Is it childish to believe love?

[Alex_Sanders]

I don't believe love is anything near objective. Therefore, I believe it's no more than a delusion. A lot of delusion can make people feel happy, like religion. Like a Space daddy watches over you all the time and make sure everytime you pull an napkin, another one will pop out right under it.

But the rational and sophiscated ones of us human tend to part reality from delusion. It's a gift of evolution that those individuals without the ability to distinguish fantasy with reality will be eliminated, it's also a curse, as most of us can see quite clearly how harsh reality is. Some get along, some don't, so they may choose to escape the reality temporarily, like intoxicating themselves.

What's the last time someone ask you do you love someone? Shouldn't be later than college. If someone ask you do you love your wife, you will find it offensive, and you will ask him/her where he/she is getting at. And deep inside, you are saying "What a stupid question, what does that even mean, my wife and I get along, and we just get along..."


Love is chemical, love is a feeling, it's a delusion. If I were a sales manager, and I want to recruit a new, fresh outta school salesman, I'd love to ask him this question: do you believe there is a thing called love? If he/she answers yes, then bam! He/she is out of the question, too young to this world, kid, sorry.

And in case someone else ask me "then why do you stay married?" after this tirade, I'll tell him/her "Because divorce is damn expensive! And we really, really get along just fine..."

 

[Ryan_m_b]

"Love" is a word we use to refer to the real emotion. It is not a chemical, nor a delusion. Like all aspects of consciousness it is an emergent property of brain function but that does not change the fact that it is a legitimate subjective experience. Saying love is a delusion and rational people should move away from it is foolish, when you are happy do you not feel happy? By your reasoning all subjective experience is a delusion that should be ignored.

When someone asks you if you love someone it's because being in love with someone is a state distinct to the practicalities of your relationship.

 

[AwwYeaa44]

Love is chemical, love is a feeling, it's a delusion.

What in your head isn't 'chemical'? Break it down into its smallest parts and all your knowledge about physics is too.

Your brain is a computer and anything that it knows, experiences, etc. is an arrangement of physical material. The accounting program on your computer is really just a set of indentations on a hard drive. There's really nothing more to it than there are to dents on a coffee table.

In the most basic sense, binary logic is no different than a feeling.

There is no such thing as abstract knowledge. It's all just grooves on a CD.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Your brain is a computer and anything that it knows, experiences, etc. is an arrangement of physical material. The accounting program on your computer is really just a set of indentations on a hard drive. There's really nothing more to it than there are to dents on a coffee table.

Well yes except that the mind is an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence" is a still unfathomable question that pushes the "it's just a computer" analogy well out of the realm of accuracy.

 

[Jack21222]

I don't believe love is anything near objective. Therefore, I believe it's no more than a delusion. A lot of delusion can make people feel happy, like religion. Like a Space daddy watches over you all the time and make sure everytime you pull an napkin, another one will pop out right under it.

But the rational and sophiscated ones of us human tend to part reality from delusion. It's a gift of evolution that those individuals without the ability to distinguish fantasy with reality will be eliminated, it's also a curse, as most of us can see quite clearly how harsh reality is. Some get along, some don't, so they may choose to escape the reality temporarily, like intoxicating themselves.

What's the last time someone ask you do you love someone? Shouldn't be later than college. If someone ask you do you love your wife, you will find it offensive, and you will ask him/her where he/she is getting at. And deep inside, you are saying "What a stupid question, what does that even mean, my wife and I get along, and we just get along..."


Love is chemical, love is a feeling, it's a delusion. If I were a sales manager, and I want to recruit a new, fresh outta school salesman, I'd love to ask him this question: do you believe there is a thing called love? If he/she answers yes, then bam! He/she is out of the question, too young to this world, kid, sorry.

And in case someone else ask me "then why do you stay married?" after this tirade, I'll tell him/her "Because divorce is damn expensive! And we really, really get along just fine..."

Even if love is just a chemical, then you've admitted that it does exist, and therefore is not a delusion.

