What Is Love?

[cal]

Alright so coming from the societies we come from, with the ideals and preconceptions those societies have indoctrinated into us, the question most people ask them selves at one point in their life or another is, "Am I in love?" Usually in relation to a single other consciousness. And to those who can introvert their consciousness, they go all Socratic and ask, "Well, what is love?"

 

I have been asking this question a lot lately, with no real answer other than that it's something for us to enjoy while we live out the blip in time that we're told has some significance or greater meaning. In fact, when asked what the significance, or purpose, or deep meaning is to one's individual life, or to any life at all, it usually has something to do with love (altruism included). That's not really a sufficient answer now is it though, because some consciousnesses never experience love, or they simply can't (not to mention it's a bit circular). So saying love is what gives life meaning is really to say that love is what gives those who love meaning. At which point everyone can follow a kind of "to each his/her own", but wouldn't that mean that if you love something that is defined as intrinsically evil (ethically speaking) then you have false love? What if you truly love an evil thing, like murder? Does the love of something that is conceptually opposite of love perverse the possibility for your love to be true in the first place? I can't think of an axiom that proves love to always be a positive thing.

 

So let's back up a bit, I realize I'm starting on a bunch of things here that may seem unrelated.

 

What is love? Empirically, neuroscience classifies it as a combination of dopamine and oxytocin (although I've heard oxytocin can be solely responsible for it as well), the psychological effect being produced when thoughts of interaction or bonding are stimulated, usually by the outside environment of a consciousness, but sometimes love can be stimulated (synthesized experience?) with nothing but the perceivers' mind. Many argue that love, along with other emotions and feelings, is not simply chemical, and that you can actuate a reasoning for love-like thinking in an a priori manner. They do this to fulfill the idea that love-like actions and thoughts could exist even without the chemicals responsible for them (and there is no empirical evidence to support this btw, but I see the logic behind it and agree it is possible).

 

That being said, we know love exists, like other emotions, even if it is only chemically and not a real physical thing beyond that. So why do it? Why "love" something? In any study of prosperity for a species, social bonding and cooperation are necessary for their survival and prosperity. Is that the only reason love evolved? It seems that logically understanding the necessities of cooperation are not enough for most people, they will still refuse to help or put thought into another consciousness without love being a factor. So biologically it's a cure, yet, most people tailor their love to specific organisms, and never love anything outside that group. For some, they only ever love a small group of friends, or a sexual partner. Why is it so limited?

 

Love knows no bounds, right? Why is it that people cut it short and decide to only love one other person, or to only have love for a group of friends, or some genetically similar lineage members? Love was almost conclusively evolved to help prosperity of the entire species, not just those who you happen to like more. Or was it? The fact that we have the ability to like and dislike things, liking them enough to say you love them, or disliking them enough to say you hate them, means that maybe love knows too many bounds?

 

Maybe fear isn't the mind killer, maybe it's love, bound by all the other restrictive emotions. So to the point of this whole thing that I'm trying to figure out... what, truly, is love? If it's just a chemical designed to get us to behave with each other, then why bother listening to it? Why not beat the system and refuse to ever love anything at all? You might say it's more than that, even if a chemical is responsible for it, love is a conceptual power that has other functions than to simply manipulate us into being satisfied with our short and usually meaningless lives for the sole purpose of continuing our species. What then is't?

 

If love is truly greater than what evolution says it is, why do we only target it at a few people? "But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?" Is Juliet the only person that Romeo could ever truly love? If love knows no bounds, and is the most powerful conceptual philosophy we can emotionally experience, why not love everyone, as abundantly and indiscriminately as possible? Why not Buddha the place up and even love things that aren't human, like nature and the universe? Could it be that loving nature means it would be too difficult for us to kill it and eat it for survival? Does that then make love simply a mechanism designed to fool us? Could it just be that I'm a sexually frustrated teenager and am looking for love in a hopeless place? Could it be that I've made too many pop culture references for this thread to hold the significance I'm looking for?

 

I have questions with no answers, pls halp. Also I just finished watching Angel Beats if anyone is familiar with that show, which may explain some of my disillusionment.

 

[EDIT] Currently the main _M^O_D^I_F^I_E^D question to be answered in this thread is: Why limit your love, why not instead love everyone, as abundantly and indiscriminately as possible?

Edited March 9, 2013 by Snax

[Eclogite]

Eros, Agape, Storge, Philia.

 

Which do you wish to talk about? Your confuse when you conflate these four different forms of love. (And of course I love Margaritas, which is the fifth kind of love and is much more important than the other four.)

