You would clearly see a physiological response where portions of my brain would light up. But is that itself love, or is that merely you recognizing my physiological response to the love I feel?
Could it be that there is no difference?
Love is a word, a symbol, we give to certain feelings that well up within us. If there is a substance called “love” we have not been able to identify it, though not from a lack of trying.
What then are these feelings? May they be a cascade of electro-chemical stimulation of neurons that result in a warm and fuzzy feeling brought on by external stimuli, by memory, by a linked cascade of neurons?
We might call that “love” if it happened often enough and common enough through a population. A symbol to convey to others.
All of the emotions may be the same type of physical response to the world around us. Hate, greed, empathy, wonder, envy, ego.
It may be that such responses conveyed some survival advantage to the species and evolved ever more powerful as our brains grew allowing more interactions among more disparate neurons and neuronal paths.
One fact to keep in mind. Humans have a history of ascribing metaphysical meaning to things we do not fully understand. The sad part of that history is that we have been proven wrong so often and been proven right . well . never.
With this in mind, consciousness, like love, may be nothing more than the complex inter-play of electro-chemistry and cascades of neuronal activity . on steroids so to speak.
Does this view make consciousness any less amazing? Does it “detract” from our humanity, our “place” in the universe, the grand wonder? Not at all.
To paraphrase myself from another thread: The real wonder, the miracle of existence, is that atoms, obeying only the laws of physics, can coalesce into mega-structures that can contemplate themselves and the stars from which they came. And atoms do this all by themselves without any need for magic. Amazing!
™ Version 4.2
