Can every1 please tell me the answer to this-> WHAT IS LOVE?

Yes, love is emotion, emotions come from the brain and are based in chemical interactions and electric impulses.
But, what causes those chemical interactions and electric impulses?
I mean, when you feel the emotion "love" the cause is the biological process?
And, leaving the emotions, when you think 2+ 2 = 4, the cause of that idea is a biological process?
If yes, then when you think that emotions or ideas are chemical and electrical interactions, the cause is also those chemical and electrical interactions.
But chemical and electrical interactions don't have any criteria of truth. They occur and that's all.
Then how can you be sure that ideas and emotions are caused by chemical and electrical interactions? Don't you think it would be a contradiction?

Mmm...delicious paradox. Do we think our thoughts or do our thoughts think us? I would say that our very first thought is the response to a stimulus, and everything else is a chain reaction that acts very much like the universe: big bang, growing area of thought, reaching its peak, and then dwindling down to that last spark before you die. (And then, if you believe in reincarnation: new "universe")
val: what do you mean by:

Taliesin, I meant that electrical and chemical interactions have no conscience. They have no values. An electric impulse is not good or bad in itself, nor true or false.
As for the chain reaction: I don't accept that kind of causality. Did you read "The new alliance" of Prigogine (Nobel Price of chemistry) ? Or Atlan's "Entre le crystal et la fumée" (sorry, but I don't know the title of the english translation) ?

No, I didn't, what are the books about, exactly? I'm still unclear as to your point on the issue that chemical interactions "have no conscience". Please explain further.
Why do you "not accept" the causality of brain reactions? From what I've learned while studying the brain, an external stimulus creates an internal impulse, usually in a neurotransmitter, which causes other transmitters to cause a response. In the case of love, the stimulus would be the other person behaving in an attractive manner, which leads your brain to say: 'hey, this person's pretty cool,' which in turn leads to you behaving in a similar way towards them, cycling and building on itself until you have love.
You also spoke of a "contradiction." What did you mean by that, too.

Taliesin:
1. Chemical interactions have no conscience the same way as a stone has not.
2. The books I mencioned are about causality, refusing a deterministic universe, like in Laplace conception. That applies to all natural phenomena.
3. The problem is not exactly to refuse the brain reactions. Ideas do not exist without brain activity. But saying that they are caused by brain activity leads us to problematic situations. If you say that my idea of 2+2 = 4 is an effect of a neuronal stimulation, why not think that 2+2 = 5? Ideas have coherency. You can think of a tree, although you are not seeing it. We can even have the concept of causes although we never see or feel causes, only phenomena succeeding in time.
I didn't say that an external stimulus does not create an internal impulse and so on. What I said was that an idea, although it corresponds to a particular brain activity, is not caused by it. External stimulus have no coherence. They come constantly from everywhere. But your mind creates patterns, concepts, that give some of those stimulus -those your mind selects- a mental coherence.
4. Your example of a love situation, is entirely empirical. I respect empiricism, but I think it is a theory that entails unacceptable consequences, as you can see in Berkeley and Hume.
In the case you mencioned, I must observe that you can see a great number of people "behaving in an attractive manner" but you don't love all of them. You choose one, because you already have an interior pattern of what is attractive to you, to your sensibility.

Val: Sorry, but I'm still not getting how

fits in with what you're saying. The books sound interesting, I think I might check them out, but the "2+2=5?" scenario is based on flawed logic. The reason that we think 2+2=4 is because numbers are symbols, made to correlate to reality, so we came up with words for a single object, and quantities after that, so the number "two" stands for a duo of objects, the same way that a double set of duos is a quartet. Therefore, we can't turn math into something subjective, because it is empirically based. When you reject empiricism, then you basically reject all language and science.
Now as far as love is concerned, linguistic abstractions such as 'love' or 'fear', etc., can't really be quantified, since they aren't based on things like "I love you [this] much," they just...exist. Neuroscientists know that many brain structures, such as the amygdala, influence/control emotion, but they don't really know the cause of it yet. So to speak of love is really to be poetic about your feelings, and while we might find out somewhere in the future that there are actually tiers and amounts of emotion, to relate to love in technical terms is missing the point.