[cal]

Eros, Agape, Storge, Philia.

 

Which do you wish to talk about? Your confuse when you conflate these four different forms of love. (And of course I love Margaritas, which is the fifth kind of love and is much more important than the other four.)

Well that's exactly my point now isn't it? It doesn't matter if it's family love, friendship love, love of a partner (to be "in love"), since they all are derived purely from the concept of raw love, which is what Agape love is- unconditional, raw, unadulterated love.

 

I'm asking why is it that we take the pure form of love, it's unconditional form, and then put conditions on it, and limit it to be the other three forms of love? Why not just use agape love for everything if that's what pure love is about?

 

As a side note, knowing this forum, I recognize that debate on how "pure love" is defined will probably come up. I mean pure love as it's rawest conceptual form, the unconditional Agape form. I understand why there is classification for how love is used (hence the three other forms) but I don't understand why they are often the only ones used, or why people tend to only look for love with a sexual partner and no other kind of love.

[Eclogite]

I think there is almost no similarity between the different forms of love, other than they are human 'experiences'. Lumping them together means we might as well lump all emotions together and just call them feelings, nothing more than feelings, trying to forget my feelings of love. Teardrops rolling down on my face, trying to forget my feelings of love.

Feelings, for all my life I'll feel it. I wish I've never met you, girl; you'll never come again. Feelings, wo-o-o feelings, wo-o-o, feel you again in my arms. Etc.http://www.metrolyrics.com/feeling-lyrics-albert-king.html

[LaurieAG]

Empirically, neuroscience classifies it as a combination of dopamine and oxytocin (although I've heard oxytocin can be solely responsible for it as well), the psychological effect being produced when thoughts of interaction or bonding are stimulated, usually by the outside environment of a consciousness, but sometimes love can be stimulated (synthesized experience?) with nothing but the perceivers' mind.

Hi Snax,

 

I don't know about oxytocin but dopamine plays an important part in the withdrawal process of opiate addicts as when the addict is in the grip of addiction their brain ceases dopamine production and when they come down cold turkey it takes a while before their natural dopamine production restarts.

 

Over 30 years ago I was a volunteer counselor for a local drug referral center and the usual procedure for treating addicts, either withdrawing cold turkey, or those who had overdosed and had been treated with narcan, was basically rohypnol (yes the date rape drug) and talking them down. For withdrawals we would pick up the prescriptions from the president, who was a doctor, pick up the addict and then take them to the vice president, who was a chemist who would open up especially, let the addict present the script and collect their medication and then take them back to the center to supervise their dosage.

 

One person who was shaking so much after taking 2 tablets that the paintings were shaking on the walls, and it took two of us a half an hour of talking about this or that before they stopped shaking. We handed them over to others after the initial contact and their dosage was reduced over as short a period as possible, while their psychological support continued until they had regained their self confidence.

 

I suppose treating fellow humans equally, regardless of their station in life, is more like a love of humanity than a human love as such.

[CraigD]

Let’s dispense with classical titles, and use phrases from a language we all speak: Sexual love, the feeling had when wanting to have sex with another person; Object love, the feeling had for a class of non-persons, such as collectable books, figures, coins, postage stamps, etc; Subject love, the feeling had for a subject, such as math and science, in general or specialized disciplines; love of self; love of one’s children; love of small, cute, furry animals; love of country. The list goes on, and can be redefined and categorized fluidly, from the four classical Greek ones Eclogite cited, to more modern psychoanalytic schemes like Fromm’s, to using physiochemistry and brain imaging techniques to map them to different brain areas, hormones, and neurochemicals.

 

I'm asking why is it that we take the pure form of love, it's unconditional form, and then put conditions on it, and limit it to be the other three forms of love? Why not just use agape love for everything if that's what pure love is about?

Like Eclogite, I don’t think these various forms of love necessarily or often have much in common. Mental states and behaviors associated with one kind appear to have different neurophysiological origins, involve different emergent mental properties we can call “intentions”, and result in dramatically different behaviors and physical outcomes. So assuming that, because we in our present consensus, language-influenced culture categorize them under a single term, “love”, they must be special forms of a general, “pure” metaphysical substance is, I think, a learning-blocking error – as Eclogite termed it, correctly I think, conflation.

