Helen Fisher: The science of love, and the future of women

blissed · 13-05-08 03:38:02

This video's a bit longer than most on the site :) (18 mins) but I found it really interesting, if anyone wants to watch it and comment on it, feel free. I like the part where she says "I don't think we were made to be happy, we were made to reproduce, the happiness we make."

http://www.ted.com/talks/view?id=16

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sunbeameggshells · 18-05-08 11:11:24

First of all that ted webite seems to quite lovely...thanks blissed : )

I think Fisher makes some valid points, the overall fact that love is necessarily essential to humanity is indisputable...

though i think she sets up a deterministic image of love that revolves around objectifying the Beloved and bringing them into conformity with our wishes. For instance she acknowledges as a core the core aspects of love as being: a blind over exaggeration of the Beloved, a craving possessiveness of the Beloved, which Fisher links as an aspect of Darwinian evolution...to me this seems to be a rhetorical flourish; and finally love is also a motivation and obsession to obtain the Beloved. Fisher ultimately concludes that love is not an emotion but rather a drive that comes from the wanting and desirous portion of the mind.

Fisher proceeds to expound a tripartite theory of reproduction and love's role within it...its quite intriguing that a lot of theories of the mind or mental activty are reduced to three essential domains...for instance freud and plato spring to mind...the first part is our generic sex drive, the next is romantic love that fills us with elation and obsession with the Beloved and the last part is a loving attachment which allows us to tolerate one individual long enough to sufficiently raise a child.

However if humanity possesses free will, what should we make of this sort of love then, doesn't it seem to reduce love to some sort of mad idea fixe simply for the perservation...perhaps enhancement of the species? Fisher discusses the fact that we can love more than one individual and women's growing pragmatic ability to leave long term loving attachments. If we are able and do love more than one person, or thing??? then wouldn't it be ridiculuous for us to demand that our Beloved to solely be in love with us while we can and often do involve ourselves in polyamorous activities??? Love seems to be some sort of double standard and absurdity??? What's more Fisher's love seems to be one of our distinctive faculties for which we use to objectify and generalise existence for the sole purpose of making life easier, since according to fisher, love is blind. This is explained in the sense that we neglect aspects of the Beloved from a desire to maintain a particularly pleasing image that the Beloved can present us for a want of ease and desire. However this flies in the face of our ultimate subjectivity if indeed we are actually free???

Perhaps if indeed we were free Fisher's account of love would be an absolute fallacy...perhaps true love would rather reside in a total acceptance of the complete individuality of each person and our ultimate subjectivity...

blissed · 19-05-08 01:17:20

Thanks for your response Sunbeam :)

Free will
I don't think we can say we either have free will or don't have free will. Our conscious minds (free will) are an interaction with our subconscious body management systems. There are completely subconscious systems like heart muscle beating or digestion, over which our free will has no direct control and other systems we have some control over like breathing and anger.

If you try to see how long you can hold your breath or try and see how long you can hold back anger, after a while you'll look pretty much the same :) red faced or purple even :) and quaking as you feel ready to burst under the pressure, but when you finally breathe, it's because your body must and when we're angry we completely lose our free will to the inherited knowledge of our species which says like a jerk sometimes, no, the way your dealing with this is all wrong!! and if the angers solution was wrong we have to apologize, but this is the interesting part, if the anger worked we claim the behaviour as our own and are chuffed at how assertive we are. I think this claiming of subconscious behaviour as our own gives us sometimes the illusion of free will in some areas where we don't have it. I really don't know why I like my favourite foods, probably no more than someone who's pregnant knows why they like eating coal :) and it's probably because those foods contain what my body needs at that particular time. We claim all these subconscious behaviours as our own because they're part of us,

but as I said in the beginning free will and body systems have a genuine interaction thats developing and slowly changing the whole time, not only do the body systems interact to influence our free will, our free will interacts to influence our body systems, because if it wants to, our free will can choose locations that are challenging, like going on an expedition, which can develop both body and free will.

Love
Phew!! :) anyway, I think Helen identified our subconscious species specific falling in love process. Isn't it romantic :) and like anger, that process has a different character in different people and the character of free will is different in each person too. So rather than having a set of right answers, the whole of life and falling in love I think is mostly a wonderfully creative process.

