Can you explain love with science?

[WendyK]

Can you explain love with science? I think you can I think it is like 90% basic instinct about what to look for in a partner for attraction. But also I think there is some spirituality that cant be explain in science.

[Greippi]

There was a special issue about this in New Scientist a few years back. I'll distill the gist of it later.

[Genecks]

Can you explain love with science? I think you can I think it is like 90% basic instinct about what to look for in a partner for attraction. But also I think there is some spirituality that cant be explain in science.

 

From a scientific perspective, things are physical.

 

Thus, unless you can prove that spirituality's physicalist attributes, then you'll have to assume that it is not part of science.

That's the game of science: Things are physical and need to be shown as physical aspects of Nature.

[Graham]

Of course you can!

 

Vasopressin, vasopressin receptors, and the reward pathways of the brain! (the ventral tegmental pathway)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasopressin

 

Neurotransmitters like serotonin which provide your motivational and positive thoughts associated with the male/female also play a role in love related experience. Though, 80% of your serotonin is involved in gastrointestinal tracks...oddly enough.

 

If you mean sexual pleasure, that would be Oxytocin!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin

Edited May 10, 2010 by Graham

[Double K]

I can't explain love with science, but I can explain science with love....

 

Which means I should be able to solve it using a non-linear equation?

[Mr Skeptic]

Can you explain love with science? I think you can I think it is like 90% basic instinct about what to look for in a partner for attraction. But also I think there is some spirituality that cant be explain in science.

 

I think 100% of love can be explained with science, eventually. Just not yet. We don't know enough neuroscience yet.

 

Are you suggesting that perhaps some aspect of love will be forever unknowable to science? That seems unlikely to me.

[the tree]

I can't explain love with science, but I can explain science with love....

 

Which means I should be able to solve it using a non-linear equation?

What? No. In general processes aren't invertible. Particularly with explanations - the movement of shadows can be explained with the movement of the sun but not vice verser.

[Silivros]

When the OP mentions instinct, that is a chemical response to an environmental imput, and the chemical responses of the emotions we associate with love are able to be recorded, but what of the initiator of love? What begins the emotional reactions? Is this only instinct?

Is their a component outside of the physical neuro-chemical processes of cognition that initiates the neuro pathways that begin the chemical reactions?

Edited May 12, 2010 by Silivros

[LimbicLoser]

I really think we're gonna have to have some more precise definition, here. Is the question, in the first place, about agape? or is it more along the lines of philias, or eros[/ii]? Graham has provided a good general outline for some major portions (as far as I know) on the brain function/anatomy part (not all, but some) . . . other parts will seemingly depend on which one of the above three candidates we might be wanting to look at, at a time. Let's wait to see if the OP gets back here.

[Ncurtisbrown]

Can you explain love with science? I think you can I think it is like 90% basic instinct about what to look for in a partner for attraction. But also I think there is some spirituality that cant be explain in science.

 

 

I always thought it was a hormonal response, the human body is programmer to reproduce, and it's just our bodys way of finding a suitable mate.

[webbed_feet]

Can you explain love with science? I think you can I think it is like 90% basic instinct about what to look for in a partner for attraction. But also I think there is some spirituality that cant be explain in science.

 

I would need to make the distinction between romantic love and unconditional love, because I think different biological factors are involved. In short, my experience is that romantic love can have a "shelf-life", whereas unconditional love is a bond for life and for evolution (i.e. the survival of the species is dependent on the mother child bond).

 

It appears you are referring to romantic love only, so I'll try to lend my opinion on this. There are evolutionary factors involved here too, but I think romantic love is a process where we take all of our previous experience and project it on another. In other words, when we look for a partner we use what we have accumulated, in terms of an "ideal mate," based our experiences throughout life. Those who fit, or at least come the closest, are the ones we are attracted to. And since this person we've chosen "fits our ideal" we in turn open ourselves up to reactions in the brain (again, evolutionary) that send a cascade of chemicals - namely dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter that controls risk/reward and pleasure.

 

So basically, I consider "falling in love" to be just a chemical reaction based on an archetype we've accumulated throughout life. Hence, when we grow and change over the years we also change our perspective (archetype) and thus we might then "fall out of love" with the person who used to fit our ideal - the 7 year itch.

 

To me, spirituality, if it exist, comes in to play with unconditional love only, since that seems to be the kind of love that's transcendent.