 

My criticism here is from an objective, scientific philosophical perspective. From a human social perspective, I think we should recognize and acknowledge that the conflation of the many forms of love isn’t accidental, like an inaccuracy in a 19th century trigonometry table introduced by a mistake in a professional human calculator’s paper and pencil arithmetic, but purposeful, intentional, and reasoned. An individual or society can gain great advantage over others – and reflect it by becoming socially or population genetically dominant over time – by effectively employing conflated ideas of love in forms such as religion, nationalism, and morality. The particulars of how this is done appear complicated, as evidenced by the fact that even the people who seem best at it – influential artist, political revolutionaries and dictators, etc. –make serious mistakes.

[cal]

I think there is almost no similarity between the different forms of love, other than they are human 'experiences'. Lumping them together means we might as well lump all emotions together and just call them feelings...

I don't see it that way. You can take your love for friends and place it on a sexual partner, I mean after all, your "soul-mate" is supposed to be someone that you could be best friends with, right? And you can love a friend like a brother or sister, so I don't see how these loves are so different besides who they're directed at in relation to their genetic distance from you. You might say that you love your brother differently than you can ever love one of your friends, to which I say you are very closed minded and unaccepting of emotions (or have less-than-desirable friends).

 

 

dopamine plays an important part in the withdrawal process of opiate addicts as when the addict is in the grip of addiction their brain ceases dopamine production and when they come down cold turkey it takes a while before their natural dopamine production restarts...

 

I suppose treating fellow humans equally, regardless of their station in life, is more like a love of humanity than a human love as such.

Dopamine does a lot of stuff, I was just saying that it is commonly tied to how we experience love, among other things that it does.

 

That last sentence you posted would be classified as unconditional love for mankind, which is what altruism is based upon. My question remains, why not just be entirely altruistic and love everyone as they were your best friend, or your brother, etc?

 

 

Sexual love, the feeling had when wanting to have sex with another person;

Isn't that just lust? I mean to be "in-love" with someone doesn't mean you love her just because she lets you shoot it into her, right? There's something beyond that which constitutes the reason you love that person. Well, there's supposed to be, at least, so I don't think sexualism is a form of love, it's just sexualism and nothing more (not to say it's a bad thing or isn't a very positive thing for a relationship, just saying it isn't what constitutes love).

 

 

to using physiochemistry and brain imaging techniques to map them to different brain areas, hormones, and neurochemicals...

 

Like Eclogite, I don’t think these various forms of love necessarily or often have much in common. Mental states and behaviors associated with one kind appear to have different neurophysiological origins, involve different emergent mental properties we can call “intentions”, and result in dramatically different behaviors and physical outcomes.

Okay and here's another thing I mean to propose to you, the online science community- When a part of the brain lights up when someone says they love a person as opposed to a different part of the brain lighting up when they say they love life, does that mean those different parts are responsible for those emotions, or does that mean the consciousness is targeting different parts in relation to what those parts monitor? Just saying those different parts are responsible for spatial relation (identifying other people in your environment) or logical faculties of your mind (to be able to say you love life itself) is not to say those parts are what feels love; love is the aftermath of what part of your brain is targeted, but it's the same chemical/set of chemicals released, just directed to different concepts. So as far as I can see here, all love is fundamentally the same, just targeted at different things using different mechanisms.

 

If you haven't ever done it, you can get into a prescient state of consciousness manually by thinking about it, similar to transcendence in meditation but you skip the meditation part. I've done this quite often and I find that my love (any kind of love) is derived from the same initial seeds of consciousness and simply aimed at concrete concepts that can relate the love back, making it understood by the consciousness. For example, love seems to be the only emotion that is endless in proportion to what the conscious mind can experience, and thus needs to be funneled into specific areas of the mind in order to not overtake the whole thing. I've played around with this though, because I didn't see the necessity of it, and when you open the gates into your other mind-spaces it directly triggers euphoria and gives way to an easier method of turning off the temporal lobe. Love seems to have other practical uses within our own minds aside from just the love of a small group of other people around us. Also, I realize most of what I'm saying here will be taken with a grain of salt because deep meditation is pseudoscience at this point, but I encourage you to try it yourself if not just for the experience.

 

I'm talking a lot, but I'm not saying anything. Let me try to rephrase... maybe I'm different, or everyone else reading this is, but love in any form seems that it can be reworked into a different form. Wouldn't that suggest that all the different forms of love are based on the same thing within our consciousnesses? And even if you argue that they aren't (and I don't know how you could prove that argument unless you also often delve into your own subconscious with transcendence or prescient mind-states), then why can different forms of love be reworked and applied to things that they are not traditionally derived from, like loving a friend like a sibling, loving a parent like a friend, loving a partner like a friend, etc?

