Is True Love at First Sight Real or Does It Evolve Over Time?

[Another God]

Originally posted by Royce
I find this hard to think of as only hormones and chemistry and for the life of me I cannot find an evolutionary survival benefit from such pain.

Thats OK Royce, it understandable that you find it hard to think of only as hormones and chemistry. You only have the subjectuve experience of it. An objective experience is an oxymoron. I just hope that you understand that an argument from indignation holds no actual weight behind it. I mean, just because you find it hard to believe, can't be taken as an argument against the claim that that is all that love and pain are.

Whether "soulmates" are designed for each other or met and loved in another life or are simply two people uniquely suited for one another
and instantly recognize and realized that fact doesn't matter. What matters is that it happens and is real.

Whooa..."what" happens though? What do you mean by soulmate?

As far as love healing or tempering physical pain, of course it is chemistry in action but it is the love the causes the chemistry that happens.

OK, so u agree that there is a correlation between the physical attributes to love/pain and love/pain itself, but you are claiming that the love/pain causes the physical, and not the other way around.

To make this claim meaningful, you now need to explain exactly what it is that Love/Pain is, and how it causes the physical reactions. Because under the current scientific paradigm, the subjective experience is said to be caused by the physical, in a direct meaningful way. This explanation not only attempts to explain what love is, and how the experience arises, but it also explains why there are certain physical reactions that correlate to love/pain. With your "Love causes physical reactions" hypothesis, you not only need to explain what love is, what causes it, and where/how love exists outside of the physical, but you will need to explain why this phenomenon should interact with the physical, and then you will also need to explain HOW this phenomenon interacts with the physical.

I can agree that love is a survival technique or stratagy as is monogamy and reproduction. I can even see that love is a product of evolution and reaching a certain minimum level of intelligence. All I am saying is that it is much more and it is and has tangable effects and results on all of us. We need love and need to love just as much as we need food and water. I agree that it is subjective. It is also objective.

I can't help but read this all and feel like you are saying one thing, and then saying the complete opposite and agreeing that they are both true, when one contradicts the other.

Love is not, per say, objective. Love is subjective. But as with all subjective phenomenon, it arises due to objective facts/actions/causes/reality whatever. Objectivity is the reality, and subjectivity is just what we experience of it. Love is a feeling, therefore subjective.

You said before that you couldn't see how love would evolve, and you here say that you believe that we need love as much as we need food and water. Now, we have evolved love in this way so that we need it so drastically (I don't agree as much as food and water, but that's irrelevant really, I'll agree we NEED it). So why is love so damn important that it should be so integral to our character?

What is love used for? (In my chosen order of importance)
1. Bonding Mother/Father to Child.
2. Bonding Mates
3. Bonding Brothers/Sisters
4. Last and, most certainly the least, bonding between companions.

To me, the advantage of this mechanism of bonding these particular relations is obvious. The first is important because at birth and for many years, Humans are useless. Without the loving care of our parents, we would die. No doubt. This is an obvious point for Nat Selection to remove.

The second, I am going to postulate, comes about largely because of sexual selection. Females are stuck with children when they give birth. If they can get males which are going to stick around after the birth, then they will save themselves a lot of work (+ there will be a better chance of their children surviving). So the females choose mates which stick around (Or else they let the children die of mates which left (harder to raise them), or in some cases the new partner after the last one departed killed the kids of the previous father. (Yes, all of this stuff does happen in nature. Yes we are part of nature)). So, result: Over time, females have selected males which stick around (probably achieved by selecting a mutation which tapped into the 'Child love' gene which would have been present in all of us, and allowing it to now be used as a 'Mate love' gene.) Thise 'Mate Love' gene is then present in male population, and it would then be passed into all of their offspring, males and females included...
(Just one possibility)

The Third: Sibling love. Why? Because Sibling have (statistically) half of their genes in common with us. By ensuring our siblings survive, our genes unsure they have greater chance at making it into the next generations, even if you don't make it.

The fourth: Love of friends. Why? Because your friends help you when you need it. And/Or because you have helped them out so much, that you have a lot of resources invested into them, and you want to get your payment back. You want to keep them around until they help you out.
(And don't go telling me that "Oh no, I love my friends, they are much more than that to me... blah blah blah" because how many times have 'Best Friends' been instantly disowned because they did something wrong (cheated with your wife/husband, stole from you etc) Being a best friend isn't permanent love, it is a conditional love, which is based on the condition that they help you and don't betray you.)

 

[Royce]

AG, The reason for the confusion is that I think love is both subjective and objective. I don't believe that we can separate it into exclusively one or the other. IMO love is also spiritual, but that's my bag and I won't impose it here.

Another point is which came first. Is love a result of chemistry or is chemistry the result of love? I don't think that we can really tell at this point. It's the old chicken and egg delema.

As far as soul mates are concerned, I was using the term in strictly common usage. I have no idea what it really means. I know that it happens reguardless of sex or species.

While we cannot directly measure love we can measure its effects in an objective way. What I have postulated here is a well known well observed and measured phenomenon. I don't think that that is in question. I, however, don't think that we can put love under a microscope and study it scientifically because it is both objective and subjective and like an egg it can not be separated without losing its essential integrity. To try to do so destroys and renders useless or at least meaningless the very thing we are trying to study.

There are some things in life and the universe that simply defy the scientific method. They cannot be disected, measured, analyzed or quantumized. They must be accepted on their terms alone. Love in my opinion it one of those things and probably at the head of the list.

Science is a tool with limited applicability and scope. It is not the universal method of knowledge that we would like it to be. We cannot measure everything and simply because we can not measure it does not mean that it does not exist objectively and well as subjectively. There is no, and can never be one real theory of everything.

 

[Another God]

Originally posted by Royce
There are some things in life and the universe that simply defy the scientific method.

What makes you think that?

I disagree

 

[Royce]

The fact that I believe that there is more than physical matter and energy in and to life and the universe, that there are things that are both subjective and objective and are real, that the subjective can and does effect the objective. That is what make me think that.
"There are more things under the stars, Horatio, than are drempt of by your philosophers." (or something like that.)

 

[Zantra]

Originally posted by Another God
What makes you think that?

I disagree

I'll answer that- Because subjective influences skew logistics of objectivity. Our perception is how we objectively define things along with logistics. That perception is altered by subjective things. Follow me?

 

[Royce]

Gee, I wish I'd said that, Zantra! Thanks.

 

[Another God]

Originally posted by Zantra
I'll answer that- Because subjective influences skew logistics of objectivity. Our perception is how we objectively define things along with logistics. That perception is altered by subjective things. Follow me?

Oh sure, so the scientific method will never make us know the objective. Fine, I'll admit to that. I am compelled to by my understanding of the objective.

But as such, since I believe the scientific method (and any other method) simply CANNOT ever allow a subjective point of view to be able to know the objective, all the sci method could possibly strive for, is to align their subjective view with the objective reality.

And I believe that is what science tries to, and does do. It takes time, and revision, and alterations of previous beliefs, but it happens.

 

[Royce]

Is'nt all knowledge subjective whether it be knowledge of objective reality or abstract subjective thought? We can only know in our minds or brains if you prefer. Even the measurements of the pure objective are subjective perceptions of what we believe our intruments are measuring and telling us.
This is why, inpart, I say that we can not separate the two. One of the other reasons I believe as I do is that I am convinced that there is more to reality than objective materialism. Knowledge, logic, thought, reason, emotion, love, mind vs brain and heart,soul, spirit, whatever you prefer to call it is real but not objective. It can and does effect the real material world and thus can be indirectly measured. This IMO make it every bit ass real as the pure objective material rock we all allude to.