Love

[LadyMilla]

Then explain to me how if I look at this girl I never met, I feel nothing, but as soon as I see her friend, who, I also never met, I fall instantly in love. They are both beautiful, smart, and outgoing. So why is it the other one totally doesn't interest me? Wouldn't the so call "mixture of chemicals" in my brain, work for both?

 

I see a flaw in your argument.

 

Actually, there is no flaw in his argument. We are not discussing quantum physics here where uncertainty is the rule. Just because you cannot explain something that you experience, it does not mean there is no scientific explanation: probably at the moment it is beyond our grasp.

 

As to your example, take a steel ball, for example, of a certain diameter. Place it on a plate with a hole in it. The ball will roll into the hole and get stuck. Now take another ball, seemingly identical to the first one, and place it on the plate. The ball rolls into the hole, drops through it and falls to the ground. Amazing? No, you say, it is simple, the second ball was a little bit smaller than the first one. Still, if you hold both in your hands, you cannot tell the difference without taking measurements. Such a minor difference and yet it has a profound impact on the behaviour of the balls.

 

Needless to say, human behavior, and especially love, is something that is more complex than the example I gave.

 

Do I say we need to research love? NO! Love, music, art... these things are part of the mystery that makes us human. Science has its benefits but also it strips away the shroud of mystery from things we consider important. When something is explained, the mystery vanishes and the subject becomes a dry, mundane topic and loses its magic. Unless you are a money hungry b...tard who wants to become the next Steve Jobs by selling love potions and "Acme Love Restoration Gadgets" to wives/husbands whose marriage ran out of steam, I really see no... uhm... reason... for seeking a logical and scientific explanation. Myself, I definitely don't want to know why I enjoy a beautiful landscape or why that black haired guy on the TV makes me delve into a certain kind a fantasy world.

 

 

[marharth]

Well at least one person understands what I am trying to say.

[kvnchrist]

There is no mystery or magic in love. This is only romanticizing the issue. Nor does chemicals released in the body create love, From what I understand these chemical create a feeling of pleasure and euphoria. This is not love. this is the body's reaction to the emotion.. Love does'nt necessarily equate to pleasure. All you need to do, to find this out is the ask the parents of a rebellious teenager, how much pleasure they are getting from loving that kid.

 

Using this faulty logic it would be the adrenalin that that causes the fear that makes a mother lift a car off her child, instead of the fear that causes the adrenalin, that allows her to lift the car.. The instances of the body altering itself in response to outside stimuli are well documented. Take shock for instance, take the body altering the flow of heat around the vital organs when it experiences extreme cold. take the body heat rising to defend itself from colds and flues.

 

Love is not something that can be explained by science. No emotion can . It is an experience that can't be reproduced upon request in a laboratory. It's personal withing they who experience it. The bodies reaction to emotions can be studied, but not the emotion itself.

[LadyMilla]

There is no mystery or magic in love. This is only romanticizing the issue. Nor does chemicals released in the body create love, From what I understand these chemical create a feeling of pleasure and euphoria. This is not love. this is the body's reaction to the emotion.. Love does'nt necessarily equate to pleasure. All you need to do, to find this out is the ask the parents of a rebellious teenager, how much pleasure they are getting from loving that kid.

 

Using this faulty logic it would be the adrenalin that that causes the fear that makes a mother lift a car off her child, instead of the fear that causes the adrenalin, that allows her to lift the car.. The instances of the body altering itself in response to outside stimuli are well documented. Take shock for instance, take the body altering the flow of heat around the vital organs when it experiences extreme cold. take the body heat rising to defend itself from colds and flues.

 

Love is not something that can be explained by science. No emotion can . It is an experience that can't be reproduced upon request in a laboratory. It's personal withing they who experience it. The bodies reaction to emotions can be studied, but not the emotion itself.

 

I think it is you who romanticize the issue by saying that emotions cannot be explained by science.

 

Love, emotions... they are part of the 'functionality' of our brain. The brain responds to external stimuli in the form of electric impulse patterns traveling within the network of neurons (the impulses may be carried by neurotransmitters -- chemicals -- or so called action potentials). These patterns are a result of a long evolution process but they are not beyond the realm of physics or chemistry, and as such they can be tracked, studied, and interpreted. It is an extremely complicated network, and -- as far as I know - it is still the least known part of the human physiology but claiming that science will *never* unravel how the various parts of the brain function and how and what neurons are responsible for what emotion is, in my opinion, just an attempt to push the concept into some hazy metaphysical realm that is beyond the reach of our instruments.