 

See to me all love is derived from the same place, our own consciousnesses (or subconsciousness's, whatevs), and is thus egotistical (and therefore unethical) to limit what we apply it to. So again, why not love all things unconditionally? Why put bounds on what should know no bounds?

Edited March 4, 2013 by Snax

[CraigD]

Sexual love, the feeling had when wanting to have sex with another person;

Isn't that just lust? I mean to be "in-love" with someone doesn't mean you love her just because she lets you shoot it into her, right?

Sexual desire – let’s avoid the L word for now – is rarely in my experience as simple as the desire to ejaculate. Women doesn’t ejaculate, yet experiences sexual desire. So I don’t think the desire to ejaculate in an orifice of another can be equated with sexual desire.

 

I try to avoid denigrating “lust”, as in my experience the mental boundary between it and various sorts of love often termed “pure” or “noble” is very blurry and overlapping.

 

Physiologically, sexual desire – or, given that desire isn’t physiologically measurable, I should say sexual arousal – involves a lot of potent, emotion, though, and behavior-affecting neurochemistry, large among them the release and uptake of oxytocin. Oxytocin is also heavily involved in peripartum and ongoing interactions between mothers and infants, and less heavily, but detectably, with distinguishing strangers from friends.

 

If one accepts the scientific view that thoughts, emotions, and behavior are emergent phenomena of their underlying physiology, then the body’s use of the same neurochemical systems for very different lust, love, friendship, and simple recognition feelings, thoughts, and social interactions suggest that, like their underlying physiological causes, these feelings, thoughts, and social interactions likewise have a lot in common.

 

to using physiochemistry and brain imaging techniques to map them to different brain areas, hormones, and neurochemicals...

Okay and here's another thing I mean to propose to you, the online science community- When a part of the brain lights up when someone says they love a person as opposed to a different part of the brain lighting up when they say they love life, does that mean those different parts are responsible for those emotions, or does that mean the consciousness is targeting different parts in relation to what those parts monitor?

This question gets right at a key distinction between the scientific view that consciousness, in the sense you use above, Snax, is an emergent phenomena of phenomena such as those measured by fMRI scanners and biochemical test, and the mystical, spiritual one that these phenomena are due to “inert” bodily matter being “animated” by “spirit”.

 

For the most part, I think the emergence view is nearly completely dominant in present day science, though only fairly recently – the last 150 or so years – prior to which it wasn’t unreasonable to scientifically hypothesize a model where spirit was a real, physically measurable and even separable-from-the-body stuff. As biological science succeeded in imaging smaller and better details of plant and bodies, it found not spirit-stuff, but “biochemistry all the way down” as far as it can detect. So the “consciousness emerges from non-conscious chemistry” model bear the “non-conscious chemistry is animated or controlled by a different kind of phenomena, spirit” one.

 

There are a few arguably scientific dissents against this view. For example, low on my personal scale is biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic field theory. Higher on it are quantum consciousness theories such as Roger Penrose’s. Then there is “new mysterianism”, which while a offering a fun (for those into such things) philosophical journey, is, I think, appallingly defeatist, and due to be shown to be simply wrong. I’ll mention John Searle and his Chinese room argument, but only to say while I find it a gripping philosophical thought experiment, I think it appeals to intuition so strongly it should not be considered rational.

 

If you haven't ever done it, you can get into a prescient state of consciousness manually by thinking about it, similar to transcendence in meditation but you skip the meditation part. I've done this quite often ...

You seem to be using the term “prescient” differently than I’m accustom to. I understand it to mean what its root word, “pre” meaning before, and “science”, from “scire”, meaning to know suggests: to know something before perceiving it. Thus the word “prescient” can mean ordinary unconscious or conscious mental guesswork, such as anticipating where a thrown ball will go, or making profitable investments in the stock market, but in my experience more often refers, especially when describing an unusual state of consciousness, to what psychics and paranormalists call presience or precognition.

 

What do you mean by it, Snax? Not the latter, I hope, as categorically, claims of its occurrence are pretty soundly scientifically discredited.

 

From your description, I think you’re describing a state of love-filled reverie, not one in which you can magically see into the future.

