Love thy Enemy
- Thread starter Provita
- Start date
Look, I wasn't really interested in getting into a discussion about the chemical properties of love and other emotions, but since I started this digression, I'll offer a bit more.
I see what you're saying and I agree. But the difference between what I'm asserting (and what is actually known about brain chemistry and emotion) and what you're saying is that I understand that experiences are stored in our minds via electro-chemical processes. The memories are stored and the specific regions of our brains are utilized in processing the individual experience depending upon its nature. Each of the emotions has its own processes that will likely vary from person to person, involving neuropeptides which attach to receptors that stimulate electrical charges. Since we've focused on "love," I'll disregard other emotions like "joy," "grief," "jealousy," "fear," etc.
In "love," chemicals like dopamine, norepinephrine, adrenaline and phenylethylamine work together to create the feel euphoric and anxious (the pounding heart of adrenal release). The phenylethylamine reduces inhibitions and the dopamine ensures that the brain "remembers" the feeling so it will seek it again (this is why people can become addicted to intangible things like gambling or rollar coasters). Some "love" experiences can produce endorphines, which are soothing and relaxing, and -again- create a "memory" for the brain that encourages the individual to seek the conditions again that allow for the feeling.
The situations and conditions that trigger these chemical releases vary from individual to individual. Its likely that they are triggers influenced by years of nurturing and development. Perhaps a scent that unconsciously reminds you of a parent or caregiver. Perhaps one or more gradually conceived "ideal mate" strategies within the brain. There's been some very good work done in researching this sort of thing over the past few years, and the work of an anthropologist named Helen Fisher comes to mind. The work of she and he colleges was quantitative and the methods stand up to scrutiny. Not only was she able to measure the levels and discharges of the chemicals I mentioned above, but she was also able to quantify problems that other drugs like oxytocin and antidepressants can have on emotion. The citation for the research eludes me, but she has a book on the subject called Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, which I've not read yet but is on my summer reading list. There's a review written by Barbara Smutts, a primatologist whose own work is fascinating, at the Amazon link. You can find an overview of Fisher's work at The Brain in Love and Lust, a web-based review of the study. I've got a copy of the journal Science that has an interesting article on the "biology of emotion," cited below.
Neither do I. I miss-typed. What I should have typed (I was rushed to leave the house for work) was "free-floating rationale." What this means is there isn't an express purpose for something. The term comes from philosopher Daniel Dennett and it was intellectual incompetent of me to use it without defining it much less without spelling it properly. Very often people will observe an evolved trait and note that the trait is especially suited for an organism or environment -so much so that it looks designed. In actuality, however, its just a matter of selective forces that the trait has attained its "rationale."
Dennett uses the term "free-floating" to indicated those rationales of "bargains" in nature that aren't "devised by human bargainers." I'll use an example that Dennett himself uses: the Toxoplasma gondii is a bacteria that can live in many different mammals, but, to reproduce, must find its way to a cat's stomach. The most common vector for this is the rat. The interesting thing about this bacteria is that it has the unique quality in rats that makes it fearless and hyperactive by interfering with the rat's nervous system. This trait, affecting the rat in such a way as to make it vulnerable to the cat, appears to be a rationale, but it is a free-floating one, since it was selected naturally through evolution. The lines of T. gondii that didn't infect rats went extinct; the remaining lines that affected the rat's behavior had the advantage and reproduced faster and more frequently.
Now, I asserted that "love" was a trick of DNA that encourages us to procreate and care for offspring. I'm not saying that I don't find this "trick" marvelous or disagreeable. In fact, I'm quite happy that it exists. My wife is my best friend and my daughter is the most significant thing I've done with my life. I'd gladly give my own for hers and I don't mind knowing that the rationale in doing so is an evolutionary one.
With regard to some of your other questions, "why we feel," etc., I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave that for you to seek education on elsewhere. Most of what I've typed above is off the top of my head. I recall explanations for the chemical processes that create "feelings" in various brain centers like the amydala or the hippo campus... language is dependent upon processes in the Broca's and the Werneke's areas. But the exact chemical processes elude me for now. Perhaps there is insight in the resources I linked and cited, either directly or indirectly through their own citations.
Mlot, Christine (1998) NEUROBIOLOGY: Probing the Biology of Emotion [Research News]. Science, 280(5366), 1005-1007.
Cyperium said:
I see what you're saying and I agree. But the difference between what I'm asserting (and what is actually known about brain chemistry and emotion) and what you're saying is that I understand that experiences are stored in our minds via electro-chemical processes. The memories are stored and the specific regions of our brains are utilized in processing the individual experience depending upon its nature. Each of the emotions has its own processes that will likely vary from person to person, involving neuropeptides which attach to receptors that stimulate electrical charges. Since we've focused on "love," I'll disregard other emotions like "joy," "grief," "jealousy," "fear," etc.