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sunbeameggshells · 19-05-08 11:17:01

Wow this is going to enter into a meaty philosophical debate blissed ; )

I don't know quite whether I'd agree with helen...i think i'm more idealistic than her...probably from my desire to transcend values and become an absolutely individual entity...only more years will tell whether i can achieve such lofty ambitions...: ).

Anyway back to your response...as above you demarcate between our conscious minds and our subconscious body management systems...

As a crude simplification on mybehalf do you identify our conscious mind with free will...is that what you mean when you bracket free will after 'conscious minds'? and as to the subconscious body management system do you see that as being identifiable to a deterministic system that operates to keep us alive, ie the heart beating ect, and as something that releases endorphins or the like to get us angry so we can fend off danger??? If I've hit the nail on the head i'd like like to discuss this consciousness as being intrinsically linked to free will...

Straight up i think that rigorous consciousness, by which i mean a conscious process that is guided by strict symbols of signification, for instance mathematics and logic, is in no way related to free will...and i would extend it further and say that once we consciously cognize any emotion or experience we have deceptively mumified the said experience...in short i believe consciousness is a tool which allows us to determine and generalize our lives for the ease of our existence and that it is not linked to our free will...that rather resides in our subconscious...

I think consciousness developed due to human's being social animals...this is undeniable...none of us would be alive if our parents or guardians didn't look after us at least during infancy...firstly though to cooperate with our peers we need to know what distresses us, what we want and simultaneously we need to know what we want in signifiers which are shared with these peers...this is where consciousness kicks in, consciousness takes the shape of these very communal signifiers...ie language and physical gestures ect...consciousness is just a communal system of understanding...however as a communal tool it ends up generalizing and simplifying our individuality for the ease of life...still necessary cause we can't always be in a state of disbelief and scepticism : )

free will rather resides in of subconscious or pre consciousness where we aren't quite sure of our experiences and what they mean...free will exists within a sphere of ambiguity...well blissed perhaps you'd like to like to draw some implications for love from these ideas ; ).

blissed · 19-05-08 15:01:44

Oooh! I'm am just too interested in this subject for my own good :) I've thought about this quite a lot because I'm excited by the possibility in my lifetime of someone creating a sentient computer with a human type consciousness with free will and how that would be achieved.

How I define free will
I think most animals have some kind of Free will because it's needed to walk along and not bump into things :) You need to be awake to do that, you need to have a type of consciousness.

What do we think consciousness is
A thermostat is conscious of 3 states, on, too hot or too cold. The human brain is conscious of billions of more states and the part we call consciousness is the part who's main responsibility is for not bumping into things :)
Baroness Susan Greenfield gave a talk ages ago where she said, to her, there is no one place in the brain where consciousness resides and that consciousness is a sum of all it's parts. like a few pixels don't make a picture of a face but millions of pixels do. So it seems consciousness is software that can be closed, run in utility mode or fully opened :) Deep sleep, REM dreaming or awake.

Sentience
Like us most animals have a species specific consciousness, some we recognize (dogs, bonodo's, dolphins) in some their consciousness is more alien to us (fish, reptiles) Sentience to me is a specific type of consciousness that falls on or close to our own and that we can recognize.

Free will in the subconscious
Information comes in through our senses and our conscious mind makes conclusions and resolutions and worries about unresolved problems that are all passed to parts of our subconscious and stored there. But their not just stored there but thought about in the thought mechanisms that are separate from our consciousness, tho linked to it and receiving input from it while we're awake. And while we sleep, it continues thinking and sometimes produces an answer to an unresolved problem when we wake up. "just sleep on it and see how you feel then."

Things that we're passionate about to the very fibre of our being will be there in our subconscious being thought about while we're asleep or while we're awake avoiding the objects that are still there and must always not be bumped into :)

Sunbeam, it's true, your more idealistic than Helen :)
I don't know if you've seen the other Ted talk I posted here by Jill Bolte Taylor http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229 where she recounts what happened when she had a massive stroke in her left hemisphere. She outlined the right hemisphere is a parallel processor full of imagination and the left hemisphere is a linear processor that thinks logically, one step at a time, compares our imagination to reality, and where our sense of self including our own 3D body map resides.

