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 Topic: Love

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  • Re: Love
     Reply #60 - June 04, 2010, 10:28 PM
    I can see the link between ocd & the initial lust phase in love, but cant see the link between seratonin, the 'happy chemical' and either of them..
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  • Re: Love
     Reply #61 - June 04, 2010, 10:43 PM
    A person who has OCD may not have enough serotonin

    So if OCD is caused by low levels of serotonin, then if new lovers also have low levels of serotonin, that would trigger some OCD behaviour ... I think.

    So although serotonin is related to depression, it can also be related to OCD. I assume this is the case due to degrading communication in the nerve cells, i.e. causes an imbalance which can be one way or the other depending on other factors (I also assume).
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  • Re: Love
     Reply #62 - June 04, 2010, 10:47 PM
    Yes but being in love is a euphoric feeling, and one I woul associate with HIGH levels of seratonin, its not one associated with depression & anxiety that I would assume low levels of seratonin would produce. 

    The drug Ecstacy works by inducing high levls of seratonin, the feeling is similar as being in love (in fact you spend a lot of time when you are high on it telling everyone that you love them)
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  • Re: Love
     Reply #63 - June 04, 2010, 11:40 PM
    Oh I see ... interesting ... well ... I don't know ... good point ... hmm ...
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  • Re: Love
     Reply #64 - June 06, 2010, 10:29 AM
    Quote from: BlackDog on June 04, 2010, 07:53 PM
    God.. its like you can look into my heart and see my soul. I feel like that ^^^ every time I look myself in the mirror.

    Oh hello there! cool2

    EDITS IN BOLD



    You're starting to look more like Johnny Bravo every day.... minus the hair  Wink

     Cheesy
  • Re: Love
     Reply #65 - June 06, 2010, 11:58 AM
    LOL
  • Re: Love
     Reply #66 - June 06, 2010, 12:00 PM
    Love is wanting good for someone.  If there is no good, there is no love...
  • Re: Love
     Reply #67 - June 06, 2010, 12:11 PM
    Quote from: BlackDog on June 04, 2010, 12:51 PM
    "Islam is interesting, and you will like it. Fuck off." - New Statesman


     Grin
    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Love
     Reply #68 - June 06, 2010, 12:12 PM
    Knew you would like that one Grin
  • Re: Love
     Reply #69 - June 06, 2010, 05:54 PM
    I have a question for the material/ chemical explanation of love.

    Imagine a person that has been locked up in a room alone but has never experienced love. However, this person has complete knowledge about the chemical reactions involved in the sensation of love and all the brain reactions involved. Let us say that the person knows everything that can be known about love, a complete explanation is given.
    Now, this person is let lose upon the world and as such things go, this person falls in love. Now, I want to know does this person learn something new by experiencing love? Or is the total physiological knowledge enough to explain the psychological knowledge? Can a person know the feeling of love by knowing the chemicals of love?

    Furthermore, if you hold that something new is learnt by feeling love beyond the physiological knowledge then what does this mean about the physicalist paradigm? Does this mean that there are facts about reality that, in principle, cannot be explained in a materialist/ physicalist worldview? Or should we accept that the materialist worldview is correct but the sensation of love doesn't really exist ontologically?
    At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
    Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
    Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
  • Re: Love
     Reply #70 - June 06, 2010, 05:57 PM
    I think new information will be added, the experience of love will enrichen and deepen the knowledge so to speak. I always found theory gets a new dimension when practiced. Simply because there are different ways of learning information, one of them being kinetic.
  • Re: Love
     Reply #71 - June 06, 2010, 06:06 PM
    Quote from: z10 on June 06, 2010, 05:54 PM
    I have a question for the material/ chemical explanation of love.

    Imagine a person that has been locked up in a room alone but has never experienced love. However, this person has complete knowledge about the chemical reactions involved in the sensation of love and all the brain reactions involved. Let us say that the person knows everything that can be known about love, a complete explanation is given.
    Now, this person is let lose upon the world and as such things go, this person falls in love. Now, I want to know does this person learn something new by experiencing love? Or is the total physiological knowledge enough to explain the psychological knowledge? Can a person know the feeling of love by knowing the chemicals of love?

    Furthermore, if you hold that something new is learnt by feeling love beyond the physiological knowledge then what does this mean about the physicalist paradigm? Does this mean that there are facts about reality that, in principle, cannot be explained in a materialist/ physicalist worldview? Or should we accept that the materialist worldview is correct but the sensation of love doesn't really exist ontologically?


    Ah, yes. Qualia

    When the person experiences love, they learn something new. You can't know everything about love without knowing what its subjective experience is actually like.

    The subjective experience of love is the product/effect of the neurological and phsyiological states that an individual personally experiences, and does not simply observe from an external viewpoint.