In "love," chemicals like dopamine, norepinephrine, adrenaline and phenylethylamine work together to create the feel euphoric and anxious (the pounding heart of adrenal release). The phenylethylamine reduces inhibitions and the dopamine ensures that the brain "remembers" the feeling so it will seek it again (this is why people can become addicted to intangible things like gambling or rollar coasters). Some "love" experiences can produce endorphines, which are soothing and relaxing, and -again- create a "memory" for the brain that encourages the individual to seek the conditions again that allow for the feeling.
The situations and conditions that trigger these chemical releases vary from individual to individual. Its likely that they are triggers influenced by years of nurturing and development. Perhaps a scent that unconsciously reminds you of a parent or caregiver. Perhaps one or more gradually conceived "ideal mate" strategies within the brain. There's been some very good work done in researching this sort of thing over the past few years, and the work of an anthropologist named Helen Fisher comes to mind. The work of she and he colleges was quantitative and the methods stand up to scrutiny. Not only was she able to measure the levels and discharges of the chemicals I mentioned above, but she was also able to quantify problems that other drugs like oxytocin and antidepressants can have on emotion. The citation for the research eludes me, but she has a book on the subject called Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, which I've not read yet but is on my summer reading list. There's a review written by Barbara Smutts, a primatologist whose own work is fascinating, at the Amazon link. You can find an overview of Fisher's work at The Brain in Love and Lust, a web-based review of the study. I've got a copy of the journal Science that has an interesting article on the "biology of emotion," cited below.
Cyperium said:
Neither do I. I miss-typed. What I should have typed (I was rushed to leave the house for work) was "free-floating rationale." What this means is there isn't an express purpose for something. The term comes from philosopher Daniel Dennett and it was intellectual incompetent of me to use it without defining it much less without spelling it properly. Very often people will observe an evolved trait and note that the trait is especially suited for an organism or environment -so much so that it looks designed. In actuality, however, its just a matter of selective forces that the trait has attained its "rationale."
Dennett uses the term "free-floating" to indicated those rationales of "bargains" in nature that aren't "devised by human bargainers." I'll use an example that Dennett himself uses: the Toxoplasma gondii is a bacteria that can live in many different mammals, but, to reproduce, must find its way to a cat's stomach. The most common vector for this is the rat. The interesting thing about this bacteria is that it has the unique quality in rats that makes it fearless and hyperactive by interfering with the rat's nervous system. This trait, affecting the rat in such a way as to make it vulnerable to the cat, appears to be a rationale, but it is a free-floating one, since it was selected naturally through evolution. The lines of T. gondii that didn't infect rats went extinct; the remaining lines that affected the rat's behavior had the advantage and reproduced faster and more frequently.
Now, I asserted that "love" was a trick of DNA that encourages us to procreate and care for offspring. I'm not saying that I don't find this "trick" marvelous or disagreeable. In fact, I'm quite happy that it exists. My wife is my best friend and my daughter is the most significant thing I've done with my life. I'd gladly give my own for hers and I don't mind knowing that the rationale in doing so is an evolutionary one.
With regard to some of your other questions, "why we feel," etc., I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave that for you to seek education on elsewhere. Most of what I've typed above is off the top of my head. I recall explanations for the chemical processes that create "feelings" in various brain centers like the amydala or the hippo campus... language is dependent upon processes in the Broca's and the Werneke's areas. But the exact chemical processes elude me for now. Perhaps there is insight in the resources I linked and cited, either directly or indirectly through their own citations.
Mlot, Christine (1998) NEUROBIOLOGY: Probing the Biology of Emotion [Research News]. Science, 280(5366), 1005-1007.
Ok, that's all fine, I'll agree that chemicals in one way or another can be composed in such a way that it represents love.SkinWalker said:
Chemicals that hinder some signals and inforce some signals (and there is probably many more techniques of which chemicals can be used to alter passways in the brain and the proceeding of signals).
But there must be said also, that these signals and chemicals isn't the subjective experiance of the feeling itself. It's merely a description of what it is that should be felt.
The subjective feeling must be handled elsewhere, and I don't see how subjective experiance could be made physically, since it gives rise to something that in the nature of it just isn't physical (not 'physical' the way that it is known to physicist and scientists anyway), we can't touch on subjective experiance and there is no actual color red in the brain when imagined, thus the color red exists subjectivly only and not physically in the brain. However that the brain use a description of the color red and make the correct associations (in memories etc.) may so be, but all the subjective experiance of the color red and it's associations must be handled by a different process that we cannot clearly define physically.
It is in the subjective experiance that love is meaningful to us. Surely love would be meaningful to the world and hence the description of it is brought forth by the world through evolution, but in subjective experiance love is meaningful not for the ability to make us survive (and carry our genes) but for the way it makes us feel. Not just about ourselves but the way we feel for others as well.
The physical attributes that is love and the subjective attributes that is love goes hand in hand, since we happily accept love (for the comfort of it) and since physically it gives us advantage.
Hadn't we been aware, then love would have no meaning physically either, but because we are aware love can be meaningful physically (through survival and passing our genes).
