K Dubya
Member
I thought of something. Could a similar case study/existance finding be done with rage? Or is rage just a strong form of anger? If so, couldn't you argue that love is a strong form of some other emotion?
Edit: Rage may be the wrong word, I think hate would be a better choice.
K Dubya
Member
I understand that they are not the same. I was stating that hate would be a better choice to compare to love in a social experiment.
I suppose I should clarify, rage is not the wrong word, but the wrong idea entirely.
My original thought was that if you could prove that love 'exists' you could argue that hate also 'exists', and that hate seems to be more prevalent than love, and may be an easier starting point.
Couldn't love be a stronger form of like? The only problem I see is the defining line between the two.
UrsaMinor
Member
I'm sure there are psych studies about hate out there, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if somebody had started to dig into the neurobiology, but you'll have to wait until somebody in the field chimes in.
"Neurobiology of hate" turns up a number of hits on Google Scholar, so somebody has at least been thinking about the topic.
K Dubya
Member
"On the other hand, I think Justice Gustin may be on to something. Maybe "like" and "love" are on a continuum."
In that case, wouldn't 'dislike' and 'hate' have a similar relationship?
And how different are 'like' and 'dislike'? I don't think it would be too much of a strech to say that all four terms are all parts of the same thing, and that the perception of that thing is subjective, much like temperature? Which can also be broken down further to cold > cool > warm > hot.
I would like to hear a more educated take on this as well.
Alright, PFF.
You showed up right as another poster, "GodisLove" was making the rounds here and it made you look suspicious... as in people were wondering if you were a sockpuppet of "GodisLove". We've been burned before and we don't like it. If you are not, in fact, "GodisLove", then no worries! If you are, then it's better to fess up now. Sockpuppetry is a bannable offense here at UF, but they might be willing to give you a pass the first time.
Next, regarding love...
(1) Love is an observable behavior. We observe love in several forms: mother/child bonding or father/child bonding, courtship/mating, and friendship/in-group cohesion. You may even want to go for why humans help strangers (philanthropy or altruism). There are studies for that, too. Which of these studies would you like to focus on?
(2) All behaviors have neural substrates. You should know this already. How? You should have been exposed to ablation studies in humans in combination with mammal/primate models. In short, there is no behavior that a human can perform if there is not a part of the brain to underpin it. Can you explain how you seem to lack this knowledge as a neuroscience studies graduate?
(3) Here's a basic article on reward systems in the brain:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_system
I'll post more if I find more.
Let me just state that the neural substrates of love is an easily researchable topic on pubmed. If there are particular articles you want to discuss, let me know.
UrsaMinor
Member
Not being a neurobiologist, I wouldn't venture a firm opinion on whether "love", "hate", "like" and "dislike" are different points on the same continuum- and by this, I mean a continuum of intensity of a single, common physiological mechanism. Abstractly and conceptually, as they relate to subjective experience, you can certainly argue that they feel like they are on a continuum, but this may not reflect underlying physiological reality. The brain is a complicated, many-trick pony. If I had to guess, I'd say that I think the smart money is on "love" and "hate" having distinct mechanisms, although they may have some features in common. LRA, do you know anything about this?
I can speak with more confidence about temperature perception. All subjective temperature sensations are the result of the same thing: perception of average molecular velocity, which itself is unquestionably a simple continuum. If the average is high, we call it "warm"; if it's low, we call it "cool". If it's very high or very low, we call it "hot" or "cold". There seems to be a simple, intuitively obvious and satisfying one-to-one match between physical reality and our perception of it.
But it's not really true. Physiologically, we have separate thermoreceptors for "hot" and "cold"- and it is possible to confound the brain by stimulating both at once. I have done the experiment where I placed my hand across a closely spaced series of metal bars which were alternately hot and cold. The mental experience is an odd one- you cannot say whether your hand is hot or cold, you just know that the temperature sensation you are experiencing is intense, without knowing what it is.
K Dubya
Member
Very interesting points, Ursa. A few other things come to mind as a result.
If we have different thermoreceptors for hot and cold, and we have different neuro-thingies for love and hate, I would think then that the two examples aren't too different from one another and could go as far as to say that either hot/cold and love/hate are both on continuums, or that the both are not. Except that, in my mind it is clear that hot and cold are on the same continuum. I also understand that just because 2 sets of things share one characteristic does not mean that they share all characteristics, or two.
So once again I am left with questions for people who know what they are talking about.
UrsaMinor
Member
The timing may have been coincidence, and PFF may simply have been caught in the crossfire. I still think the posting styles are too dissimilar to suspect sockpuppetry, but I understand all the trigger-happiness after the last sockpuppet. My guess is that GiL simply left after he got whatever jollies he was looking for.
But anyway, PFF, we don't normally pile on newcomers unless they are suspected of trolling or they are just massively clueless. Some regular posters also have a low tolerance for woo and sloppy thinking, and if you can avoid those, you'll do fine here. Discussions will be rough-and-tumble. If you advance propositions that you can't support with evidence, you will have your feet kicked out from under you in very short order, and rightly so. Don't be afraid to refine your arguments and try again. People will respect that a lot more than the run-away tactic.
UrsaMinor
Member
K Dubya,
Good. Keep thinking and asking questions.
Whether hot and cold are on a continuum depends on exactly what you mean by the question. There are three possible things you can ask (underlying physical reality/mental percept/physiological mechanism of perception), and they don't all have the same answer:
Physical temperature is a continuum.
Our mental construct of temperature envisions it as a continuum.
Despite how physical temperature works and how we think about it, our actual physiological mechanism for perceiving temperature is definitely not a continuum.
And that's a simple, well-understood example. Emotions are much more complicated, and there are many more variables to consider. I can't justify drawing too close a parallel with sensations.
As far as I know, the extent of our knowledge on emotions is:
The underlying physical reality is ??? (the concept may not even be applicable).
Our mental construct envisions emotions as a continuum.
The actual physiological mechanism for emotions is...complicated and incompletely understood.
K Dubya
Member
Ursa, I agreee with everything in your last post, except for "Our mental construct envisions emotions as a continuum." Unless you mean emotions are a set of continuums, because I wouldn't put happy/sad on a continuum with love/hate. I suppose that's where the complicated part comes in.
EDIT: I type slow, your second to last post
By the way, where do historical events fall in the original poster's question? (If you're still around, PFF, you should know that that wasn't even a particularly rough reception by internet standards, and that I am nevertheless sorry for my pessimism.)
Non-reproducible, non-observable (by me, anyway) and the evidence is often little better than hearsay. Obviously, if some random dude says "I saw a rat in the alley behind my house" his testimony is a kind of evidence, although it is not scientific, properly speaking...
I call unicorns!! I saw a trailer with Lauter (the werewolf from twilight) for a movie called 'abduction' and I thought it was Twilight for the first 30 seconds of the trailer.
UrsaMinor
Member
Yeah, word in the spec fic writing community right now is that the vampire/werewolf wave has crested. If you want to do something supernatural and sexy, you'll have to come up with something new.
And whatever you do, don't emulate Stephenie Meyer. Except for the making-megabucks thing.
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