Papal Visit to the UK

[Cort Haus]

Love is an emotion which, like the others, has evolved to fulfil a purpose. Of course it isn't necessary to understand or even consider the mechanics of such a thing while experiencing it.

When an emotion is so closely bound up with one's family / spouse / children, it isn't hard to see how valuable a thing it is in a species where it can takes so many years before the offspring can fend for themselves in the world.

[Asher]

as irman points out love isn't just about mates and children.

It ultimately is. Emotion is biological in basis, it's why you can change your emotions by changing your diet, exercise regime, physical activities, drugs, etc.

Human emotions like love have developed because it benefits the species -- humans who developed personalities and brain chemistry which exhibited what we called "love" had the most successful offspring, so it stands to reason most people today have the same chemistry.

[Asher]

The vast majority of people who refuse to accept the answers science has for these "unanswerable questions" are dreamers or idealists. I don't mean that in a derogatory way. They just want something more in life. They aspire for a higher sense of purpose and meaning to life. They fill that void with religion, and if it makes them happy, then more power to them. But if you actually sit and think about it logically, there's reasonable and scientific explanations for how we are that make far more sense than the metaphysical concepts of "soul".

[Cort Haus]

Love for one, is inadequately explained by "it's all just chemicals". The complexities involved in love and different levels of love (it isn't JUST about mates and children for one) defy a simply mechanical explination. As as put, does chemistry, or even can it, explain the multitude of questions and outpouring of emotion (poems and stories and songs we write to encompass that try to encompase that) we have involving love?

Because love is such a powerful emotion, and because music and literature are creative expressions of emotion, it is no surprise at all that attempts to express love are made through these media.

One of the great Sci-Fi writers famously said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Contemporary technology such as the computer would probably seem to be magic to someone from a pre-industrial society, but yet even those people today without an inkling of how they work will accept that they are built from materialist and mechanistic principles.

Some of the less-obviously bio-mechanical experiences of being human might seem harder to explain in logical (ie non-metaphysical) terms, but it just takes more effort - in terms of research, knowledge, understanding and imagination, then the cheaper option of plugging an anthropomorphic personification into the gap.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Some of the less-obviously bio-mechanical experiences of being human might seem harder to explain in logical (ie non-metaphysical) terms, but it just takes more effort - in terms of research, knowledge, understanding and imagination, then the cheaper option of plugging an anthropomorphic personification into the gap.

The issue is, however, that some of us (and not necessarily just the religious, atheist post-modern philosphers reach similar ideals on some of this - and they usually don't plug anything "into the gap" so to speak) see it as something that never can be solved or proven in any way because it goes beyond the mechanical explainations.

[Asher]

There are many things philosophers cannot explain, like how algebra works. Nothing mechanical there, either. Magic. Faith. Soul.

[Cort Haus]

The issue is, however, that some of us (and not necessarily just the religious, atheist post-modern philosphers reach similar ideals on some of this - and they usually don't plug anything "into the gap" so to speak) see it as something that never can be solved or proven in any way because it goes beyond the mechanical explainations.

Why never? This seems to underestimate human potential, which has already demonstrated an ability to make leaps in scientific understanding that would have seemed unimaginable in earlier centuries. Personally though, I'll be looking to the work of cognitive scientists rather than to philosophers for the answers.

[N35t0r]

Love for one, is inadequately explained by "it's all just chemicals".

Just because you don't want it to be.

The complexities involved in love and different levels of love (it isn't JUST about mates and children for one) defy a simply mechanical explination.

So did the behaviours of relativistic bodies until Einstein came up with the theory of relativity.

As as put, does chemistry, or even can it, explain the multitude of questions and outpouring of emotion (poems and stories and songs we write to encompass that try to encompase that) we have involving love?

We're still a long way away from undertanding how the brain works to the littlest detail, but when we do, sure it can.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Your faith in science is almost religious .

[Cort Haus]

With the difference being, of course, that it is largely evidence-based.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Saying that science will discover all is evidence-based?

[N35t0r]

Your faith in science is almost religious .

Yeah, except it's not.

[onodera]

Can science explain the nature of self-consciousness? This is what I've been struggling with for the past 6 months.

[DaShi]

Yes, it is an illusion.

[N35t0r]

Saying that science will discover all is evidence-based?

All? Hardly.

How the brain works? Yes. We have only recently started to crack this field, and huge advances have been made. We're also getting progressively better at working on smaller scales.