Occasionally when reading I run across a phrase or sentence or paragraph, which really rings a bell for me. The bell may be recognition of the compatibility of the point to my own conclusions or perhaps the point caused an epiphany, or other reasons. When I encounter such a point I often copy it and store it in a file for later analysis. One such point is as follows: “Platonic idea that the giving and receiving of knowledge, the active formation of another’s character, or the more passive growth under another’s guidance, is the truest and strongest foundation of love”.
My analysis of this sentence led me down a long trail over an extended period of time to an understanding of the meaning of the statement and to an agreement with the meaning of that statement.
When studying philosophy I had read some of Plato’s work and had a slight remembrance of one of his Dialogues in which he dealt with the subject of love. After some study of the particular Dialogue in question and some further study of Plato’s general philosophy I realized what was meant by the point made in the sentence I had saved.
Plato wrote, “An unexamined life is not worth living”. I find this a bit hyperbolic but nevertheless agree with the general point. Plato also argued that the giving and receiving of knowledge, the active formation of another’s character, or the more passive growth under another’s guidance, is the truest and strongest foundation of love. Plato judged that the basis of love is centered upon the mutual struggle for truth.
I would not attempt to explain why Plato’s Idealistic philosophy leads to this conclusion but I think one can find justification for this point of view by considering the nature of the parent to progeny relationship. Considering the nature of evolution one might easily discover that the origin of love could be observed in the obvious relationship of present day mammals. The educational relationship between the animal mother and their progeny are evident to the most casual observer.
I often watch the Discovery Channel on TV. As you probably know this channel often has a great documentary on animal life. Their audio/visual presentations give the viewer wonderful insights into the life of animals. Often the animals in question are large mammals such as lions, gorillas, monkeys, etc. I find verification of Plato’s theory every time I see the relationship between mother and progeny in these documentaries.
Evolutionary Psychology is based on the theory that all human psychological traits, such as love, must be traceable to our evolutionary ancestors. The source of love in humans is evolved from the mother infant relationship in early mammals (perhaps).
I find this theory of love makes sense. Do you agree?
Your description of love is needlessly wordy, shifts into tangents that aren't necessary (still can't see how you justify the link between Plato and evolution), and is obviously trying too hard to sound scientific. You also don't draw any sort of link between your animal observations and Plato's definition that love is a struggle for truth, despite saying that you "find verification" of it on the Discovery Channel.
Love is a by-product of evolutionary forces that influence us toward procreation.
There. One sentence, and I'm fairly sure it covers most of your topic. It's not really a new insight either.
"Plato judged that the basis of love is centered upon the mutual struggle for truth."
Basically, everything in the OP could've been reduced to this wonderfully worded statement. And Plato was not alone. In the perennial philosophy and esoteric traditions, Truth = Oneness, and in Oneness is the greatest love.
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I suspect that the instinctive feeling caused by love is displayed in our self love that is also our survival instinct. We call it the survival instinct but it is probably the love instinct as focused upon the self.
Without the guidance of the parent the young cannot survive. As I watch these shows of animals in the wild on the Discovery Channel it seems so clear to me that this is the origin of the instinct we call love.
Truth for a lion cub is what is the correct manner to deal with a snake, or an elephant, or etc. All of which the cub learns from the mother.
Love is an instinct without which mammals would not have survived.
We have all kinds of ways to use the word love. If we remove all the contingencies we will find that in all cases the essence of love is an emotion, i.e. an instinct.
I love chocolate, I love mom, and I love April in Paris. Love is an instinct and love is an abstract idea. Remove all the contingencies and you are left with the emotion we call love. That feeling resulting from the emotion is really what we are speaking of. We attach that feeling to many things. Just as we attach fear to many things and these emotions help the species to survive.
We assign the same word to many things. I suspect that in many cases we are assigning the improper word. When I say I love cookies I suspect we are using the wrong word. However there is a feeling that results from emotion, which is an instinct, and that feeling like the feeling of fear can save or life. Without such an instinct the species could never have survived.
You're trying to turn hard science into fanciful wordplay. The affection show on your Discovery Channel programs does indeed have a set reason for it, but it's based in evolution and natural selection.
We are organisms that were built by genetic instruction, and it is those genes who (unconsciously of course) are struggling to survive. The genes whose programming is best suited to the environment will do well, because their instructions will help the organism survive and it will reach the next generation, where the gene will give similar or identical instructions. In this light, it is easy to see how the "affection for children" gene (or gene cluster) survived so well in most species. If a parent shows affection to their child, usually in the form of care and protection, the child is more likely to survive. And that surviving child will carry the same genes to care for its children, and so on.
The onset of consciousness in evolution has caused us to find alternative reasons for such love. It is a beautiful phenomenon, and altruism can have myriad benefits for us as people. We need not feel obligated to be slaves to our genetic code, since we are aware of their processes and thus able to refute and counter them...and so there is opportunity to see affection as something fulfilling. But to speak of love and affection as an abstraction, rather than acknowledging their actual origins, causes, and reasoning, is a dangerous mixture of actual science with complete nonsense.