I think what your observing is that Helen's theory is very left brained and logically thought through, there isn't the right brain poetry to get in there and complicate things :) and things are definitely more complicated :) and because we need both left and right working together in the real world, her observations are valid but seem incomplete. and yes we were talking about love :) Threads are conversational here and don't have to stay on topic, which is just as well really, because altho we're talking about love, love is part of a holistic whole that makes us what we are and all those other things do seem to be so interesting as well don't they :)

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sunbeameggshells · 20-05-08 08:12:08

Yes I am more idealistic...probably because I'm a fantastic left hander and we are notoriously linked to the right side of the brain...though i also have quite the dogged determinism to stay upon the topic...this one being i'd assume what are the implications for determinism and free will for love?

If we were free i think true love would consist in a complete abandonment of all security and attachment...the free spirit par excellence : ).

If determined i think sticking to the best possible security and the utility of the most probable predictability would be the sanest course to take...

To be honest i think we need a mixture of both...but if i had to choose one or the other i'd go for the wild free for all of freedom ; )

blissed · 20-05-08 16:55:06

sunbeameggshells wrote:

If we were free i think true love would consist in a complete abandonment of all security and attachment...the free spirit par excellence : )

Oh I agree! I'm told the falling in love process lasts long enough for us to have children and raise them till infants but I think the length of time people are effected varies down to a few months,

sunbeameggshells wrote:

To be honest i think we need a mixture of both...

if we can recognize falling in love as an involuntary process and natures way of making absolutely sure we do what it wants, a bit like a boss telling you to do what you were just about to do anyway :) (I hate that) Then like we can try and manage anger, we can do the same with involuntary love, and then I think true love and the free spirit par excellence has more of a chance.

Just my 7,467 dollars worth :)

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momentextase · 20-05-08 22:57:15

The current "state of the art" of brain neuroimaging, while very exciting, promising and evolving quickly, seems to me to be very, very new. It looks quite problematic in terms of interpretation, interpolation and extrapolation, I take all this with a grain of salt. OK, with a barrel of salt.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 … 102934.htm

In the article I provided a link for above, it can be seen that cultural influences have a huge effect on the phenomenology observed in brains being observed during identical experimental tasks.

I think it is fair for someone to state that an effect in a particular area of the brain is indeed observed when a specific person under study reports feeling what that person reports they experience as "love."

But I think it is quite impossible and a wild leap to characterize what "love" IS, or to infer anything about the origins of such an abstract concept ... from such observations.

At this time, it may even be a big stretch to generalize that ALL people in ALL cultures would show the same imaging patterns, i.e. that "love" affects the same places in the brain and in the same way (as imaged with fMRI or PET) -in all peoples brains.

It was once thought the left hemisphere was the sole location of language functions, but this has been disproved. There are many people alive, and functioning at high levels in analytical tasks, able to speak, honors students, executives etc that have had their left hemisphere REMOVED!!!

Also, it has been observed that the right hemisphere is very active in tasks having to do with abstract analytical geometry.... how "touchy feelie" is that! lol!

And, as is the case with those that have had their left hemisphere removed, some people that have had their right hemisphere removed can do very well, even artistically and heuristically.

In short, the brain exhibits what is called "functional plasticity." Even memory has been observed (cases of surgical removal of parts of the brain "mapped" to contain memory..yet paradoxically memory is retained) to be "distributed" in the brain, an observation which lead to the hypothesis of the so called "holographic" quality of the brain.

Interesting clip blissed, thank you! For myself, I find the Dr's assertions highly speculative, and I am struck mostly by how her interpretations of her observations seem to be "fitted" to rather old and I feel outdated ideas in evolution (newer ideas-Stephen Jay Gould anyone?) married to the relatively new notions (relative to the scale of human evolutionary "time") of "romantic love." That concept of love did not even exist in our culture until the 800's and the mideastern lyric poets or perhaps the French troubadours circa 1100????

I spent a lot of time with the Hopi Indians, our ideas of obsessive love and attachment and "romantic love" baffles them... at least it did 35 years ago! lol! Interestingly, they have had gender equality going back about a thousand years. For them, almost everything, (including who to they "love sexually") is a choice -albeit also often a group discussion! As for love, well they all love each other, everyone... which is one thing that makes their "loving" a choice for them.

Last edited by momentextase (21-05-08 02:12:03)

phexy · 21-05-08 07:52:45

On the topic of the correlation between left and right brain hemispheres: A couple of my friends have recently tried "improving" their left-right brain function/interaction by taking a suppliment called Piracetam. They say they notice a difference when they take it. So I looked it up...

