Romance versus Sex

Wtf? And if love has nothing to do with sex, then wtf does it have to do with childrearing?Jealousy, by which I can only assume you mean sexual jealousy, is not experienced in some cultures. You can be jealous for all sorts of things, and marriage does not cover them all. Historically marriage was about tracing property rights. Where sex was treated as a commodity that was included. I'm sorry what planet are you on? Across all cultures, if the issue is childrearing, monogamous relationships are not the norm. If you want to discuss marriage then if you know anything about history and culture understand that marriage for reason of love is in the vast minority.Marriages were traditionally about property rights and were more often than not arranged in some fashion, with no love involved. That is a refutation of your position. That you said it and don't understand it indicates you are having some problems. If love has something to do with lifelong commitment, the fact that most are not lifelong commitments should suggest something about your theory regarding love.Actually since we are on the subject of brain chemistry, have you read any of the stuff regarding the life cycle and those chemicals associated with love? Big hint... they don't last a lifetime and in fact indicate forces to mate with more than one partner. And you use specific examples of marriage, and have stated lifelong commitment as justification. Neither are real. Marriage is a legal contract about rights. It often had nothing to do with emotions.And if you had said, love helps people form bonds, that I would have agreed with. The idea that the chemicals involved were to form PAIR bonds, rather than general bonds, and that for the specific purpose of raising kids for a lifetime is where I was having problems. I did not provide my own shelter, but could have. I did provide my own food. Almost all my clothes were hand me downs from others, so most were not provided by anyone in love. And yes I could have provided them as well.Have you ever seen really poor kids on the street? They are pretty self-sufficient from an early age. I saw a great doc on children soldiers, there was a brutal general in africa who wasn't even 13.If you are asking if it is not traditional in western society to have things provided by parents up till the age of 17-18, then the answer is yes. That does not measure what self-sufficiency is for children. Again you need to check out of your own culture, before creating your theories on what humans are actually like and capable of.In fact, maybe you should read up on how children were "reared" in Sparta. Uh, what does that have to do with love? When exactly did this love drive develop within humans? In recent times? Holy shit, if you are claiming that it is a wild assertion to state that humans have greater brain capabilities than other animals, and are more flexible in what they can learn and do... wow.I mean I am quite stunned. Okay, you bring in an animal to discuss this topic, and show me where they have cultures and maybe I'll start taking you seriously. Okay, I will step back from any accusations of "proving" anything. However, it is not the best explanation and it is not... as I have shown... a scientific explanation. It is based on deductive logic and pure conjecture, which is not modern science.It is perhaps the most comfortable, or crackerbarrel logic explanation. It doesn't take much to pull it down. Here is an alternative...Sexual attraction allows for increased mating (in general) which would result in more children. Continued attraction, so sustained attraction to an individual, means increased chances of conceiving with that individual. Of course there is no barring attraction to more than one individual at a time, and sustained attraction to more than one individual at a time. This increases chances of reproduction for males, and quality reproduction for females (as they have a range of partners).In addition to basic attraction, there is an added factor of protecting those for which one has had an attraction. That is an interest in not seeing them harmed, which prevents onesself from harming them. That increases the odds not that one will stick around to rear children, but rather than one will not overtly harm offspring or those that could be carrying that offspring.Again, given basic human sexual activity, this is not confined to one individual and set of offspring and so creates a form of social bonding. Thus larger groupings are available which creates added protection, regardless of whose offspring is whose.As an added benefit, that sexual societal tool allows for mediation of violent action for resources.You know where that explanation comes from? From our closest genetic relatives. Gosh. And that would seem to fit better with an evolutionary mechanism than pointing to monogamy in birds, which has now been shown to be false.I might add that one can also look at sexual behaviors in other higher functioning animals, like dolphins. What do you think you'll find there? I didn't understand what you meant. Were you suggesting that every paper agreed with what I just said, or that they gave reasons why what I said was wrong?That is to say that pair bonding is important and related to sex, or that it is not. But you cannot have it both ways. You cannot say that you can compare us to anaimals with similar activities, and then that we cannot when it disproves your hypothesis about a specific activity.You just said in an earlier post, you PREDICTED, that science would find similar mechanisms in both humans and animals, with those similar behaviors. What a crappy argument. This isn't what I said at all. Look, I've been reading through much Evo Psych material. Why am I to believe one book is going to be vastly different than all of the other material Evo Psych people are publishing, and different from how people like you and Schraf and Parsimonious have explicitly been using it?You guys take nice modern western liberal notions of how humans work and then look for how that may be explained as having been set into humans because it had an evolutionary advantage.It presupposes the conclusion you are looking for.Tell you what, rather than a book, why don't you find me the BEST evo psych article(s) published on the connection between brain chemistry, love, and childrearing. So it is a modern invention within humans? I like this nice tie in with concepts that we are moving toward greater cultural influences after nixing my own assessment of the same thing. I love it. That scale itself is questionable. Adultery level. Fantastic. What we obesrve in humans. The heights of ethnocentric nonscience.The very concept that humans have "adultery" is cultural. There were times and cultures, and there are still cultures in which nonmonogamous sexual behavior is practiced openly. No hiding, no "cheating", like the birds used to hype that particular scale IIRC. There is no adultery there at all.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Natural != good.EVEN if evolutionary psychology does provide an explanation of Love, proves it's purpose to satisfactory levels, and sociology and history can provide clear evidence of how love came to be formalised through marriage it would in no way what-so-ever mean that we should get married, should pair-bond for life or any other frickin' thing of that sort.Marriage is certainly involved in property rights, but it also occurs in many cultures in which they have little or no property. It's also frankly untrue to say love is uninvolved in marriage in most cultures, while the rich and powerful certainly were in the business of arranging marriages to further political ends they hardly score up as the majority of the populus. Among most of the common people, the parents arranged marriages based on existing feelings, or in many other cases viewed love as something that came to be after the marriage.I actually think what we call Love is actually a group of related but different emotions, some of which produce the short term flush of emotional overload that tends to characterise the early parts of a relationship. You are correct in stating that there is a change in brain chemistry during the initial stages of attraction that falls away over time; in fact there's more than one such cycle. I don't believe our emotional set up is hardwired to make us find one single partner and live the rest of our lives with them; I do think it is set up to make us stay together long enough to raise children.On your example of an alternative set of sexual explanations: yes, that's a workable system. I suspect that it is not a common one among humans because our children have a much higher care cost than baby chimps.As for your point on "monogamy with adultery", yes, I accept the language used has inappropriate connotations but it is none-the-less the term I've seen used for that kind of relationship. It's not an wholey inaccurate term anyway as in the majority of such species, the "adulterous" relationships are conducted in secrecy. Perhaps the most facinating example of such relationships is the Garden Robin: Robins pair bond, but the female will seek out additional male partners and then when returning to "her" male he will peck her genitals making her eject the semen from the other male. After the chicks are hatched, the other male will bring gifts of food for her. This means that she gets a chance at genetic diversity in her offspring, "her" male is reasonable assured of parentage by making her eject the semen and will thus invest heavily in the chicks born while the other male gets a shot at having his own offspring raised for cheap, possibly having failed to acquire a pair-bond of his own.