[cal]

You seem to be using the term “prescient” differently than I’m accustom to. I understand it to mean what its root word, “pre” meaning before, and “science”, from “scire”, meaning to know suggests: to know something before perceiving it. Thus the word “prescient” can mean ordinary unconscious or conscious mental guesswork, such as anticipating where a thrown ball will go, or making profitable investments in the stock market, but in my experience more often refers, especially when describing an unusual state of consciousness, to what psychics and paranormalists call presience or precognition.

 

What do you mean by it, Snax? Not the latter, I hope, as categorically, claims of its occurrence are pretty soundly scientifically discredited.

 

From your description, I think you’re describing a state of love-filled reverie, not one in which you can magically see into the future.

I quite liked this response Craig, but out of it you have this question for me. The word prescient is exactly how you define it, being able to predict things, but the mind-state I'm talking about is a few shades away from it.

 

If you've read Dune then the prescient mind-states you've defined are exactly what they do in Dune, however advanced prediction and precognition isn't what I'm describing. I guess I've used the word a little incorrectly but it's the closest thing to it that I can describe, as I've never seen an actual word or definition for the mind-state I'm describing (and so have been left to name and define it myself). Let me explain this a little deeper so hopefully some validity can be found in it. This "prescient" mind-state I'm describing is prescient in how you can view yourself. The mind-state alone is exactly the same mind-state achieved when a person's consciousness learns Transcendence, or "extremely deep meditation". If you properly achieve deep meditation, you can turn off your temporal lobe and even manually create synesthesia of your body, or do other things like split your consciousness into different work-spaces, if you will, and have multiples of your consciousness working on top of each other. Or at least that's what I'm told, I've never meditated, but I can do all the same stuff using my own introspective method. So it's the difference between margarine and butter, but I hope you get the point. The same things can happen when you take powerful hallucinogenics as well (like LSD, Ayahuasca, Psilocybin Mushroom, DiMethylTriptamine and other psychedelics). But I like being able to do it manually, so I've never tried any of the chemical forms either. I guess my opinion on this mind-state is biased since I don't know if there are any significant differences from when I do it manually to when someone does it via meditation or drug, but from any objective analysis of it, they are all essentially the same mind-state.

 

The reason I call it a Prescient Mind-state, aside from its manual activation, is because I like folding my consciousness onto itself a few times, which is like the splitting up thing I also described. The more times you fold your consciousness onto itself, the more consciousnesses you have to work with and the more mind-space and processing power is available. Any significantly powerful thought I've ever had I would credit birth to a time during one of these mental sessions. Like pretty much any strong philosophical or scientific hypothesis I've ever come up with was created and seeding during one of the induced prescient mind-states. Saying this now, I feel as if that discredits any intellect I would normally have without being able to do it manually haha. But I guess admitting one's self is stupid is at least wise in its humbleness? Either way, from what I can make of it, a lot of people have the capability to explore their consciousness and subconsciousness in the fashion I've described, and I've never once heard anyone say it was a negative experience for them, so I hope you can see that there is some validity behind the existence and practical use of that mind-state.

 

As far as things about myself I've figured out during a prescient (/transcendent) mind-state, and how powerful it is- being able to be hyper introspect on that level gives way to the root of problems and issues with one's self much quicker and much more profoundly than one would come about when going about the day normally. For example, I can actively and manually alter my consciousness and any extension of it at will when I'm in a prescient mind-state (also part of the reason I think "prescient" is a fit word for it). On top of being able to turn off your temporal lobe, you can also turn off emotion centers (granted these things are not easy to do). So I decided being sad was never necessary, I logic'd my way through the inequities of sadness during a prescient trip two years ago and presto, I've never consciously felt sadness ever since (I have from subconscious sources during dreams though, but I don't think it's fit to count those since the function was to eliminate them from normal conscious states). This is a weird thing to claim I've found as most people think that is impossible or improbable, and I guess for most people it is, but I'd like to think having control over yourself really isn't that impossible lol. Again I realize some things I've said here may seem silly or that I'm talking out my *** but I'd love to discuss this more with you if you need more things to help validate its existence or functions. Everyone I know irl that I try to talk to about this is usually incredibly disinterested in being more introspective, and I don't know why haha.

