Love and Evolution

[Led Zeppelin]

I love my wife. The reasons why I love her are not because of reasons like "She is fit" or "She is always at work on time!" I think the things I love her the most for are her frailties How can a feeling like this arise from inanimate chemicals or even in the most simple form of life?
inanimate

 

[Nesslig20]

Short answer: Emergence or Emergent Complexity

Long answer:

 

[Led Zeppelin]

Alright. So I get from these videos you believe that love could be the result of sort of "hive mind effect" like when certain ants in hive go out to find food. Also it might be a result of a program which evolved in us, like a computer program that is able to determine strategy. I don't think that either of these really answer my question. But I think the hive mind deserves more thought than is generally given to it. For example, what would be the difference if my visual perception of my surroundings were the result of insects crawling on to my face and given pheromon signals to my brain, instead of direct electric signal from my eyes?

The problem I have is that consciousness seems to be something that exists outside of this "hive mind". I am just as conscious in a completely dark and quiet room as a I would be in a room with the light on and music playing. I would still love my wife, even if I were not able to be affected by much or perhaps any outside stimuli.

Everyone knows you are a smart guy. Maybe I have completely missed your point?

 

[Nesslig20]

Alright. So I get from these videos you believe that love could be the result of sort of "hive mind effect" like when certain ants in hive go out to find food.

Well, the videos provide more comprehensive explanations, but sure. Individual ants or bees cannot make complex decisions, but the interaction between the individuals allows the the colony - as a whole - to make complex decisions. Hence complex phenomena that we would associate with consciousness can occur simply by the interaction of agents which do not exhibit the same properties on their own.

Likewise, our brains are made of trillions of neutrons with trillions of interactions between them. While we don't know exactly HOW this would give rise to our level of consciousness, there is every indication that consciousness as an emergence phenomenon is plausible and is consistent with neurological phenomenon.

Also a good vid:

Also it might be a result of a program which evolved in us, like a computer program that is able to determine strategy. I don't think that either of these really answer my question.

How so? Well...if you are referring to the exact mechanism for how neurology explains consciousness, then there is no answer as of yet. However, to go back to your original question of how things like feelings can arise from inanimate objects, emergence is still a good answer.

But I think the hive mind deserves more thought than is generally given to it. For example, what would be the difference if my visual perception of my surroundings were the result of insects crawling on to my face and given pheromon signals to my brain, instead of direct electric signal from my eyes?

I am not sure whether I follow.

The problem I have is that consciousness seems to be something that exists outside of this "hive mind". I am just as conscious in a completely dark and quiet room as a I would be in a room with the light on and music playing. I would still love my wife, even if I were not able to be affected by much or perhaps any outside stimuli.

....what? You haven't left your own brain when you are in a dark and silent room. The brain is the "hive mind" not the outside stimuli.

 

[Led Zeppelin]

One point I was trying to make was is if consciousness could arise in a creature that was solely dependent on a "hive" of other creatures for the transmission of the sense of one's surrounding. Like the way a queen bee might depend on information from other bees to maintain a hive.

Thank you for giving me a better understanding of the idea of emergence. It's kinda interesting.

 

[Nesslig20]

The queen doesn't maintain a hive like that. She just functions as the reproductive unit.

Also, you're welcome.

 

[DanDare]

Love is a part of a set of instincts that get us to produce children and protect them and one another.
It is selective to a degree, since you don't love a house fly the same way you love your wife or children. This is a problem with the word love being somewhat overloaded.
Its difficult for nature to provide complex creatures with complex instincts. Consider just the act of having sex and the ton of behaviors involved. So evolution by natural selection, as always, just does a 'good enough' job to provide improved probabilities of reproductive success. Some people don't succeed even with the same genetic make up, due to circumstance of development and life experience. Doesn't matter, enough succeed. That means that as long as the subject of your feelings is biologically compatible and you produce kids it doesn't matter what attributes you fixated on. It got you there.

 

[Led Zeppelin]

Love is a part of a set of instincts that get us to produce children and protect them and one another.

Can you list the rest of this set of instincts?

 

[DanDare]

lust
affection
parental concern
amee (friendship)
dependence and similar imprinting
protectiveness
I'm sure there are more

 

[Led Zeppelin]

Thank you for that.

 

[Sparhafoc]

I love my wife. The reasons why I love her are not because of reasons like "She is fit" or "She is always at work on time!" I think the things I love her the most for are her frailties How can a feeling like this arise from inanimate chemicals or even in the most simple form of life?
inanimate

Because such feelings - even if not specifically in this form - presented survival benefits among species that depended on one and other. This love feeling appears to be a feature of mammalian life. It's quite possible that other social organisms experience something equivalent and that we just miss their signalling of that feeling, but I think it's quite clear that other organisms beyond humans experience a deep affection for the presence of specific other individuals.

 

[BrachioPEP]

I totally agree, Sparhafoc.

I think it is the evolution of survival and other beneficial traits that have led to what we recognise as, ‘love’.

Whilst mammals are the best or more obvious example of caring and seeking partners (mammary glands help a lot with this), birds care for their young and have wonderful courtship displays not unlike those we have developed, however different they might appear between birds and humans (but I think they are very similar, given how each species operates and the body plans).