And if Intelligent Design shows design they are not trying to indicate what created us... right. The argument goes that there is advantage to human behaviors, and that most certainly is used to argue for their continuation.It is true that Evo Psychers bring up arguments that if they found out rape was an evolutionarily driven mechanism, they would not be for it, but that does not reduce what they are in fact doing which is building moral justifications. The stuff they dislike they use to bash the things they do not like.For example it is shown that men are inherently "bad", rape as an evolutionary product set within men, and need to be restricted from certain activity. Oh but monogamy and love is inherent, and that confers UNQUESTIONABLE benefits.Nevermind that both sets tend to conflict with each other and in fact have generally neutral evidence and results. First of all, this is another mistake of the Evo Psych crowd, commonality does not suggest one iota that something is ingrained or more "natural" to humans. A single cultural deviation at any point in time is enough to refute such a claim.Second, you are making fallacious arguments about marriage and cultures, especially throughout time. You say little or no property but dismiss the whole point that the spouse and children are property or bearers of rights. Love may or may not be present in marriages but without question the institution of marriage did not come to us through ideas of love. Yeah and one of the great justifiers for arranged mariages which might not be palatable to those in the arrangement was the calming idea that when thrown together, they eventually would fall in love in some way.There is no question that people when thrown together and have sex, often develop feelings. But this is on a greater than one to one scale, and occurs regardless of children are even possible.Can you explain homosexuality or people that fall in love with animals? Funny I heard that somewhere before... oh yeah, when I was saying the same thing to you. That's how cultures could have the feelings without having the concept of Love. This possibility calls into question your very argument. Earlier you did suggest lifelong monogamy, even if not full sexual monogamy. As far as your second sentence goes you have provided no evidence for this (and neither has anyone within Evo Psych) other than appealing to modern child rearing practices and conventional beliefs about what is best for kids. Yeah, not common because our CULTURE has set things up to reinforce a certain standard. I agree it is not necessarly COMMON. But that has nothing to do with why feelings developed does it?Human kids do not have higher care costs than chimps, outside of cultural expectations.In any case, I just presented a better scientific explanation for the chemical reactions seen. It does not rely on appeals to current culture, or commonality in current culture , and uses a more inductive approach which is inclusive (means can explain) other behavioral phenomena seen in humans, as well as makes connection to what we see in nature regarding our closest relatives.Honestly you have failed to provide an explanation for the diverse nature of these feelings within humans and how they are acted upon by humans. Yeah I saw those terms used too. I even mentioned I thought it was a bird used to help perpetuate the stereotype of "adultery" as a clinical possibility in humans.Lets get the facts straight here. While you may see a single form of sexual behavior in birds you DO NOT SEE THAT IN HUMANS. Despite it being a common form now, it is not common across all cultures and certainly was not across all times.Sexuality was made secretive by specific groups of people and you can see the spread of this by conquering and rule, not by simple mixing of the gene pool. You can even see peoples change their sexual habits away again. What is that, a mutation?You must explain the diversity of sex and love with a theory, not explain how one type may have come about through evolutionary means. They ALL came about the same way, evolutionarily or not.In the end analysis, humans are not secretive about their many sexual partners by nature. That is most certainly a cultural learned trait. Sex is not automatically assumed bad, nor sex with another "cheating" unless one is taught such things. It is just like saying people naturally don't want to eat with members of the opposite sex besides spouses. That certainly is true in some Islamic nations, but my guess is you would not assume that in a theory on love would you?I might also point out that plenty of people who fall in love, end up not wanting children at all, and indeed sometimes kids end up wrecking the relationship. Love does not automatically translate to concern or will to take care of children.The best you can connect is desire to stay around long enough to ensure a chance of procreation and not harm those that would be part of that cycle.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Once again, you've spent almost your entire post arguing with positions I haven't taken. I don't know whether what your arguing with is a position you've seen someone else take, or whether you're just plucking strawmen out of the air but, frankly, it's getting very tiresome.Your notion that humans don't have higher care costs than chimpanzees is simply false. Human infants are more helpless when born: a chimp can cling to it's mothers fur well enough to be carried around, while a human baby cannot even raise it's own head. Human infants are helpless for longer; an 18 month old chimp is largely capable of feeding and fending for itself, and will involve itself with social grooming while an 18 month old human can't even walk properly, let alone talk properly. Not only are human infants and children unable to look after themselves for longer, but they require a lot more teaching than chimps do and require higher quality and more difficult to obtain foodstuffs than chimps do to grow those highly expensive brains.