 

I guess I'm saying useless stuff at this point if you simply don't think there's validity behind my statements. Let me try a different way. Think about "love" in the sense of how it's fundamentally defined- the positive emotional attraction of one consciousness to an object or organism. That definition is where other classifications of love are derived from, so I still don't understand why people limit their love. Bringing this full-circle, after the first few times I figured out how to hyper-introspect and do cool **** with my brain, I turned off sadness, and then shortly after reasoned out (via way of investigation inside my subconscious) that my ego was really the only thing limiting my love. I "took away filters" (that's how I describe it, because again, I haven't seen any other solid descriptions of these kinds of things) for certain emotion gates, most of them being joy-related (not happiness, I said joy for a reason) and love-related. So now, consciously, in or out of a prescient mind-state I'm always enjoying life more and find it exceptionally easier to love people and immediately become attracted to them in a friendly sense. But it doesn't stop with people, I've since also enjoyed significantly more music (I actually can't find a song or genre that I don't enjoy anymore) and significantly more food and culture in general. This is probably babble at this point, I apologize for the wall of text, but I hope it answered your question, haha.

 

David Lynch has some good quotes on the subject-

 

"If you have a golf-ball-sized consciousness, when you read a book, you'll have a golf-ball-sized understanding; ... and as you go about your day, a golf-ball-sized happiness."

 

"Little fish swim on the surface, but the big ones swim down below. If you can expand the container you're fishing in - your consciousness - you can catch bigger fish."

Edited March 5, 2013 by Snax

[LaurieAG]

Its probably easier to look at vice and virtue because they both cover the entire ground from the majority of perspectives.

 

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

 

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

[cal]

Its probably easier to look at vice and virtue because they both cover the entire ground from the majority of perspectives.

I don't see how unconditional love for all things could be a vice.

 

You could say, well what if someone murders your whole family before your eyes? To which I answer that "turn the other cheek" becomes applicable. I'm not religious, in fact I'm rather against the whole thing, but the philosophy that Jesus tried to teach about Love is still a good philosophy. So what vice is there in pure altruistic love for the universe?

[LaurieAG]

I don't see how unconditional love for all things could be a vice.

Hi Snax,

 

Altruism is a virtue not a vice.

[cal]

Altruism is a virtue not a vice.

So then why did you provide links for both lol?

 

Also if we can all agree it's more virtuous than vice-like, then again, my question persists, why does everyone refuse to love everyone else? Why are we so limited? PLS ANSWER DIRECTLY THIS TIME. pls. lol.

[LaurieAG]

So then why did you provide links for both lol?

 

Also if we can all agree it's more virtuous than vice-like, then again, my question persists, why does everyone refuse to love everyone else? Why are we so limited? PLS ANSWER DIRECTLY THIS TIME. pls. lol.

Hi Snax,

 

Directly Love is about reciprocity and is a virtue as such, otherwise it is a vice.

 

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

The Golden Rule or ethic of reciprocity is a maxim,[1] ethical code or morality[2] that essentially states either of the following:

(Positive form of Golden Rule): One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.[1]

(Negative form of Golden Rule): One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated.

Main article: Silver Rule

This concept describes a "reciprocal", or "two-way", relationship between one's self and others that involves both sides equally, and in a mutual fashion.[3][4]

This concept can be explained from the perspective of psychology, philosophy, sociology and religion. Psychologically, it involves a person empathizing with others. Philosophically, it involves a person perceiving their neighbor as also "an I" or "self."[3][4] Sociologically, this principle is applicable between individuals, between groups, and also between individuals and groups. (For example, a person living by this rule treats all people with consideration, not just members of his or her in-group). Religion is an integral part of the history of this concept.[1][5]

Edited March 6, 2013 by LaurieAG

[CraigD]

If you properly achieve deep meditation, you can turn off your temporal lobe and even manually create synesthesia of your body, or do other things like split your consciousness into different work-spaces, if you will, and have multiples of your consciousness working on top of each other. Or at least that's what I'm told, I've never meditated, but I can do all the same stuff using my own introspective method.

...

I guess I'm saying useless stuff at this point if you simply don't think there's validity behind my statements.

Snax, the problem, from the perspective of participating in a science forum, is not that you’re not saying useless stuff unless we believe there’s validity behind your statements, but that you’re making unsupported claims.

 

If you are, as you claim, able to turn off your temporal lobe by an unusual means (not, for example, due to frontotemporal lobe dementia, or via rTMS, as described in papers such as Alan Snider et al’s 2006 Savant-like numerosity skills revealed in normal people by magnetic pulses) you have an unusual ability, which scientist would be interested in examining. The claim is not difficult or intrusive to test, nor the state unusual when caused by artificial devices, deformity, injury, or disease) – fMRI images it clearly, and it can be indirectly detected by simple perception tests, such as the one described in Snider’s paper, or depicted in the famous matchstick counting scene in the movie Rain Man.