 

Unfortunately, contrary to what you believe, it is the reaction of your brain with all the chemical and electrical interactions that you experience as love, hatred, fear and other emotions. There is no romantic metaphysical "prime mover" that sets these reactions in motion. It is the motion of those patterns of electric potentials that is e-motion (was that a pun? Definitely not intentional). Obviously, the experience is unique but still it is firmly rooted in our reality, which is the playground of science. Science has its own limits, still, I believe the brain and its processes are within those limits. The brain is not a chaotic system (on the contrary, if it were a chaotic, unorganized mess, it would not function), neither is it a quantum system where the Heisenberg uncertainty principle would limit your ability to measure things. So, I think, the jury is still out on this one.

 

[kvnchrist]

There is no mystery or magic in love. This is only romanticizing the issue. Nor does chemicals released in the body create love, From what I understand these chemical create a feeling of pleasure and euphoria. This is not love. this is the body's reaction to the emotion.. Love does'nt necessarily equate to pleasure. All you need to do, to find this out is the ask the parents of a rebellious teenager, how much pleasure they are getting from loving that kid.

 

Using this faulty logic it would be the adrenalin that that causes the fear that makes a mother lift a car off her child, instead of the fear that causes the adrenalin, that allows her to lift the car.. The instances of the body altering itself in response to outside stimuli are well documented. Take shock for instance, take the body altering the flow of heat around the vital organs when it experiences extreme cold. take the body heat rising to defend itself from colds and flues.

 

Love is not something that can be explained by science. No emotion can . It is an experience that can't be reproduced upon request in a laboratory. It's personal withing they who experience it. The bodies reaction to emotions can be studied, but not the emotion itself.

 

I think it is you who romanticize the issue by saying that emotions cannot be explained by science.

 

Love, emotions... they are part of the 'functionality' of our brain. The brain responds to external stimuli in the form of electric impulse patterns traveling within the network of neurons (the impulses may be carried by neurotransmitters -- chemicals -- or so called action potentials). These patterns are a result of a long evolution process but they are not beyond the realm of physics or chemistry, and as such they can be tracked, studied, and interpreted. It is an extremely complicated network, and -- as far as I know - it is still the least known part of the human physiology but claiming that science will *never* unravel how the various parts of the brain function and how and what neurons are responsible for what emotion is, in my opinion, just an attempt to push the concept into some hazy metaphysical realm that is beyond the reach of our instruments.

 

Unfortunately, contrary to what you believe, it is the reaction of your brain with all the chemical and electrical interactions that you experience as love, hatred, fear and other emotions. There is no romantic metaphysical "prime mover" that sets these reactions in motion. It is the motion of those patterns of electric potentials that is e-motion (was that a pun? Definitely not intentional). Obviously, the experience is unique but still it is firmly rooted in our reality, which is the playground of science. Science has its own limits, still, I believe the brain and its processes are within those limits. The brain is not a chaotic system (on the contrary, if it were a chaotic, unorganized mess, it would not function), neither is it a quantum system where the Heisenberg uncertainty principle would limit your ability to measure things. So, I think, the jury is still out on this one.

 

I have stated my case and my beliefs. Emotions come from what occurs outside of the body, not inside of it. You can't produce love, unless there is a target for that love. Neither can you produce any other emotion, unless you are effected by something externally. The effects that the body produces are a reaction to these occurrences. If the opposite were to be true you could fall in love with a pile of animal excretion, if the correct chemicals were entered into the brain. I hardly think that would be the case.

[LadyMilla]

I have stated my case and my beliefs. Emotions come from what occurs outside of the body, not inside of it. You can't produce love, unless there is a target for that love. Neither can you produce any other emotion, unless you are effected by something externally. The effects that the body produces are a reaction to these occurrences. If the opposite were to be true you could fall in love with a pile of animal excretion, if the correct chemicals were entered into the brain. I hardly think that would be the case.

 

Your brain does not respond to the external object or concurrences, at least not directly. Your brain responds to the PERCEPTION of the external stimulus that is formed within the brain. This is why you feel emotional response to memories. When you think about someone you love, you do not have an external stimulus. Your brain produces emotion in response to a memory which is present as a combination of various chemical bonds. That is, your emotions in this case are triggered by what? A bunch of proteins that were created in your brain.

 

[kvnchrist]

I have stated my case and my beliefs. Emotions come from what occurs outside of the body, not inside of it. You can't produce love, unless there is a target for that love. Neither can you produce any other emotion, unless you are effected by something externally. The effects that the body produces are a reaction to these occurrences. If the opposite were to be true you could fall in love with a pile of animal excretion, if the correct chemicals were entered into the brain. I hardly think that would be the case.