Love is the ability to put yourself in someone or something else's place, and is the opposite of egocentrism.

What is egocentrism? I struggled with that one until I heard Houston psychologist John Bradshaw explain it simply. He said egocentrism is normal for a four year old. If you asked a four year old girl if she had a brother, she would reply, "yes." But if you asked her if her brother had a sister, she would be totally confused because she is unable to put herself in another's place at that age.

Egocentrism may be normal in an early stage of brain development, but if it persists long into adulthood it is a sign of arrested emotional or spiritual development. Growing past egocentrism is mature love.

Re: Can every1 please tell me the answer to this-> WHAT I


honey child, for a mere $500 i can show you.

that is, if you don't mind a fella' with a truss.

Taliesin, chemical interactions are natural phenomena, they are not rational entities. I think this is obvious.
About the nature of numbers, I think it is a fascinating question -and I think you are wrong -, but to be discussed as a specific topic. Why don't you initiate it?
About the question of this topic, "what is love" I think you are mixing two different things: when you feel an emotion, there is a correspondent activity in your brain. The problem is to consider that the physiologic activity is the cause of your emotion.
I don't reject empirical experience, I reject empiricism as a theory.If empiricism was true, then science would be impossible (see Hume).
Greetings.

love is the happines we would consider impossible, and the respect we consider undeserved.

val: I still don't understand how or why

Fits into your argument. I've been re-reading your posts, and I'm still not getting why it matters if chemical interactions are "rational entities" or "have a criteria of truth." I'm sorry to keep bringing this up, but I truly have no idea what you're getting at. If, after you respond, I still don't get it, then I'll just stop asking, because even I'm getting on my nerves. On the 'numbers' question: why don't you go to my "Truth" thread and use numbers as an example, and explain why you think I'm wrong. Thanks.

Taliesin:
You say that ideas are chemical interactions (etecetera). I say ideas cannot exist without chemical interactions, and brain activity, but they are not those chemical interactions or that brain activity.
If you think ideas are electrical and chemical activicty, then your theory (because it is an idea) is nothing more than a certain number of chemistry and electrical interactions. Like my theory.
In that case, what makes you think that your chemical and electrical interactions (your theory) are right and mine (my theory) are wrong? How can you distinguish between true or false chemical and electrical interactions?
I hope I have been clear enough this time.

Yes, thank you, I think I understand your point now. You're saying that while ideas are based on chemical interactions, they have some sort of separate quality that makes them more, hence your "rational entities" remark. Gotcha.
I love that you brought up truth again, since that's such a pervasive and fundamental concept. However, I'm not sure that emotions really fall under the criteria of being 'true': what you describe as 'love' might be completely different from what others define it as. This brings up an interesting question, though: If emotions like love are subjective, are they governed by reality, and physical laws? If not, then we might have accidentally created a proof for a higher being separate from reality. Oops.

I don't know. I reject the concept of god. But I cannot define what is an idea, although I accept ideas only exist as a "correspondence" to brain activity. If you read modern philosophers like Davidson or Searle you will see that they move around the subject without giving a clear answer. The curious debate between the neurobiologist Changeux and the philosopher Ricoeur - "Ce qui nous fait penser" (sorry, I don't know the english translation) isn't also very conclusive.

Yeah, Val, I get tangled up in the same quandary of believing that something exists, but not knowing why it exists. I think the translation is "That which makes us think." or something along those lines. I like that you brought up the fact of philosophers not actually answering questions to which they don't know the answer: I think that those are the questions we should be asking. However, some people dislike that, like Frank. :wink:
Frank: Don't get me wrong, I have an extremely high regard for your intellect; I just happen to disagree on that point.