Is “love” significant?

[Little lunch]

Love has made me happy, ecstatic, confused, angry, sad, afraid, sick, jealous, crazy.
It's not all good.
Possibly none of these feelings would exist without love.
It is the base paint, the root note, the common denominator of all feelings, effected even by it's absence.
Maybe.

[XK9_Knight]

I don't buy this idea that just because love is a chemical arrangement in my brain, my experience of it is somehow devalued, or different from anyone else's. It's still the same experience, it carries the same import as it would to someone who believes it's some special soul magic, because it's elicited by my consciousness and history with a person. Why should the fact that I know where it comes from, and that that origin is mundane rather than supernatural, make the effect less valuable?

I like being in love, I love the woman I'm with, I've loved others and will love again, and any theist who feels they have a license to scoff at the legitimacy of my emotions because of my belief about gods is an asshole. Not saying that's you, OP, just making a statement in general there.

No Offense taken. I don’t really think it’s a matter of ‘knowing where it happens in the brain,’ so much as it is ‘whether the feeling itself is more meaningful than what produces it.’

I didn’t intend to denigrate your view, actually I find it the most unusual. Being controlled by the chemistry in our brains sounds almost alien; as though it were ‘predetermined’ in a sense?

I'm sorry, but this thread is bullshit until "significant" is defined. The feelings we call love are obviously very strong motivators-- they cause people to behave in ways they otherwise wouldn't. If people's behavior is significant, then love is significant.

I think what you are really trying to get at is at mind/matter duality, with the possibility of the existence of the soul and God as "peripheral." Unlike most here, I'm not a physical monist, so I agree with much of what I expect you to say. However, since you've declared as Christian, I assume you are also building a case in order to support the idea of a Christian God. I won't agree with that.

Also, welcome.

... Sometimes I feel like my very presence here is a form of trolling (Lol). Honestly, I’m not “telling” you what love is, I’m asking. Significance is particular; I expected differing opinions and that’s what I asked for.

Sure, I could give my own opinion, but that’s no fun. I’m eager to hear from the rest of you. (And by the way, thanks all of you )

[Esquilax]

No Offense taken. I don’t really think it’s a matter of ‘knowing where it happens in the brain,’ so much as it is ‘whether the feeling itself is more meaningful than what produces it.’

I didn’t intend to denigrate your view, actually I find it the most unusual. Being controlled by the chemistry in our brains sounds almost alien; as though it were ‘predetermined’ in a sense?

Well, consciousness and the things that govern it aren't super well understood, and I tend to think of it as an emergent property of chemical processes that's more complex than that description might indicate. But there's a certain type of theist who'll point the finger right at you if you say you don't believe in a soul and say that the only other alternative is "molecules and motion," that if you don't believe in a soul you must therefore believe you're just a collection of atoms, couched in the most dry, simplistic terms possible. It's a false dichotomy, but the demand made of the atheist is that they can't believe in free will and that everything is determined by brain chemicals.

It's not accurate, but that's the canard. Personally, I like the compatibilist view: it may well be that I don't have free will, and my eventual choices are governed by neurochemistry, but in my first person experience it feels like I'm making my own choices, so why should I care?

[Anomalocaris]

I think we do tend to put love on a higher pedestal than other emotions, and some people want to think there's some big divide between love and lust. Like love is this deep spiritual thing, while lust is a dirty perverted thing.

We put love on a pedestal because we live in an age where live is relatively secure at least until old age, and social positions and social bounds are also relatively stable.

So other feelings associated survival and avoidance of serious risk have become more muted.

[Jenny A]

Being controlled by the chemistry in our brains sounds almost alien; as though it were ‘predetermined’ in a sense?

Predestination is the bug bear in the closet whether you are theist or atheist. If it's all chemical and physical, than you can argue it's all predetermined and runs like clock-work. If you suppose an all knowing god instead (or in a addition to natural causes) you get a god who already knows what you are going to do as if you'd already done it. Acting as if you believed in either kind of predestination is dangerous to your mental health.

But. I don't think we really exist in any real sense outside our brains. Take away or replace my heart, eyes, legs, etc. and I'm still me. Do a brain transplant and I'm someone else.

And yes what runs the brain is chemical. And chemicals can change emotions radically. Recreational drug use is testimony to that. Damage to the pituitary gland, the kidneys, and other organs, produces enough chemical change to really change personalities.

That said, the working of the brain is so complex that I can't say it feels like a bunch of chemical reactions. And I'll be damned if I going to behave as if it were.

[ManMachine]

This is an interesting question. IMO, emotions (including love) are individual strategic behaviours that arise from deep seated neural systems that evolved to help us survive as a species.

[Jenny A]

This is an interesting question. IMO, emotions (including love) are individual strategic behaviours that arise from deep seated neural systems that evolved to help us survive as a species.

I'm sure you are right about emotions being a product of evolution. But that doesn't cause them to feel any less significant. Loving and being loved by my friends and family is a large part of what is good and important in my life.

But, evolution is useful in understanding why we behave the way we do. Certainly it helps with conundrums like why it is that the death of a single child can cause great emotional resonance, but the death of 100,000 people often doesn't so very much.

[XK9_Knight]

Well, consciousness and the things that govern it aren't super well understood, and I tend to think of it as an emergent property of chemical processes that's more complex than that description might indicate. But there's a certain type of theist who'll point the finger right at you if you say you don't believe in a soul and say that the only other alternative is "molecules and motion," that if you don't believe in a soul you must therefore believe you're just a collection of atoms, couched in the most dry, simplistic terms possible. It's a false dichotomy, but the demand made of the atheist is that they can't believe in free will and that everything is determined by brain chemicals.

It's not accurate, but that's the canard. Personally, I like the compatibilist view: it may well be that I don't have free will, and my eventual choices are governed by neurochemistry, but in my first person experience it feels like I'm making my own choices, so why should I care?

Might I say first of all I love () where this discussion is moving.

I would agree that consciousness isn’t well understood. I did a study on depression some time ago for school and found it to be… how should I say… not very helpful? In studying behavioral and cognitive therapies it seemed as though “body and soul” we entwined; one doctor said that fMRI scans would show that thoughts induced the chemistry and not the other way around. Problem is the chemistry causes inflammation in the body creating stress that then feeds back to the depression causing thoughts.

Needless to say I found it to be rather inconclusive (… like every fucking paper I’ve ever written!).

I don’t wish to impose a false dichotomy, but you can see some it’s merits I’m sure? One problem I may have with the compatibility view is that it’s essentially a form of self-delusion, is it not? Whether you perceive it as free will or not it’s all the same. (Or I could still just be harping on a false dichotomy? XD )

And by the way, thank you Jenny for your clear and concise contribution to the discussion. But this last part intrigues me…

That said, the working of the brain is so complex that I can't say it feels like a bunch of chemical reactions. And I'll be damned if I going to behave as if it were.

What do you mean by that last part?

[The Grand Nudger]

Possessing a clinical (or sterilized, or dry) understanding of any given thing does not prevent us from having a passionate experience of that thing. The molecules may be sterile, the chemistry may be dull - but the effect....well that's wonderful.

Or, to put it another way. Vets tend to love animals.

[Mudhammam]

Being controlled by the chemistry in our brains sounds almost alien; as though it were ‘predetermined’ in a sense?

And? So?

"Almost alien" pretty much sums up every revolutionary paradigm shift in science.