Even invertebrates have evolved characteristics that precede what we can recognise as caring/love/protection. There are half a dozen animals that take part in, ‘matriphagy’. Greater love has no beast, than she lay down her life for her family. Ironically (due to their widow actions) the key protagonist is a spider which produces more offspring than it can feed. Quite soon after birth, it allows the offspring to eat her alive which sustains it for enough time to grow and live independently.

If we consider the effects of falling in love and the varied reasons for it, it benefits all. It creates widespread monogamy which we then fight less about (think jealousy), and it keeps us together, (largely) and provides better chances for upbringing and discipline and commitment and future stability and planning ahead, so those little nuances (like fancying a quirky smile or modest dress sense or funny mistakes) will escalate in providing better bonding.

Evolution is highly complex when we look at it from our position. Each reproductive generation will have the same, similar and some different traits, so we are comparing in reality, (depending on how many offspring in that species over time) potentially millions of tiny changes, each having negative, neutral or positive benefits. Most will make little difference. The ones that do make a bigger difference (for good or bad under environmental or other conditions) will be more or less successful and adaptable to go on to produce offspring. Traits that locate or bond partnerships better (whatever they are or however odd) are more likely to stick around. Love seems to be a good thing for us and we can see many versions and potential progressions of it throughout the animal kingdom. There is a moth who can sense (with smell) a partner 7 miles away – a world record. With such relative short lives, they would not benefit from the human kind of love. Dogs have an almost irresistible desire for bitches on heat, so complex rituals are not necessary (as the route/method evolution took/found, was to strengthen the smell of the female as a means to procreate.

There is no reason to think that love (or anything else) needs explanations beyond the natural unless there is compelling reason to think so and then we can put it to the test. If we cannot test it, it is beyond the realm of science to even consider. Looking for holes in the hard work of science (whilst valid if correctly motivated) is just lazy and offers to alternative. Gaps are what we seek to find answers to. When the stars spell out, ‘God Bible True’ and David Copperfield has been questioned and tortured fully, we can then consider the limits of science and God.

 

[Sparhafoc]

There is no reason to think that love (or anything else) needs explanations beyond the natural unless there is compelling reason to think so...

Verum! Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

 

[Led Zeppelin]

Because such feelings - even if not specifically in this form - presented survival benefits among species that depended on one and other. This love feeling appears to be a feature of mammalian life. It's quite possible that other social organisms experience something equivalent and that we just miss their signalling of that feeling, but I think it's quite clear that other organisms beyond humans experience a deep affection for the presence of specific other individuals.

Well sure, I am sure that any evolutionist would say that evolution envolves survival benefits. What I am asking is how did lying about the reasons you love someone become a benefit? No one ever says "I loved this person because he/she seemed fit to breed with".

 

[Sparhafoc]

Well sure, I am sure that any evolutionist would say that evolution envolves survival benefits.

I want to quickly address this on the side: the concept of there being 'evolutionists' contains no greater sense than there being gravitationists or thermo-dynamicists... science isn't a belief system comprised of sects. Evolution is the foundation of modern Biology; there are people who accept science, and there are people who deny it on ideological grounds.

What I am asking is how did lying about the reasons you love someone become a benefit?

I don't think that lying about the reasons you love someone does offer a benefit, be it evolutionary or otherwise. There may be particular circumstances whereby a deception could perhaps offer some specific benefit, but that's not evolutionary because evolution is concerned with genetic changes in a population, not the interpersonal emotional components between two people.

Perhaps a better question with respect to evolution might be how deceit arose, and for that we would need to look at game theory and evolutionary stable strategies. In extremely brief rendition: If everyone lies, then there's no social bond - most individuals must be honest most of the time else there'd be no benefit to being in a social group. However, that high frequency of honesty is open to occasional deceits that offer some benefit for minor risks.

No one ever says "I loved this person because he/she seemed fit to breed with".

Well, I'd say that's because you don't love someone because they seem fit to breed with; you may be sexually attracted to someone because they seem fit to breed with on a deeper subconscious level inculcated through cultural and temporal mores, but that's not love. There are many types of love, for example the love you have for your friends, parents, siblings or offspring, and that has nothing at all to do with lust / sexual fitness. Similarly, wanting to have sex with someone doesn't equate to love. So I don't believe the two are expressly connected. I would suggest that to a first order of approximation, essentially all human procreation throughout history didn't involve love - that's not to say that love didn't exist until the modern world, or that husbands and wives historically never found love, but rather that it wasn't as important a component in mate-selection in any cultures until the modern individualist period.

 

[Led Zeppelin]

Thank you for your reply, Sparhafoc. It's an honor to get a reply in any forum from a guy who is as smart as you.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Thank you for your reply, Sparhafoc. It's an honor to get a reply in any forum from a guy who is as smart as you.

That's what we're here for, and in the best reading, we're all here to make each other smarter. Even when responding to a question, it challenges your knowledge in the sense that needing to present an idea tests how well you really comprehend that idea - and even when we are knowledgeable about a given topic, sometimes the way another mind approaches and presents ideas can offer new illumination on old knowledge.