    Such is the materialistic understanding. In any case, I don't really think qualia are as big a problem for materialism as dualists like to claim.
  • Re: Love
     Reply #72 - June 06, 2010, 06:10 PM
    Ah Z10 what about empathy in regards to love? Even if one has never experienced it?
  • Re: Love
     Reply #73 - June 06, 2010, 06:12 PM
    good spot, zebedee - this is the old jackson knowledge argument usually for the sake of "red"

    I would hate for you to think I'm a dualist, I think that's a bankrupt theory. If anything, call me a panpsychist  Wink

    However, let us explore this further. If it is true that the subjective experience of love is the product of the physiological brain affects then why is this product unable to be fully learnt from the materialist view? Why is it that something new is learnt? Surely, if I knew everything about the sun from astrophysics but learnt something new when actually looking at it then astrophysics must be an incomplete theory - why does materialism escape this criticism?
    At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
    Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
    Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
  • Re: Love
     Reply #74 - June 06, 2010, 06:13 PM
    Quote from: BlackDog on June 06, 2010, 06:10 PM
    Ah Z10 what about empathy in regards to love? Even if one has never experienced it?


    can you really know what love feels like by reading about love poetry bd? really?
    At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
    Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
    Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
  • Re: Love
     Reply #75 - June 06, 2010, 06:51 PM
    Quote from: z10 on June 06, 2010, 06:12 PM
    However, let us explore this further. If it is true that the subjective experience of love is the product of the physiological brain affects then why is this product unable to be fully learnt from the materialist view? Why is it that something new is learnt? Surely, if I knew everything about the sun from astrophysics but learnt something new when actually looking at it then astrophysics must be an incomplete theory - why does materialism escape this criticism?


    I have to confess to a considerable degree of ignorance on this subject. I've neither read, nor thought much about it. However...

    It's not impossible for it to be learnt from a materialistic perspective. It's only impossible to learn all there is to know about such a phenomenon by simply observing it from the outside, just as it would be impossible to know everything about, say, sound, without knowing fundamentally what causes it. In both cases, knowledge of some aspect of the phenomenon is not being taken into consideration.

    It seems to me that the way you're phrasing this question doesn't make sense. You're saying that someone knows every thing about a specific phenomenon, and then saying that they're also capable of learning something new about it. But of course, if one does indeed know everything about a phenomenon, then one can't possibly learn something new about it.

    I would say that recognising even the subjective experience of a particular phenomenon would be a prerequisite to knowing everything about it. This kind of knowledge is just another aspect, one of many.
  • Re: Love
     Reply #76 - June 06, 2010, 07:00 PM
    Quote from: z10 on June 06, 2010, 05:54 PM
    Imagine a person that has been locked up in a room alone but has never experienced love. However, this person has complete knowledge about the chemical reactions involved in the sensation of love and all the brain reactions involved.

    This would imply that such a person is able to "run" in his mind a simulation of an entire human brain, knowing how every neuron is going to be fired up, and thus able to actually run a "virtual mind" inside his own mind.

    If that is the hypothesis, then yes, such a person would know the FEELING of love, since he was able to completely reproduce the feeling of love inside a perfectly simulated world.

    If that is not the hypothesis, then I cannot see how else it is possible to claim that such a person has a COMPLETE knowledge of the reactions involved.
    Do not look directly at the operational end of the device.
  • Re: Love
     Reply #77 - June 06, 2010, 07:02 PM
    I apologise for not phrasing the question clearly zebedee. When I saw know everything about love I meant only from an objective/ scientific viewpoint.

    I think you are correct to say that it is impossible to learn everything from the outside but perhaps we aren't agreeing on what a physicalist paradigm involves. As far as I understand the viewpoint, it states that the only facts that exist are physical facts and therefore, subjective knowledge is unneccesary to know everything about a subject - everything can be known about something without the sensation of that thing being known.
    My contention is that while one can learn everything about the physical facts of love (the chemicals involved, the nuerons involved etc etc) one does not know everything about love as the subjective feeling of love, the very experience of it is unknown.
    Therefore, I would conclude, the physicalist paradigm is incomplete and there is more to love than just the physical facts. (Of course, a similar argument can be made for all sensations and I would support a general conclusion to that effect but we are only focusing on love right now.)
    At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
    Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
    Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
  • Re: Love
     Reply #78 - June 06, 2010, 07:03 PM
    Quote from: Tlaloc on June 06, 2010, 07:00 PM
    This would imply that such a person is able to "run" in his mind a simulation of an entire human brain, knowing how every neuron is going to be fired up, and thus able to actually run a "virtual mind" inside his own mind.

