Lust And Love
December 20, 2003 8:11 PM   Subscribe

Why Are Love And Lust Always Talked About As Opposites? Even a much-respected philosopher like Simon Blackburn makes this essentially epistemological mistake. The horrific modern expression "in lust" is a further example. How can you lust after someone without loving them a little (or a lot) too? Or vice-(and the word vice is well applied)-versa? [More inside.]
posted by MiguelCardoso (75 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
How can you love someone without wanting to devour that person totally, carnally as well as spiritually? How can you feel, temporarily, for a meagre half an hour at most, you've actually "had" someone if you haven't fed on their soul - and fed your soul to him or her - too? Sexual attraction is biology - but lust, real lust, requires a passion and a hankering and an obsession and a delicious, never-satisfied renewal which is as total and consuming as love. Perhaps there was a slight mistake, on the part of the Catholics, when they approved it as one of the capital sins? I mean, the others do suck... [Via Arts and Letters Daily.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:12 PM on December 20, 2003 [1 favorite]


The division between spirit and body is artificial - the mind springs from the brain which is an organ of the body, it is not something separate from and opposed to the physical body.

The simplification of all internal struggles into two diametrically opposed forces is one of the greatest fallacies in popular philosophy.

Any further discussion on the topic of soul will first have to come up with a specific definition of what soul is - or we'll all end up talking about different things.

I blame Descartes.
posted by spazzm at 8:21 PM on December 20, 2003 [1 favorite]


Opposite? No, nor does Blackburn say so.

Related? Sometimes. Usually, if same-sex love affairs (called "friendship") are excluded. At this hour, I am going to have to do what talk radio callers do: "I'll hang up and listen to your answers."
posted by kozad at 8:36 PM on December 20, 2003


Oops. I meant same-sex heterosexual love affairs. Oh, never mind. I can't type clearly tonight.
posted by kozad at 8:39 PM on December 20, 2003


A perennial question. I blame Persian Dualism.
posted by troutfishing at 8:48 PM on December 20, 2003


How can you lust after someone without loving them a little (or a lot) too?

Easily. Lust, is basically chemical. The curve of someone's buttocks makes your hormones surge and you're seized with the urge to conquer.

Love is a horse of a different color. Love is emotion, appreciation, depth. Love takes time to develop. Love, ultimately is when someone knows everything about you and still likes you anyway. Sexual attraction is of course an element but it's by no means the only, or even the most important one. In a way we've been so sold as a society on the whole romance novel/beer commercial "sweep me off my feet" BS that we've been warped into chasing it.

I remember the first girl I was ever intimate with. We couldn't be in the same room with eachother without hooking up, but we realy had nothing in common and didn't actually like eachother much. Pure chemicals.

The woman I've been with for the past 9 years is another story. We know eachother so well we practically change eachothers diapers, and we still can't imagine being apart.

The two feelings are related but they are shirttail cousins at best. Love at it's best is creative. Lust, while healthy in certain doses, is ultimately soul-destroying.
posted by jonmc at 9:01 PM on December 20, 2003


Wow. I can smell the coming overintellectualized vomitfest already. Let me be the first to say -- STFU, you overeducated wanker. Love and lust are talked about like they're two different things because, uh, they are. "I love her" really does mean something different than "She f*cks my brains out every single day and twice on sunday", and anyone who doesn't realize that is deaf, blind, and self-delusional.

Exact quote from the other day: "So, I slept with this guy, and the next day I'm like, 'Wow! I really like him! I shouldn't have slept with him!'" That statement makes no sense, unless you accept that not only are love and lust two different things, but they can very easily contradict one another. (They can also reinforce one another...much like disparate wave generators that can reinforce eachother for some time, before apparently eventually falling out of sync. There, something for the nice people I just called wankers.)

Check out Check this out. The point isn't whether this is true or not, only that it makes sense. It does, so they're different concepts.