Yeah right. Look, I'm actually interested in debating Evo Psych, just as I am ID, so if there is any miscommunication it is not deliberate.There's a way to make this real easy, present the best paper EvoPsych has on this subject. I think you have misunderstood me on this point. There are slight differences in capabilities within the maturation cycle between humans and chimps. The human child may have a bit longer time period before being able to fend for itself, it may need some more nutrition, and it will ultimately take longer to grow into a full adult.However, humans have better ability to provide for their offspring, and eventually the learning capability of a human child crosses that of a full grown chimp. And it is not like you have shown that a single human mother is incapable of providing for a child, such that it would require a male partner, or that that would be so advantageous that it would be selected for.You also seem to have dodged (once again) where in the developmental cycle this love thing came about. How do you know when love developed in humans, our birth to adult cycle was not much more similar to that of chimps? As far as I understand it, chimps can develop bonds. How do you know it is not love? If so, what then would be the reason?Given the number of people that bond, and then leave once children are born and do not take care of the offspring, why am I to believe that would have been different long ago?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Somehow this thread collapsed before the subject was clearly defined, or so it seemed to me. Got bogged down in chemistry and biology. So I'd like to ask some questions to pin down what you are talking about, if you would. The questions aren't all that well thought out and some are attempts to refine other questions:To what extent is the thrill a matter of ego strokes, that is, a sense of yourself as particularly valuable, lovable, important?Does it necessarily involve reciprocity, the impression that the romantic feeling is mutual, or can it be one-sided or "unrequited"?How well do you have to know the object of the romance? Can it be based on something as simple as how somebody looks, or is it more about how somebody superficially appears to relate to you, by say appreciating you in some way in a casual contact situation. Does the thrill tend to increase or decrease with familiarity?To the extent feeling valued or appreciated is a part of it, does the appreciation have to be particularly related to something you highly value in yourself, something you care greatly about, or if they just like your looks and don't have a clue about what matters to you would that be enough to engender romance?Or is your appreciation of qualities in the other person the main ingredient in the thrill?Can it be completely unrealistic and based on nothing but your own fantasy life, or does it have to have some connection with reality. I guess this is an elaboration on #3 above. How much actual knowledge of or contact with the other person would it take to quash it completely if the reality doesn't meet the terms of the fantasy? Does it necessarily even involve actual contact with the object of the romantic feeling? Do you think celebrity stalkers may have a similar feeling about their objects? Can it become an obsession?Whose description on this thread came closest to describing your view of it?I suspect you could write a novel about it. Except you seem to be drawn more to comedy. Well, this COULD be treated as comedy I guess, but it would take real genius to preserve the thrill aspect of it in that case.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-08-2006 05:43 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 01-08-2006 05:44 PM