    If that is the hypothesis, then yes, such a person would know the FEELING of love, since he was able to completely reproduce the feeling of love inside a perfectly simulated world.

    If that is not the hypothesis, then I cannot see how else it is possible to claim that such a person has a COMPLETE knowledge of the reactions involved.


    I think you are begging the question if you equate knowing how a neuron works with a virtual mind. That's exactly what is being questioned, you cannot start with that as a presumption.
    At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
    Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
    Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
  • Re: Love
     Reply #79 - June 06, 2010, 07:11 PM
    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/

    This article has a good discussion of the question I am posing. There are a fair few objections there to the conclusion I offered but I don't think any of them are good enough to alleviate the problem for physicalism.
    At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
    Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
    Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
  • Re: Love
     Reply #80 - June 06, 2010, 07:16 PM
    Quote from: z10 on June 06, 2010, 07:03 PM
    I think you are begging the question if you equate knowing how a neuron works with a virtual mind. That's exactly what is being questioned, you cannot start with that as a presumption.

    You are just being unnecessarily anal.
    Of course that is what is being questioned.
    I put "virtual mind" in quotes for a reason.

    So I will reformulate:

    If:
    - minds are entirely physical
    - somebody has complete knowledge of all the physical reactions concerning "love"
    Then:
    - that somebody would be able to run a mind inside his own mind, simulating all that is there to know about love
    And then:
    - that somebody would know all that is there to know about love

    Otherwise, if:
    - minds are not entirely physical
    - somebody has complete knowledge of all the physical reactions concerning "love"
    Then:
    - somebody can run the simulation of a brain being in love, but cannot run the simulation of a mind (since he is not necessarily able to simulate the non-physical part)
    And then:
    - we cannot claim if that somebody can learn anything new about love (cause maybe love IS entirely physical even if the mind is not entirely physical... we do not have enough data to know)

    Better?
    Do not look directly at the operational end of the device.
  • Re: Love
     Reply #81 - June 06, 2010, 07:22 PM
    Or, I will reformulate again for even more clarity:

    If all mental process are physical in nature and we make a philosophical experiment about somebody who has complete knowledge of all physical processes, we do not reach a contradiction about him not being able to "truly know" what certain feelings are... because in that case he should be able (by hypothesis of "complete knowledge of all physical processes") to simulate such feelings in mental processes within a virtual world in his own imagination.
    Do not look directly at the operational end of the device.
  • Re: Love
     Reply #82 - June 06, 2010, 07:25 PM
    The truly interesting part about this is:
    Can a finite system/mind/brain/whatever be able to have complete knowledge of the way itself works?

    I detect a Turing halting problem with that :O
    Do not look directly at the operational end of the device.
  • Re: Love
     Reply #83 - June 06, 2010, 07:45 PM
    Quote from: Soren on June 01, 2010, 10:37 AM
    Personally I think it all comes down to chemicals.  So yes in my opnion you can do a materialistic reduction of love. And I agree with Rationalizer in that being able to reduce it to basic materialistic components doesn't make the felling of being in love or the love for my child any less fantastic. I'm still feeling it Smiley

    Here's a simple explanation of the chemical processes in connection with love:
    http://www.youramazingbrain.org/lovesex/sciencelove.htm

    Best regards


    enjoyable read - but there is certainly more to love than just chemicals released in the brain. for example if these chemicals are released in someones brain they don't fall in love with everyone around them - who they fall in love with is very specfic. if it was just a case of chemicals making someone more likely to fall in love, then in theory that person should feel love in general i.e. perhaps for all the attractive females around him for example. but love does not appear to happen like that - people fall in love with specific individuals. there appears to be a special connection between specific individuals (stardust gave a good description) - and this is called love. chemicals in the brain may play a role in some feelings realted to love (as described in the article) - but there probably is a much bigger picture.
    ''we are morally and philisophically in the best position to win the league'' - Arsene Wenger
  • Re: Love
     Reply #84 - June 06, 2010, 08:20 PM
    Quote from: z10 on June 06, 2010, 07:02 PM
    I apologise for not phrasing the question clearly zebedee. When I saw know everything about love I meant only from an objective/ scientific viewpoint.

    I think you are correct to say that it is impossible to learn everything from the outside but perhaps we aren't agreeing on what a physicalist paradigm involves. As far as I understand the viewpoint, it states that the only facts that exist are physical facts and therefore, subjective knowledge is unneccesary to know everything about a subject - everything can be known about something without the sensation of that thing being known.
    My contention is that while one can learn everything about the physical facts of love (the chemicals involved, the nuerons involved etc etc) one does not know everything about love as the subjective feeling of love, the very experience of it is unknown.
    Therefore, I would conclude, the physicalist paradigm is incomplete and there is more to love than just the physical facts. (Of course, a similar argument can be made for all sensations and I would support a general conclusion to that effect but we are only focusing on love right now.)


