Where is the Love?

The Mysteries of Love

Love is confusing.

"How do I know if it's love?"

"Does s/he really love me?"

"Why do you love me?"

"How do we make love last?"

Where is the Love

Stories About Love

Seems like everyone has some special insight on love.

Even philosophers

I want to look at three different takes on love:

Neuroscientific

Sociocultural

Romantic

I don't claim to solve the mysteries of love.

Quite the opposite: I hope to deepen them.

In Conclusion

Love is a many splendored--and many splintered--thing.

We should resist single-perspective views of love.

The job of philosophy is to see how all the pieces fit together.

If love is identified with 'brain state X' then anyone not in 'brain state X' cannot be in love. Consider:

The Problem of 'Neuronal Chauvinism'

The Problem of Intentionality

Love is 'about' the beloved; Brain chemistry isn't 'about' anything.

Imagine a man locked in a 'love simulator.'

Science is about understanding things objectively.

Love is about seeing the other person subjectively.

The Romantic View of Love

Does Neuroscience Kill Romance?

The Neuroscientific View of Love

If love is just brain chemistry does that mean it's just an illusion?

Not at all. Hunger, pain, vision and memory all happen in the brain, that doesn't mean they're not real

Do We Want Idiosyncratic Love?

Perhaps 'real love' is unconditional, your beloved is your soul mate, it was 'meant to be.'

First off, it's almost certainly not true.

And that's a good thing: 'destined love' takes choice out of the picture, and long-term love is all about choice.

Love isn't just burning passion; it's also about the mundane and quotidian.

Love can't be defined, dissected or theorized.

This is Your Brain on Love

Neuroscience allows us to measure the brain-in-love.

Humans love with their brains, and brains are a product of evolution.

Love is a trick natural selection plays on us to bond together and raise children.

Theories are about thinking; love is about feeling

Analytic thinking is ill suited to making sense of love; we should turn instead to poets and artists.

Problems with the Romantic View

Analyzing love can be healthy... and unavoidable.

"Why do you love me?" Your mind? Your emotions? Your personality? What if those things change?

The Doppelganger Problem: What if someone else has more of these traits? Shouldn't I love them more?

It seems like we want love to be idiosyncratic.

Defining love destroys it, so stop trying, just get out there and love!

Pluralism and Synthesis

Can we accept all three of these views at the same time? Synthesize them into one grand pluralistic vision of love?n

Sounds nice, but what do we do when these views come into direct conflict?

Maybe pluralism will work, but we need to take the conflicts seriously, just as we need to resist simplistic reductionism.

Garret Merriam

None of this is neurologically hard-wired.

Different cultures have different norms regarding courtship, cohabitation, sex, marriage, parenting, etc.

Assistant Professor of Philosophy

Some of the greatest love stories transgress social norms of love. Consider:

The Problem of 'Transgressive Love'

Lutz: "Emotional experience is not precultural but preeminently cultural."

Some societies have no word for 'love' (e.g.-the Manu of New Guinea)

Rouchfoucald: "Some people would never have fallen in love if they hadn't heard there was such a thing."

Wittgenstein would likely have considered talk of love just another 'language game.'

The Case for the Sociocultural View

Love isn't a 'natural kind, but rather a grouping of things selected and crafted by language and culture.

The Sociocultural View of Love

University of Southern Indiana