 

Unless you’ve actually had it shown via such tests, I doubt that you can do what you claim. I’ve read and watched enough scientific and popular writing and documentary TV and film on the subject – much of it by Snider, a multi-disciplinarian with a keen interest in it – that if the ability you describe had been observed, I think I would have heard of it – though of course I’ve not read all the literature, so if anyone knows of any about someone who can suppress temporal lobe activity at will, please post a link.

 

Snax, if you can back up your claim with links or references to credible scientific sources, please do. If not, you should not make them in these forums. If you can’t provide any support for them, but are confident in your claim, I urge you to contact Snyder or a similar scientist, and arrange to have them tested.

 

The ability you are claiming is not a minor novelty, but potentially a revolutionary increase in human potential. At present, most people with abnormally low temporal lobe activity are severely mentally handicapped, because the temporal lobe is important to cognition, such as the ability to understand analogies. Snyder is hopeful that it may be possible to refine artificial techniques such as those described in his paper above to allow people to have ”savant skills” without the accompanying handicaps.

 

To continue with your references to Dune, this ability to selectively and temporarily induce savantism in a neurotypical person make possible a real person with abilities similar to the mentats depicted in its fantasy world.

[Rade]

[EDIT] Currently the main question to be answered in this thread is: Why limit your love?

Love comes in many forms, agape or unconditional love is but one form of love, as others have replied. Love as a concept is an emotional response to values. A value is that which a human acts to gain and/or keep; values presuppose that alternatives exist. Something can be valued (e.g., toilet paper in the stall) yet not loved. So, we value toilet paper when needed, but we can love art or ice cream, or another human, etc. that we also value. So, what sets aside the different emotional responses to what we value ? I suggest (for discussion) that the love emotional response combines conscious and subconscious actions to the valuation outcome, whereas other types of value (such as toilet paper present when needed) are purely a conscious emotional response. If so, then the role played by the subconscious (e.g., it is known that the subconscious filters perception that enters conscious) would help explain why so many errors in judgement can result from the love response, why love is always limited and can never be purely unconditional, and why the end result of love is often tragic disillusionment, a shattered illusion of conscious desire to value unconditionally.

[cal]

Snax, the problem, from the perspective of participating in a science forum, is not that you’re not saying useless stuff unless we believe there’s validity behind your statements, but that you’re making unsupported claims.

How do I support a claim of what happens inside my own consciousness? I'm talking about the mind for most of this, not the brain, which as far as I know, has absolutely no way to empirically prove it exists in the first place with the exception that we all pretty much agree that we all have one (a mind that is). Other than that, I don't see any way of providing empirical evidence for the mind-states I've described, unless other people do it and again, we all agree it exists.

 

However for the shifts in brain function I described there are empirical ways to observe such things as you say...

 

 

Unless you’ve actually had it shown via such tests, I doubt that you can do what you claim. I’ve read and watched enough scientific and popular writing and documentary TV and film on the subject – much of it by Snider, a multi-disciplinarian with a keen interest in it – that if the ability you describe had been observed, I think I would have heard of it – though of course I’ve not read all the literature, so if anyone knows of any about someone who can suppress temporal lobe activity at will, please post a link.

 

Snax, if you can back up your claim with links or references to credible scientific sources, please do. If not, you should not make them in these forums. If you can’t provide any support for them, but are confident in your claim, I urge you to contact Snyder or a similar scientist, and arrange to have them tested.

 

The ability you are claiming is not a minor novelty, but potentially a revolutionary increase in human potential. At present, most people with abnormally low temporal lobe activity are severely mentally handicapped, because the temporal lobe is important to cognition, such as the ability to understand analogies. Snyder is hopeful that it may be possible to refine artificial techniques such as those described in his paper above to allow people to have ”savant skills” without the accompanying handicaps.

Lol whoops, I made a big mistake, sorry. Every time I said Temporal Lobe, I meant the Parietal Lobe, the one responsible for our sense of time and physical input senses. The Parietal Lobe was implied with my writing since I talked about synesthesia, but I kept saying Temporal Lobe, so I apologize for that. That being said though, I realize it waters down what you posted a little, since most of it has to do with the temporal region, but you still have a point. There are ways to test it, and many monks have been studied for the ability to shut down their perception of time. The same thing has been found to happen with many psychedelic chemicals. What I describe is really not a mysticism, there are firm theories on how and why humans can manually shut down these aspects of their consciousness. I suppose that doesn't undo your claim of my way being abnormal though, and I suppose you're right.