 

Your brain does not respond to the external object or concurrences, at least not directly. Your brain responds to the PERCEPTION of the external stimulus that is formed within the brain. This is why you feel emotional response to memories. When you think about someone you love, you do not have an external stimulus. Your brain produces emotion in response to a memory which is present as a combination of various chemical bonds. That is, your emotions in this case are triggered by what? A bunch of proteins that were created in your brain.

You still have to have something to respond to. You have to have a trigger to initiate the process. If the external stimulus was not something you were attracted to, you would not feel anything at all. If you meet two identical twin sisters and you fall in love with one, it is because of what that one means to you. You are attracted to her because something about her impresses you Without the initial experience, you would never have created a bond. I understand what you mean by memories, but in order to have them, except for false dreams, you have to have experienced something. Love is created by the initial impression. The memories just reiterate those feelings and the brain responds accordingly.

[LadyMilla]

You still have to have something to respond to. You have to have a trigger to initiate the process.

 

Yes, but as you can see the brain will provide the same response to the proteins that form your memory. Emotion is the process of response itself or, rather, the brain's judgment about the positive or negative character of the stimulus. Should scientists somehow find a way to reproduce those proteins and implant them into your brain, forming a series of believable memories, you brain's response would be the same.

 

Of course, you are right in that there has to be an 'initial emotional' training, positive and negative feedback to external entities and occurrences before your brain will respond in a certain way to a certain stimulus (or a combination of stimuli - when you see somebody and interact with them, you are under an onslaught of stimuli (visual, audio, smell - yes, pheromones too -, physical (touch), etc.). But even that learning process requires that you give some kind of response. As a child, you see the flame of the candle but you do not fear the heat because you have no prior experience. If somebody brings the flame closer to you, you won't back away. There is no negative feedback... yet. But after you burnt your hand because you tried to grab that bright thing, your brain will remember the negative feedback and next time it will generate a negative emotional response at the sight of a flame to prevent you from suffering the pain again. Or you see an apple for the first time in your life. You don't know what to expect. You taste it and -- for the sake of simplicity, let's assume that you like it - you find that your body's response is positive. Next time the sight of an apple will generate a positive feeling, your brain anticipates the positive experience. After a long chain of events and experiences, your brain will have a wide range of stimuli stored and remembered, together with the associated positive or negative feedback. Your brain builds a processing mechanism that integrates these bits of experiences and the emotional responses to them into an ever changing, evolving filter that screens the incoming stimuli.

 

Now, after the long evolution of your filter, you encounter a girl and you experience something that people call love at first sight. The stimuli flowing through the filter induce a swell of positive or, I might say, ecstatic response. But I think you realize that at this point of your emotional evolution, if the memories of your short encounter with that girl were produced by an extremely advanced laboratory and implanted into your brain while you sleep, once you wake up your emotional reaction to those memories would be the same, because they would go through the same filter as the real external stimuli and your brain would have no reason to act against its 'programming'.

 

[HeyYou]

So your assuming every women in the world doesn't recognize logic and science?

 

Besides love is still a emotion that people feel, that doesn't mean that I don't feel it as well. I simply don't believe that it can not be explained by science, and I don't think that has any effect on romance.

 

The logic your trying to use is humorous.

I don't use logic. I use experience which trumps logic every time. especially when dealing with the fairer sex.

 

Ain't that the truth......

 

You are never going to quantify, analyze, or otherwise explain love in a scientific context. Not gonna happen. To attempt to write if off as a chemical reaction in the brain, misses the point entirely. I think if I lived in a world where science COULD explain just what love is, I would blow my brains out, as life would not be worth living.

[marharth]

So your assuming every women in the world doesn't recognize logic and science?

 

Besides love is still a emotion that people feel, that doesn't mean that I don't feel it as well. I simply don't believe that it can not be explained by science, and I don't think that has any effect on romance.

 

The logic your trying to use is humorous.

I don't use logic. I use experience which trumps logic every time. especially when dealing with the fairer sex.

 

Ain't that the truth......

 

You are never going to quantify, analyze, or otherwise explain love in a scientific context. Not gonna happen. To attempt to write if off as a chemical reaction in the brain, misses the point entirely. I think if I lived in a world where science COULD explain just what love is, I would blow my brains out, as life would not be worth living.

The whole experience versus logic debate has been going on for centuries. To me its quite obvious experience means nothing if you can't use logic to fully understand what the experience was.

 

Why does it miss the point? Love is going to be explained eventually with advances in brain science.

 

To say love is outside of the brain is to say it is being controlled by something else entirely. That makes no sense.

 

Also just read LadyMilla's posts, it is explained their much better.