 

wf

[Mr Skeptic]

As far as I know, "falling in love" is an effect nature uses to counteract our tenancy to be unnecessarily perfectionist or unnecessarily cautious. The effect is to exaggerate the positive aspects and ignore the negative aspects of the other, motivating the couple to make the effort to mate and helping them bond. A lot of time and energy is wasted by this, however, so eventually the couple falls out of love to avoid "burning out" and so there is more time left for work.

[nycjosh]

Of course you can!

 

Vasopressin, vasopressin receptors, and the reward pathways of the brain! (the ventral tegmental pathway)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasopressin

 

Neurotransmitters like serotonin which provide your motivational and positive thoughts associated with the male/female also play a role in love related experience. Though, 80% of your serotonin is involved in gastrointestinal tracks...oddly enough.

 

If you mean sexual pleasure, that would be Oxytocin!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin

 

Joe Rogan does stand up bits about this... hilarious

[cypress]

I think 100% of love can be explained with science, eventually. Just not yet. We don't know enough neuroscience yet.

 

Yes, science is unable to demonstrate that conciseness and emotion is reducible to the physical.

 

Are you suggesting that perhaps some aspect of love will be forever unknowable to science? That seems unlikely to me.

 

There is a great deal about the mind that befuddles a scientific explanation. Perhaps the greatest current challenge and a basic step for scientific explanation is to show how encoded knowledge, communication and/or information might be generated by physical laws and chemistry. Our uniform experience indicates these have just one source, namely an intelligent agent. The best current explanation is not chemistry and physical law, and it seems unlikely that it ever will be.

[ydoaPs]

I think it's interesting that the areas in the brain involved with love are the same involved with drug addiction.

[Baby Astronaut]

Actually science is just now around the corner to explaining love, once it's pinpointed the elusive Huggs boson.

[Speldosa]

Can you explain love with science? I think you can I think it is like 90% basic instinct about what to look for in a partner for attraction. But also I think there is some spirituality that cant be explain in science.

 

Well, are you a monist or a dualist when it comes to the question of consciousness? If you are the former, science should be able to explain the whole shabang, both behavior and experience. If you are the latter, depending on what form of dualism you prefer, science could explain degrees of the behavior (in the case of epiphenomenalism, all of the behavior) but not the experience.

 

The way I see it, your question is not tied to love in any way. You could pose the same question regarding for example hunger.

[Realitycheck]

when someone is in romantic love, it seems that maybe there should be some endorphins involved, as well.

[Phi for All]

As far as I know, "falling in love" is an effect nature uses to counteract our tenancy to be unnecessarily perfectionist or unnecessarily cautious. The effect is to exaggerate the positive aspects and ignore the negative aspects of the other, motivating the couple to make the effort to mate and helping them bond. A lot of time and energy is wasted by this, however, so eventually the couple falls out of love to avoid "burning out" and so there is more time left for work.

The shortest complete sentence in the English language is, "I am". The longest sentence is, "I do".

[Zolar V]

When contemplating unconditional love, you may want to take a look at some different types of birds that find only one mate for their entire lifetime. These birds to seem to exhibit some of the same traits that we are discussing. Therefore it would be quite logical to observe these exhibited traits, and compair them with our own.

 

I personally believe that love is merely a chemical reaction in our brain. The exactness of the chemical reaction depends on our personalities and our views, these in turn are the product of innumerable various stimuli that formed our personalites during our developmental stages.

[Mr Skeptic]

When contemplating unconditional love, you may want to take a look at some different types of birds that find only one mate for their entire lifetime. These birds to seem to exhibit some of the same traits that we are discussing. Therefore it would be quite logical to observe these exhibited traits, and compair them with our own.

 

Of course, just because the couple remain together for the rest of their lives, doesn't mean that they don't mate with others.

[Narroo]

It's possible that two people's personalities compliment each other in a way that they like each others presence, similar to how people like cake.

Mmmm. Cake.

[Speldosa]

I still don't understand the question. What are we supposed to debate? Whether the brain operates in such a way that its output can be predicted?

[Zolar V]

"Whether the brain operates in such a way that its output can be predicted?"

 

The brain does operate in a manner that is in fact quite predictable.

We understand many different aspects of patterns within the brain, alowing us to predict whether or not you are lieing, sleeping, on drugs...

[Speldosa]

The brain does operate in a manner that is in fact quite predictable.

We understand many different aspects of patterns within the brain, alowing us to predict whether or not you are lieing, sleeping, on drugs...

 

Ok.

 

But still. Is this the question we are supposed to debate in this thread? I seriously don't understand what TS is meaning when s/he states that s/he thinks there is "some spirituality that cant be explain in science". That is, what the heck are we debating?