 

As far as I can tell my method mirrors deep meditation almost exactly, except I don't have to go "into" meditation for it to occur, I can actively achieve the mind-state without having to relax my mind. In fact, I've found that over-stimulating my mind works quite well in activating it. For example, when you do deep meditation, you're supposed to be in a dark room with no noise interference (or binueral noise at the most) to help induce the hyper-introspective state, but if I engage in non-trivial conversation with someone and rapidly move my eyes and overstimulate my senses, I can get into gear quicker than if I were to attempt it by myself in a sensory-minimal room. I don't think I need evidence for this claim beyond what you could find in google searches on deep meditation, so I'll spare you links unless you're super interested.

 

You also mentioned Mentats, which is yes what I was talking about, but keep in mind I'm describing introspection of one's own mind, which you can be exceptionally prescient about if you know yourself well enough. I'm not saying the prescience extends very much further beyond what's contained in your own consciousness.

 

 

Love as a concept is an emotional response to values. A value is that which a human acts to gain and/or keep; values presuppose that alternatives exist. Something can be valued (e.g., toilet paper in the stall) yet not loved. So, we value toilet paper when needed, but we can love art or ice cream, or another human, etc. that we also value.

But again, why not love that there is toilet paper available instead of just liking it? And furthermore why not love when the toilet paper is not available? You might say, well when it's not available, then it hinders the actions you are trying to pursue - wiping your *** - which is how we define it as a non-positive thing, and gives us reason to not like it. But isn't that quite a selfish thing to say? As far as judging things to be negative or positive, it's always in relation to how it affects yourself and other human beings. In relation to the universe, it's entirely neutral. The universe will never have a positive or negative take on whether or not toilet paper is readily available. So why not show love at all possible times? I don't see how it can produce negativity back unto the one who loves. Granted, the universe doesn't have a stance on whether or not you love it either, but since we're relating this all back onto ourselves, why not love anyways? It would be selfish to say you don't love someone (brotherly/friendly either way) because you have no reason to love them. Right? You don't hate the restroom stall because there's no toilet paper, so it's not fair to have a any view but a positive one in the face of a neutral or upward situation, even if there is no toilet paper (which is again, ultimately neutral).

 

Reverence for life does not only extend to the life you are simply aware of, it applies to all life, and to all people who you ever communicate with in any form, right?. So why not chose to love everyone, and be positively active in that love by consciously experiencing it? You might say that you can't always be happy/positive/loving about everything all day, to which I ask why not? So far nothing has stopped me, so I don't see why it should stop you. Just because something happened to you which you can subjectively say is negative, that still gives you no right to not love it. The basis on which we can objectively derive what right you have is in relation to the overall universe, which will always have a neutral stance. So again, how can you allow yourself to not unconditionally love things? I don't see a way for people to logically come about a conclusion that argues for non-love or a negative stance.

 

 

So, what sets aside the different emotional responses to what we value ? I suggest (for discussion) that the love emotional response combines conscious and subconscious actions to the valuation outcome, whereas other types of value (such as toilet paper present when needed) are purely a conscious emotional response. If so, then the role played by the subconscious (e.g., it is known that the subconscious filters perception that enters conscious) would help explain why so many errors in judgement can result from the love response, why love is always limited and can never be purely unconditional, and why the end result of love is often tragic disillusionment, a shattered illusion of conscious desire to value unconditionally.

You argue that we can make value judgements for what we can love, but those values are heavily biased are they not? Again, those judgements are made (subconsciously more often than not as you say) in relation to ourselves alone. Yet, we can objectively say this is what happens. How can we know this if there wasn't a logical way of understanding this, either empirically or in an a priori manner? We know that our subconscious filters input and persuades us to pass judgement almost unreasonably sometimes, so it should be apparent that all you have to do to fix that problem is consciously logically compensate for what we know are altered value judgements.

 

I mean the fact that we're talking about it right now means there is a way to understand and fix the problem, doesn't it? So since we know that we have subconscious or even built-up conscious filters, all we have to do is recognize those filters inside of ourselves and then relieve them from duty to allow us to unconditionally love again, right?

 

Also, as a disclaimer, like almost every post I've ever put up here, I don't necessarily believe even half-heartily anything I say, I'm just trying to logic through this to come to a conclusion. Like I said in another thread, I'm often playing the devil's advocate just to see what reasoning is stimulated from an opposing viewpoint. So when I argue the other side, the argument is usually not totally solid, but I still like seeing what logics are used to address the argument anyways. =P