Piracetam has been the subject of intensive research for over 15 years, and has not only proven to be a powerful intelligence booster and cerebral stimulant, but also, even in massive acute and chronic dosages, appears to be nontoxic and to produce no side effects (it's so nontoxic one FDA employee reportedly claimed that since huge doses produce no toxic effects, it can't possibly have any pharmacological effects and must be physiologically inert). It is so remarkable in its effects and safety that its discovery by UCB Laboratories in Belgium sent virtually every other major pharmaceutical company scrambling to develop its own cerebral stimulant.

A variety of clinical studies with human subjects, including studies of young healthy volunteers, healthy middle-aged subjects with some memory decline, elderly subjects, elderly subjects with senility, and alcoholics, have proven that piracetam enhances cortical vigilance, improves integration of information processing, improves attention span and concentration, and can produce dramatic improvements in both direct and delayed recall of verbal learning. It's effective in the treatment of dyslexia, stroke, alcoholism, vertigo, senile dementia, sickle-cell anemia, and many other conditions, enhances the brain's resistance to various injuries and boosts its ability to recover from injuries, protects the brain against chemicals such as barbiturates and cyanides, and is widely used throughout Europe and Latin America (where it is sold over the counter).

The subjective effect described by a lot of people is that it "wakes up your brain". In fact, it selectively stimulates the anterior or frontal part of the forebrain--that part of the brain that has evolved most recently, rapidly and remarkably in the course of our evolution from ape to human, and which is the seat of our "higher functions." Piracetam works in a number of ways to increase energy within the brain. First, it steps up the production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy storage and energy generating molecules within our cells. It also boosts cerebral metabolism by improving cerebral microcirculation (blood flow), increasing the brain's use of glucose, and increasing the brain's oxygen utilization. It also seems to enhance protein syntheses in the brain (it's been proven that protein synthesis is an essential step in laying down long-term memories).

Kind makes me want to give it a go...

What was I saying again??

blissed · 21-05-08 15:51:15

Yeah here's a site where it's sold by mail order http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/megabrain-report.htm

If you go here http://edition.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/04/0 … index.html

You'll see this quote.

John Bonifield wrote:

All of this is risky. The drugs can cause cardiovascular problems and can lead to addiction. And no one knows much about the long-term effects.
"I sometimes call this America's uncontrolled experiment in pharmacology," Farah said.
Half of the responders in the Nature survey reported unpleasant side effects, such as headaches, anxiety and sleeping troubles. But 69 percent said the boost was worth the risk.

As far as I know if your brain is chemically balanced and you introduce chemicals to enhance function, the brain sees that it no longer has to produce some of them and stops, which then makes you dependent. If you stop taking the drugs your brain won't immediately start making all the chemicals you need again and you have a period of cold turkey and probly in the case of smart drugs a short period of extreme dumbness Lol

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blissed · 21-05-08 16:44:58

momentextase wrote:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 … 102934.htm
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Thanks momentextase that articles interesting.

Looking at human history our behavioural potential is very large isn't it and I suspect we have to take that into account when observing other species too like Bonobo's, chimps, elephants or dolphins, and we have to take into account our own cultural bias when drawing conclusions about what we see.

Neurons grow a network thats created as we grow up and live our lives but what we're getting clues to with research is the physical mechanism by which the neural net is created and it's architecture. For instance, when I've successfully created within a computer an analogue of a human sentient mind, that person may decide to change their architecture, perhaps to be able to hold their full attention on two different conversations at once, much like we can walk and talk at the same time.

momentextase wrote:

There are many people alive, and functioning at high levels in analytical tasks, able to speak, honors students, executives etc that have had their left hemisphere REMOVED!!!.

Thats amazing, someone having half their brain removed and still functioning. I know a few people who seem like thats happened to them already :) but to actually lose those functions and regain them in the remaining part shows how adaptable the brain mechanism is, in fact people who recover from a massive stroke prove that too.

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phexy · 22-05-08 05:51:30

blissed wrote:

If you go here http://edition.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/04/0 … index.html

Well, this site refers to ritalin - something closely related chemically to cocaine, so i wouldn't recommend trying that willy nilly.

blissed wrote:

As far as I know if your brain is chemically balanced and you introduce chemicals to enhance function, the brain sees that it no longer has to produce some of them and stops, which then makes you dependent. If you stop taking the drugs your brain won't immediately start making all the chemicals you need again and you have a period of cold turkey and probably in the case of smart drugs a short period of extreme dumbness Lol

And I have to agree with you there in some parts - my question is why then (and how) do antidepressant medications work by "levelling out" the brain chemistry? And they say that only when taken for a period of over 12 months this is effective, but it sort of contradicts yours (and my) beliefs that a brain can become "dependant" on a chemical to function properly and without it can stop producing the specific chemical the drug induced...