    I don't really disagree with any of that. I would say that cerain things do fall outside the sphere of empirical evidence, e.g., morality, aesthetics, and so on.

  • Re: Love
     Reply #85 - June 06, 2010, 08:23 PM
    Quote from: abuyunus2 on June 06, 2010, 07:45 PM
    people fall in love with specific individuals. there appears to be a special connection between specific individuals (stardust gave a good description) - and this is called love. chemicals in the brain may play a role in some feelings realted to love (as described in the article) - but there probably is a much bigger picture.

    The chemicals cause the feeling called love.  The cause of the release of these chemicals is what is in question here, I see it as a combination of genetic and environmental factors.
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  • Re: Love
     Reply #86 - June 06, 2010, 08:35 PM
    Quote from: stardust on June 04, 2010, 06:42 PM
    When you love someone you want to build your dreams with them. You feel incomplete without them in the picture of your life,  when you see them everyday but you don't see them the next and you still miss them, you think about them everyday. Love gives you courage and strength you never knew you had. They are your best friend and you want to share everything with them, they make you confident and you work with each other and teach each other. It's when you feel sad when they are. Love isn't perfect, but you see past their flaws to who they really are and that's why you love them.

    This is partly how I would describe my experience, but like a previous poster said, you can only truely know love by experiencing it yourself.


    +1 Smiley
    'The greatest glory of living lies not in never falling but in rising everytime you fall'
  • Re: Love
     Reply #87 - June 06, 2010, 08:36 PM
    Quote from: Abood on June 04, 2010, 03:32 AM
    I don't understand why people think explaining things scientifically strips their magic and beauty from them. Science actually makes things more beautiful, because paradoxically, the more we know, the more we're befuddled at how those things came to be, how all the elements became one and formed our universe. A scientific universe is much more awe-inspiring than a universe created by God. The religious view of things is so boring. What's so great about God assembling everything together? People create things everyday; nothing special about that. When I was a Muslim, I would look towards the sky and try to see something, try to be amazed, but I never was; the sky seemed so lame and mundane. Today, I look into the sky and almost cry. Every time I'm depressed I remind myself to look into the horizon and am filled with joy.

    The same is true for love. The fact that it's a Darwinian force doesn't make it less beautiful; on the contrary. Isn't it so amazing that it's a Darwinian force and yet it's so powerful that our lives revolve around it? How did those elements and forces come together to enslave us? Isn't that beautiful? Isn't it mystical?


    to be fair, if we assume for a second that God did create the universe then that is real creation. in this sense of the word 'creation' , humans  do not create anything, never have and never will - we simply use the 'tools' created by God and use those 'tools' according to the laws of science that God created (again assuming God created the universe). it's the laws of science that God himself created, that allow us to 'make' new things - but we do not 'create' anything - we are in fact dependant and limited by the laws of science.
    ''we are morally and philisophically in the best position to win the league'' - Arsene Wenger
  • Re: Love
     Reply #88 - June 06, 2010, 08:43 PM
    One of the things we read in my Philosophy of Sexuality course was on types/styles of Love.

    Quote
    Love styles are models of how people love, originally developed by (Social Psychologist) John Lee. He identified six basic love theories—also known as "colors" of love—that people use in their interpersonal relationships:

        * Eros – a passionate physical and emotional love based on aesthetic enjoyment; stereotype of romantic love
        * Ludus – a love that is played as a game or sport; conquest
        * Storge – an affectionate love that slowly develops from friendship, based on similarity
        * Pragma – love that is driven by the head, not the heart; undemonstrative
        * Mania – highly volatile love; obsession; fueled by low self-esteem
        * Agape – selfless altruistic love; spiritual; motherly love


    source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_styles


    Like anything else, there are several levels of studying Love, from a biological POV, social POV, psychological POV etc.

    To me, love is finding happiness in the happiness of another. And wanting to experience life together with another. The desire to be "myself" with someone. The desire to see the person I have come to love, as their truest self.

    I think love is, after God, the most subjective and misunderstood and overused word in English.
    "Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused."
  • Re: Love
     Reply #89 - June 06, 2010, 08:43 PM
    Quote from: IsLame on June 06, 2010, 08:23 PM
    The chemicals cause the feeling called love.


    is this scientifically proven or is it a scientific idea? - just wondering - i'm pretty sure it's the latter. i don't think it's been shown that release of adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin 'causes' love. rather i think it's been shown there are increased levels of these chemical when people are in love - hence they could simply be involved in causing specific emotions relating to love rather than 'cause' the feeling called love.
    ''we are morally and philisophically in the best position to win the league'' - Arsene Wenger
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