I'm going to have to study your questions for awhile, but you are right that the topics you bring up are the sort of thing I had in mind for this thread.I'll get back to you.

I want to say that it's not egotistical at all, but it might be covertly. On the face of it, it is enchantment with somebody else, not oneself. It can most definitely be unrequited, but if the object of one's romantic feeling treats you with utter contempt or indifference, it won't last long. But mere politeness on their part will keep it going. The thrill increases up to a point, and then it dies completely, never to return. Let's say one marries this person. After awhile, that thrill will die and will be replaced by (a)affection or (b)dislike. I think I would say that there are different versions of it, the callow and the mature. But speaking from personal experience, for me there is always an element of the physical--I have never felt romantic about any male, for example. Maybe "physical" is not the right word. Maybe it's just the idea of the "feminine" (in my case). I suppose celebrity stalking would be a version of this, although that's not what I had in mind. It can be fantasy in the sense of it being totally inappropriate for one to have such feelings about some person you know, but nonetheless do. In such a case, one hides it.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-09-2006 02:02 AM

Interesting. Thanks for the answers. I'd say you are a romantic.I wrote more but then deleted it, realizing I don't really want to describe my own personal experiences. They're not nearly as charming as yours.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-09-2006 05:20 AM

I agree romance is superior, but romance without sex is missing something.I would only have sex with someone I had feelings for, and now that is limited to my wife of course.We are both romantic with each other, and sometimes we just like to have sex, but is it just sex, since we love each other?

It is hard to imagine women feeling contemptuous toward you, or your romantic feelings being rejected very often. I would imagine that many of your female students have such feelings toward you for instance.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-09-2006 12:00 PM

I've had plenty of rejections, and my female students think of me as this old guy. I was never a womanizer.

You don't look old in your picture. But then I guess your students are pretty young.

That picture is out of date. I used it because I didn't have anything else that was digitized. It was drawn by my step-son. I was a little piqued that he drew me holding a beer. The impudence! And keep in mind it's a drawing, not a photograph. My students are about 18 to 20 years old--with some exceptions.

Well, I love your mind. I kind of wish you weren't also goodlooking. But then maybe you aren't, as you say. Then I look forward to your getting a picture of your true ugly decrepit self posted.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-09-2006 04:51 PM