your head. I'm saying that experienced pain is never imagined: it is a real, physical event in the brain, experienced through the mind, a presumably measurable mental phenomenon with physiological, neurochemical aspects. It is the effect of some cause, and that cause could be imagined and it could cause real pain, but if you experience pain, that pain is by definition not imaginary, though the cause may be.

We can imagine other people's pain, however, or hypothetical pain, and that is not the same as experiencing pain itself.

>If you are imagining something that doesn't hurt, you are not imagining pain, by definition.

By the same logic, I can feel happy just by imagining myself feeling happy?

Yes you can. In fact, considering happiness is a feeling, it’s a reasonable question whether there is even a difference between feeling happy and “being” happy.

Ok -- we must have such different internal lives that I'm willing to believe that your imagined pains actually hurt you.

Responding to your edit:

>whether there is even a difference between feeling happy and “being” happy.

That's not the question. The question is whether there's a difference between feeling happy and imagining yourself feeling happy.

The difference is maybe analogous to laughing uncontrollably and imagining yourself laughing uncontrollably. Imagining yourself laughing uncontrollably can lead you to feel more ready to laugh, but it is not the same.

If you answer, well laughter is physical while pain is mental, then I will ask you how that is a genuine dichotomy. The mental representation of unexperienced pain is also, in truth, a physical phenomenon since the mind is a physical experience, but the mental representation of pain is not the same as experienced pain.

But pain or pleasure, sadness or happiness from some imagined event, yes, that's real and it's what the original sentence intended to say, I believe.

Edit: This was meant as a reply to addicted rather than foldr...

Imagining yourself feeling happy can lead to you really feeling happy, but imagined happiness is not the same as experienced happiness. You imagine being happy, and _then_ might put you in the right state of mind for actually experiencing happiness. Let's remember that also the mind is either a physical phenomenon or else it is a spiritual, supernatural one. I go for physical.

Indeed. Thinking happy thoughts can make us feel happy. All experience is colored by records of past experience. So bad shit reminds us of similar bad shit, in the past. And so the bad thoughts and feelings become self-reinforcing. By interrupting that, we can make ourselves happy. Or at least, stoically happy.

I was tempted to call bullshit on that too. But a lot depends on the sort of pain at issue. If it's emotional pain, sure. But I can't imagine the imagined pain of boiling water hurting in any sense as much as reality.

However, I get that the most effective torture doesn't rely on actual physical pain. The worst thing is the knowledge that one is being permanently disfigured. And that's all about imagining the future.