Phrases like this: Remove all the contingencies and you are left with the emotion we call love. That feeling resulting from the emotion is really what we are speaking of. We attach that feeling to many things.
...are pseudo-scientific chicken scratch. So it's an abstract concept? An emotion? Various contingencies? It's a convenient label we apply to a large number of related-but-not-identical neural reactions that cause us to feel desire or affection toward something, most of which are traceable to evolutionary forces like those I described earlier. To try to reduce it to some all-encompassing unifying force that transcends ourselves, or even to speak of it in abstract terms rather than the facts about what it really is, muddies the truth. It may be great for Victorian England or a fiction writer, but for our purposes it is needlessly vague.
^go easy on the guy. i think its just his current interest in freud and EROS vs THANATOS thingie which is guiding his thoughts. nothing really wrong with it, except for being romantic. but then again, this is LOVE your talking about, youd be hard put to bring science to explain most of it. a lot moreso than other things anyhow. thats why i think he is in the right and you mostly in the wrong to give an answer like that in a thread about "love" .
Last edited by leonheartmm on Dec 17th, 2007 at 12:48 PM
I won't go easy when he's packaging speculation as science. He might be well-intentioned, so I don't mean it as a personal barb, but if I see something that I feel is wrong I point it out. And I fail to see how my evolutionary model doesn't adequately outline the foundation upon which we base the idea of "love."
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Well, if you want to talk about love you first have to do so semantically and then you can see (through science) what in nature exists that is in the definition we have of love.
I don't think either of you really did it anywhere near sufficiently. That emotions can be explained through evolution is true, but how is a more important question.
Fair enough. Different approaches. But his methodology was suspect, since he seemed to mix science and abstract philosophy as though they were one and the same.
Perhaps I'm not semantically defining love specifically enough. My intended point was to minimize the scope to the point where it was a coherent approach to the subject. I chose an evolutionary angle because he alluded to it a few times without ever explaining it accurately.
What are the emotions? The primary emotions are happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust. The secondary or social emotions are such things as pride, jealousy, embarrassment, and guilt. Damasio considers the background emotions are well-being or malaise, and calm or tension. The label of emotion has also been attached to drives and motivations and to states of pain and pleasure.
Antonio Damasio, Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, testifies in his book “The Feelings of What Happens” that the biological process of feelings begins with a ‘state of emotion’, which can be triggered unconsciously and is followed by ‘a state of feeling’, which can be presented nonconsciously; this nonconscious state can then become ‘a state of feeling made conscious’.
“Emotions are about the life of an organism, its body to be precise, and their role is to assist the organism in maintaining life…emotions are biologically determined processes, depending upon innately set brain devices, laid down by long evolutionary history…The devices that produce emotions…are part of a set of structures that both regulate and represent body states…All devices can be engaged automatically, without conscious deliberation…The variety of the emotional responses is responsible for profound changes in both the body landscape and the brain landscape. The collection of these changes constitutes the substrate for the neural patterns which eventually become feelings of emotion.”
The biological function of emotions is to produce an automatic action in certain situations and to regulate the internal processes so that the creature is able to support the action dictated by the situation. The biological purpose of emotions are clear, they are not a luxury but a necessity for survival.
“Emotions are inseparable from the idea of reward and punishment, pleasure or pain, of approach or withdrawal, of personal advantage or disadvantage. Inevitably, emotions are inseparable from the idea of good and evil.”
Emotions result from stimulation of the senses from outside the body sources and also from stimulations from remembered situations. Evolution has provided us with emotional responses from certain types of inducers put these innate responses are often modified by our culture.
It's becoming clear that you're as interested in posting your theories as you are in engaging in discussion. The above post may have merit (or not...I only browsed it) but it's a tangent that pretty much ignores what others have added to the discussion. Theories are good starting points, but if you want to go to the next level, you should attempt a more dialogue-approach to threads, rather than the preachy tone that comes about when you do nothing but quote others material.
and thats the problem isnt it. you CANT semantically describe love. it will inevitably end up being reductionist. you will only define it from one perspective will describe a COMPONENT or a specific EXPRESSION of love perhaps, but not love in its entirety. that is the thing, you CANT describe love, to even start to explain it with an evoutionary model or otherwise.
...which seems overly defeatist to me. There's no doubt a finite number of functional definitions and/or perspectives from which to view love. And therefore, a finite and reachable number of analyses.
If you're talking about each individual's interpretation of it, that's different. But like I said, then you get into the idea of subjective reality where anything becomes impossible to accurately quantify....convenient for those who wish to hide behind a "it's indescribable" banner, but not useful for our purposes.
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Dec 14th, 2007 11:25 AM
