I understand your points, it make sense that we can talk about joy or pain and the contrast between the two.
But in principle I don't see why the experience of joy requires pain. Joy can also arise from the end of a painful situation but in principle, joy doesn't require pain to be experienced.
This is what I was alluding to above: while our comparisons to other experiences will shape the experience itself, we will still have some kind of experience without the contrast.
Take the
checkboard illusion for example. Our experience of the colours is directly influenced by the other colours around it. Adding or removing adjoining squares alters our experience - but we still have an experience.
We can think about happiness by contrasting with opposite feelings and we can give value to happiness etc... but most of this is intellectual work. It's got nothing to do with experience.
I get the point, but just to say that it does have something, I think, to do with the experience. Our prior experiences I think will have an effect on our current experiences.
Take the simple example of how we feel experiencing something for the first time, versus a repeat. It's not quite the same, though they are still experiences - and may both be what we would consider positive, or non-painful.
The fact that we might have experienced something truly horrific may lead us to perceive something joyful in a different way than someone who has not experienced something so bad.
I think a happy toddler is joyous because that's his experience, independent of conscious discrimination or contrast with other feelings.
Agreed. Though that is not to say that if it could compare the experience to a previous unpleasant one, it might be a different, if still joyful, experience.
Note that having had previous terrible experiences might have the effect of making a joyful one seem more joyful, but it can also have the opposite effect, tainting the otherwise joyful experience with negative feelings. It can work different ways, especially if previous bad experiences lead to ongoing feelings of dread, despair, fear, lack of trust, etc.