I've been in love before. It's not pleasant. When I was away from this person, I would get actual withdrawal symptoms which would only go away by seeing her. In a way, I was physically addicted.

So, I can assure you, it does exist.

 

[AwwYeaa44]

Well yes except that the mind is an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence" is a still unfathomable question that pushes the "it's just a computer" analogy well out of the realm of accuracy.

For all you know, the grooves on the table are having a subjective experience.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

For all you know, the grooves on the table are having a subjective experience.

Quite right. All I can say is that grooves on a table exhibit no behaviours usually associated with entities with subjective experience.

 

[ViewsofMars]

Love is often referred to 'altruism: selfless or unselfish concern for another'.

 

[AwwYeaa44]

Quite right. All I can say is that grooves on a table exhibit no behaviours usually associated with entities with subjective experience.

In any case, I don't understand the significance of subjective experience. If it exists, it's just another physical process. It can be brought into existence by plugging in a few switches and brought out of existence by unplugging them, just like any machine process.

Even if the coffee table isn't sentient/ conscious/ whatever, I don't think that recognizing the difference is any more relevant than recognizing that the coffee table and your brain have different colors.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

In any case, I don't understand the significance of subjective experience. If it exists, it's just another physical process. It can be brought into existence by plugging in a few switches and brought out of existence by unplugging them, just like any machine process.

Even if the coffee table isn't sentient/ conscious/ whatever, I don't think that recognizing the difference is any more relevant than recognizing that the coffee table and your brain have different colors.

That's the interesting thing, it is an emergent property of a physical process and not a physical process itself. To use an analogy: no part of your brain is your mind, no process is your mind, your mind is formed through the sum total of those interactions.

I'm not sure what you mean by not recognising the difference. There is a clear relevance in recognising whether something is conscious as well as there being a great advantage to us understanding how exactly brain forms mind.

EDIT: To clarify I'm using emergence to mean strong emergence within the context of consciousness.

 

[AwwYeaa44]

That's the interesting thing, it is an emergent property of a physical process and not a physical process itself. To use an analogy: no part of your brain is your mind, no process is your mind, your mind is formed through the sum total of those interactions.

I'm not sure what you mean by not recognising the difference. There is a clear relevance in recognising whether something is conscious as well as there being a great advantage to us understanding how exactly brain forms mind.

The handle on a coffee mug is not the mug.. The mug is the sum total of a cup and a handle. A coffee mug is an emergent property of a handle and a cup.

A coffee mug is physical.

Anyways, going back to OP. Is love a delusion?

A delusion is a belief in something that's not real. Love is not a belief. So, the question doesn't make any sense.

Does love lead to delusional beliefs? Well, run a regression. =D

 

[rhody]

Here is a study that suggests their is a neurological component to "http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-neurochemical-evidence-long-lasting.html" " not to be confused with youthful attractive and infatuation feelings of love. I have run into research results on this subject while looking into other aspects of brain functions before, that's why I took the opportunity to post it.

The study first looked at those in the rush of a new relationship and love. Researchers found that these individuals, when presented with an image of their partner, showed responses in the area of the brain that processes the brain chemical dopamine. This is the area of the brain that is often associated with food and alcohol and is a motivator for wants and desires. When these same individuals were shown images of similar looking people, that region of the brain remained unaffected.

Social neuroscientist Arthur Aron from Stony Brook University in New York and his team then conducted the same study on 17 adults who had been in long term marriages ranging from 10 - 29 years and who stated they still felt as in love as they had at the beginning. Aron created a seven-point scale which rated the intensity of love participants felt in their relationship and all those participating scored a five or more. With an MRI machine recording brain activity, participants were shown pictures of their partner’s face as well as the faces of others they were close to but not in love with.

Both groups showed similar activity in the ventral tegmental area, which is the dopamine-processing region. Those long-term relationship participants who rated themselves highest in the seven-point scale showed more activity than those who scored only five.