Hence it is not a trick, but goes hand in hand with our own purpouse of what love is. It is not totally evolutionary since it fits our purpouse as well as the worlds "purpouse", thus evolution must have gone hand in hand through the process, and awareness must have been there before love (or there must have been a more primitive version of love that didn't need it's subject to be aware but had an advantage to the subject anyway, and this is far from proven as I see it - but even if it is so, it doesn't hinder my line of thought that much on this matter).
I understand what you are saying and I perceive the purpouse of the world to be as you describe.
The world is blind, therefor it works with tools of the blind.
Sure a billion monkeys can write a shakespear piece if given enough time, however this doesn't equate that there isn't meaning in the shakespear piece and it doesn't equate that it wasn't for a purpouse in the first place. Now that example is of course purely imaginary, but when things happen in the real world - seeing as there is only one reality - then things happen for a reason nevertheless even if that reason is to be achieved through very crude methods (in our point of perspective). But to tell the truth, I don't think that it is that crude, but that evolution has progressed in a far more "intelligent" way, you have only seen the top of the iceberg when it comes to evolution, and I think that if examined more throughly evolution can be seen as much more "intelligent" than spotted with the naked eye. As such that evolution could boost it's own developement by strategically making genes that are harmless being more subjected to change than genes with crucial purpouse.
There are much thoughts on this, and it can't be said that there is just random things happening either, since 'random' itself isn't understood by us, and is only defined as something that is chaotic in it's behaviour, to us that is.
I understand what you mean now. Thank you for the examples.
Well, you see we aren't that easily pursuadable (did I spell that correctly?) we wouldn't that easily give up our life just because evolution said so. Inherent in love is the thought of self-sacrifice, that you would surrender your own life so in order to save the ones you love. This is a very 'high' form of love, in that it to a great extent doesn't depend on personal gain. But through the insight that love is the greatest treasure and that your physical life isn't worth as much as the love you share with others. If then faced with the option of sacrificing your own life in order to save the one you love, then this is acceptable because you do it for a higher purpouse.
I know I can't explain it in such a way that you would just swallow it and I hope you don't, but I hope that you know that we are on the same line on this and that there is allways limitations in the ways we can explain what we "really feel" to someone else.
Well, however we explain it any "code" of the brain would need a interpreter, and that interpreter would need a way to make the code function.
That there even is a way of "making subjective experiance" is totally beyond any physical ideas I have.
Not even if we made a "image" of you inside a computer and fed that image with all the information thinkable, could that image get a sense of itself, not even if we made a image and a replica and let them exchange information would they get a subjective sense of "itself or themselves". It is far from proven that subjective experiance is physical. However they could as well go hand in hand because of their dependence of eachother.
That is, the dependence for the physical to have a free-thinking aware being, and the dependence for the free-thinking aware being to have methods of thoughts, and a description of what to feel.
Cyperium said:
You are referring to the "ghost in the machine". Why would you (and I'm not sure you are) even postulate an "interpreter" or "free thinking aware being" as something seperate from the neurochemical functioning of the brain? Since there is not even a hint of some ethereal "essesnce" that would be the "interpreter" of the mind, isn't it extremely likely that your subjective experience of self is purely an emergent phenomenon of billions of cells with trillions of interconnections acting in response to the external environment?
I meant a neural physical kind of interpreter which interpret the physical "codes" in the brain. Cause there must be such a interpreter mustn't it? Or do the codes act on their own where existence itself is the interpreter?superluminal said:
If there is a physical interpreter in the brain then what would that look like?
If existance itself is the interpreter, are we existance then?
(Not such a bad thought there...each one being it's own existance, a closed system of reality, where the codes are interpreted by us in such a familiar way that we need not to think about it. Or we could see it this way, that the process of reality interpreting the codes are experianced by us, thus the process gives rise to the feeling or whatever the code describes).
Cyperium,
I think that using the analogy of "codes" and "interpreters" is a bit dated. The closest thing we have to a model of brain function is neural-networking. These are self-learning networks of inputs and outputs with the outputs based on relatively simple weighted transfer functions. They are very good at learning from repeated "training" (i.e. external stimulous). Of course, the brain consists of various networks of cells that are arranged to be particularly good at one thing or another (language, sight, motor skills, etc.). Something as complex, self-referential, and highly organized as the human brain might easily be expected to show some amazing properties, such as a sense of "consciousness".
I think that using the analogy of "codes" and "interpreters" is a bit dated. The closest thing we have to a model of brain function is neural-networking. These are self-learning networks of inputs and outputs with the outputs based on relatively simple weighted transfer functions. They are very good at learning from repeated "training" (i.e. external stimulous). Of course, the brain consists of various networks of cells that are arranged to be particularly good at one thing or another (language, sight, motor skills, etc.). Something as complex, self-referential, and highly organized as the human brain might easily be expected to show some amazing properties, such as a sense of "consciousness".