(Note: sorry folks, couldn't find a way to relate my post back to any IFM related subjects, but I find this topic fascinating!)

blissed · 22-05-08 11:29:08

With billions of components brains are as complex as the economies of most countries. If something is wrong with a national economy and you boost it with the right kind of investment at the right time you can bring it back to health but if it's healthy and you just give everyone $2000 extra a month, for a short while there'll be a party but with too much money in the system inflation will balance things back to the way they were and the economy becomes dependent then on the money coming in, a bit like some countries receive aid, so when you stop it suddenly there's pain. As with economics the brains problems very often have complex causes and so what solves one problem (Attention deficit) doesn't solve another (depression)

phexy wrote:

And they say that only when taken for a period of over 12 months this is effective,

Economic policy's very often need to be in place for a fair while to have an effect too.

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phexy · 26-05-08 06:38:24

I'd say brains are far more complex than the economies of any country - we just haven't harnessed the extent of the brain's power yet! But I'm not that clued in on world economics, so I'll just stick to editing pretty ladies for now.

blissed wrote:

As with economics the brains problems very often have complex causes and so what solves one problem (Attention deficit) doesn't solve another (depression)

Funny you mention that blissed. The other day my mate's brother, who has ADHD, despression and anxiety gave us all a pretty big shock. He'd been put on dexamphetamines, xanax and anti-depressants all at once and it turned out to be a pretty bad move on behalf of his half-wit GP. He ended up having a seizure in the shower and would probably have died if his girlfriend didn't find him... Thank god he's ok now.

Sorry, back to the topic... Just felt in the mood for a little story telling.

sunbeameggshells · 26-05-08 11:49:50

Pills are never the answer!!! I say go all out for a manic free-for-all!!! Just as long as you're in love with being alive and can affirm your existence?

blissed · 26-05-08 18:05:34

Pills are there as a last resort but many GPs use them as a 1st resort because their a lot cheaper than therapy. Phexy I think ADHD people just need some discipline, there was never any ADHD when kids were regularly whacked about the ears :) Lol just kidding. Glad your friends brother is OK, has he tried meditation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gT8wopZJNQ

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phexy · 27-05-08 05:48:37

Thanks Blissed, I'll pass it on - I've always been an advocate for treating it with Fish Oil over medication alone... It's worked for some I hear.
But it seems it's a fairly addictive substance (dexamphetamine/ritalin etc)... And considering I don't have a phd, I'm not gonna go telling them what to do. (I've got a few friends who have either ADHD or ADD and were diagnosed when they were in primary school, so they're scarred to get off it i spose).

blissed · 27-05-08 14:59:41

Thats awful being on heavy drugs from being a child. If your passing on links to your friends, I googled for about 5 mins and found a list of support groups in Melbourne :) They'd be a good source of info if someone wants to come off the drugs.

http://www.adders.org/ausmap.htm#Melbourne

and if your freinds live interstate heres the front page of the site

http://www.adders.org/ausmap.htm

Doesn't Perth look lonely, tho apparently thats where all the money is now so I don't suppose their all that unhappy about it :)

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#1 13-05-08 03:38:02

Helen Fisher: The science of love, and the future of women

#2 18-05-08 11:11:24

Re: Helen Fisher: The science of love, and the future of women

#3 19-05-08 01:17:20

Re: Helen Fisher: The science of love, and the future of women

#4 19-05-08 11:17:01

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#5 19-05-08 15:01:44

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#6 20-05-08 08:12:08

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#7 20-05-08 16:55:06

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#8 20-05-08 22:57:15

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#9 21-05-08 07:52:45

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#10 21-05-08 15:51:15

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#11 21-05-08 16:44:58

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#12 22-05-08 05:51:30

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#13 22-05-08 11:29:08

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#14 26-05-08 06:38:24

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#15 26-05-08 11:49:50

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#16 26-05-08 18:05:34

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#17 27-05-08 05:48:37

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#18 27-05-08 14:59:41

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