The study also showed differences between the brain activities of both groups. Those in new relationships showed activity in the regions related to obsession and tension while those long-term relationship participants showed activity in the regions related to pair bonding and attachment.

The team believes this research shows that the claims of long-term intense love relationships are possible and that this is the beginning step to understanding the biology behind long-lasting love and relationships.

Rhody...

 

[Ryan_m_b]

The handle on a coffee mug is not the mug.. The mug is the sum total of a cup and a handle. A coffee mug is an emergent property of a handle and a cup.

A coffee mug is physical.

There's a difference; we define the mug as the total sum of physical components required to make it and that is not true of the mind, it is true of the brain. The definition of components of consciousness is the soft problem of consciousness. What I was referring to above is the hard problem which is similar to the difference between weak and strong emergence.

To continue your analogy:

The handle on a coffee mug is not the mug
The mug is the sum total of the cup and a handle
A coffee mug is an emergent property of a handle and a cup

A coffee mug is physical

....

The components of a brain are not the mind
The mind is not the sum total of the components of the brain
The mind is the emergent property of the brain

The mind is physical/non-physical?

 

[flyingpig]

Looking at the number of divorces, no.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I'd love to ask him this question

You slay me.

 

[ThomasT]

I don't believe love is anything near objective. Therefore, I believe it's no more than a delusion. A lot of delusion can make people feel happy, like religion. Like a Space daddy watches over you all the time and make sure everytime you pull an napkin, another one will pop out right under it.

But the rational and sophiscated ones of us human tend to part reality from delusion. It's a gift of evolution that those individuals without the ability to distinguish fantasy with reality will be eliminated, it's also a curse, as most of us can see quite clearly how harsh reality is. Some get along, some don't, so they may choose to escape the reality temporarily, like intoxicating themselves.

What's the last time someone ask you do you love someone? Shouldn't be later than college. If someone ask you do you love your wife, you will find it offensive, and you will ask him/her where he/she is getting at. And deep inside, you are saying "What a stupid question, what does that even mean, my wife and I get along, and we just get along..."


Love is chemical, love is a feeling, it's a delusion. If I were a sales manager, and I want to recruit a new, fresh outta school salesman, I'd love to ask him this question: do you believe there is a thing called love? If he/she answers yes, then bam! He/she is out of the question, too young to this world, kid, sorry.

And in case someone else ask me "then why do you stay married?" after this tirade, I'll tell him/her "Because divorce is damn expensive! And we really, really get along just fine..."

Love is a feeling of special affinity and obligation for another person (or oneself for that matter), or thing or behavior. It's what makes the world go 'round (aside from gravity and the angular momentum imparted during its creation).

If you were a sales manager (and I was a carpenter?) I'd love for you to ask me the question that you'd love to ask.

 

[Pythagorean]

@Ryan,

I would call consciousness/experiencing love a physical process. That the whole point of saying it emerges: that's it's a very complex, organized information stricture. Consciousness must be a property of matter when it's in the right energy-matter configuration.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

@Ryan,

I would call consciousness/experiencing love a physical process. That the whole point of saying it emerges: that's it's a very complex, organized information stricture. Consciousness must be a property of matter when it's in the right energy-matter configuration.

Perhaps it is just semantics but I would argue that consciousness is no more a property of matter than a story is a property of a book. It's complex and I don't think the question can be properly answered until we solve the hard problem of consciousness.

 

[Zantra]

Is it childish to hope?

 

[Pythagorean]

Perhaps it is just semantics but I would argue that consciousness is no more a property of matter than a story is a property of a book. It's complex and I don't think the question can be properly answered until we solve the hard problem of consciousness.

A story isn't a property of a book, a story is again, a property of the brain matter :)

Since the mind is limited by physical constraints, it cannot hold a story, so it has to use an external physical medium (and a codification algorithm... the decoder ring, which though it takes up a lot of resources, allows for hole libraries of books to be stored externally from it).

But the books themselves are only storage mediums.

The process is still physical though, it is information flow (a special type of coherent and correlated energy flow). It cannot take place without energy/matter interactions.

edit for pre-emptive clarification:

When I say a property of brain matter, I don't mean that it's necessarily limited to it (though it's generally accepted, in our ignorance, that it is). Neither do I mean that brain matter always exhibits the property.

Just that brain matter is a particular type of matter that, under certain conditions, exhibit consciousness (obvious).

Just like particles of hydrogen and oxygen, under a particular condition, exhibit wave dynamics. The wave dynamics are not always there, they cannot be represented by a single water particle. The wave is an emergent physical property, but a physical property nonetheless.

Its of course, a physicalist position I hold that consciousness is a physical property (this stuff has been though about for centuries, and it turns out that my view point is represented by philosophers that call themselves "physicalists"; some of them are also neuroscientists, like Ramachandran and Christoph Koch. The alternative is generally dualism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_(philosophy_of_mind )

But I don't peg your for a dualist.

Emergence is generally a physicalist approach. Physical Review E and AIP: Chaos are the two journals that represent this the greatest, but you see a lot of it in PloS and other computational biology journals (especially of course, computational neuroscience journals).

Eugene Izhikevich curates Scholarpedia, which has an itneresting article on emergence:

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Contextual_emergence

Contextual emergence
Harald Atmanspacher (2009), Scholarpedia, 4(3):7997.
doi:10.4249/scholarpedia.7997, revision #73007

Eugene Izhikevich's "Brain Corporation"
http://www.braincorporation.com/

 

[Ryan_m_b]

A story isn't a property of a book, a story is again, a property of the brain matter :)...

Pythagorean there is nothing you say that I disagree with! Neither of us are dualists but we both recognise the complexity of trying to describe how emergent properties are physical. A conundrum I hope to eventually see the answer to.

 

[DaveC426913]

I don't believe love is anything near objective. Therefore, I believe it's no more than a delusion.

The OP's conclusions seem to follow entirely from this first assertion.

Defend this assertion or your whole argument falls to pieces.

What makes you assume that there are only two choices: objective or delusion?

Why, just because I am experiencing something subjective, does that make it delusory?

Pain is subjective, taste is subjective, enjoyment of music is subjective. Does that mean they are delusions?

Define delusion.

 

[Jack21222]

The OP's conclusions seem to follow entirely from this first assertion.

Defend this assertion or your whole argument falls to pieces.

What makes you assume that there are only two choices: objective or delusion?

Why, just because I am experiencing something subjective, does that make it delusory?

Pain is subjective, taste is subjective, enjoyment of music is subjective. Does that mean they are delusions?

Define delusion.

Furthermore, there are objective parts to love. Certain areas of the brain light up in a brain scan... there's an increase in dopamine when you're around the person... these are objective things which undermine the OP's initial statement from the start.

 

[Pythagorean]

I agree, subjective doesn't mean imaginary. It means highly diverse outcomes on a case-by-case basis and due to unseen (or a large, unmanageable number of) variables.

@Ryan, I only want to move forward, whether through disagreement or augmentation. I just don't know how to go forward, so I'm hoping discussions with other students of science will help. If somebody has a new approach besides dualism or physicalism (or criticisms, or just suggestions in general) then it's always worth hearing! I think it's constructive to really examine how we think about thinking.

 

[pftest]

The handle on a coffee mug is not the mug.. The mug is the sum total of a cup and a handle. A coffee mug is an emergent property of a handle and a cup.

A coffee mug is physical.

Physics tells us the coffeemug consists of basic physical ingredients. Nothing actually emerged in the mug and "mug" is just a term humans use because the thing seems special to us. It isnt, the ingredients are just in a different configuration and nothing extra emerged from it.

This is btw also why i do not believe in strong emergence.

As for love being a delusion, this is may well be so, but... any delusion involves subjectivity. So stating that love is a delusion is the opposite from the idea that it is actually objective/physical/chemical or that it doesn't exist.

 

[Astronuc]

To love and be loved is rather wonderful. Reciprocity is ideal.