Deal.
posted by effugas at 9:16 PM on December 20, 2003


jonmc - agreed, but lust (mimicking love) is also about histocompatability and pheremonal attraction.
posted by troutfishing at 9:18 PM on December 20, 2003


effugas - but what about those we choose to not sleep with? This selection is not random....
posted by troutfishing at 9:21 PM on December 20, 2003


I'm not sure what "histocompatability" means but you hit the nail on the head with "pheremonal attraction." Like I said it's almost purely chemical. The remainder is the ego boost one gets from feeling desirable. For most of us, these are fairly rare feelings, ao the buzz can become addictive. Also, like I said we've been culturally taught to confuse this euphoria with love, when love is far more complex and deep.
posted by jonmc at 9:35 PM on December 20, 2003


The funny thing is before I experienced love and lust, I would read and listen to others talk about it and understand it better than I do now that I have experienced it.
posted by stbalbach at 9:49 PM on December 20, 2003


trout -- What about them?

jonmc -- What's culturally taught? Look at any retarded teen movie; they're full of guys who get all the action but all of the sudden realize, holy crap, that lead actress is hot... and every girl I know sees the difference between Mr Right and Mr Right Now.

Culture reflects our nature, it can't set it (no matter how much it tries *ahem* puritans *ahem* communists *ahem* religion in general, with maybe excepted the magic guilt engine that I'll leave unnamed).
posted by effugas at 9:51 PM on December 20, 2003


Effugas - I get your drift and I understand the utility of distinguishing between love and lust. I don't even think the intellect comes into either. But my question is: isn't the distinction a little artificial? When you're attracted to someone physically and enjoy their body and have them enjoy yours, doesn't this experience and intense attention also engender an intimacy and honest obsession which, when repeated over time, becomes indistinguishable from friendship and even love? It's much like solidarity - a shared secret; an under-the-sheets giggling and confessing, an unspoken trust.

I think it's efficacious to separate love and lust - but it ain't truthful. It's medieval. It's almost like the notion "I shouldn't love the wench I lust after" or "I shouldn't really lust after the woman I love". I put it to you that this is self-deception on a giga-scale and, ultimately, crap.

Or perhaps men are too free with their favours. Giving yourself to someone is a pre-requisite to receiving. I don't know, I've been around and yet all the women I've made love to, I can't help feeling I loved them all; even though a lot of them (because of the false distinction you defend) probabl.y prefer to think of me as a fleshy fling.

The American thing, whereby a man says he fucked a woman and the woman says she fucked a man (gays and lesbians are way more enlightened) is absurdly contradictory. You cannot fuck somebody (well, at least enjoyably) without being fucked yourself in turn. Given that real lust is only slightly rarer than rare love, I think the case is made that's there's really no real difference. Not if you look at it in the right, passionate manner.

(Just thinking aloud here; not saying.)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:52 PM on December 20, 2003


jonmc -- What's culturally taught?

That love is this "eyes across a crowded room, instantly I knew she was the one" type of deal. That's merely the chemical reaction I described earlier, the endorphin/ego boost cocktail. If people want to let buy into that and be ruled by it, that's their prerogative, but it's never brought me anything but misery.
posted by jonmc at 9:57 PM on December 20, 2003


Odd - I was thinking about making a Simon Blackburn post a couple of hours ago. Miguel has scooped me.
posted by crunchburger at 9:58 PM on December 20, 2003


doesn't this experience and intense attention also engender an intimacy and honest obsession which, when repeated over time, becomes indistinguishable from friendship and even love?

On preview: No, not really. I've lusted after people who, on alll other levels I couldn't stand, but for some physical reason or another got me hot and bothered. So, there's an obvious differental between love and lust.
posted by jonmc at 9:59 PM on December 20, 2003


"...and anyone who doesn't realize that is deaf, blind, and self-delusional."

Well, that settles it then.
posted by spazzm at 10:03 PM on December 20, 2003


"Lust, is basically chemical."

Some people (myself included) would argue that all emotions and thoughts are, when you get down to the gritty details, chemical and electrical.

But if you can prove otherwise, please go ahead.
posted by spazzm at 10:06 PM on December 20, 2003


Some people (myself included) would argue that all emotions and thoughts are, when you get down to the gritty details, chemical and electrical.

I absolutely agree with spazzm.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:20 PM on December 20, 2003


I disagree, spazzm, but fair enough. Let's describe it terms of the desires articulated by those chemical reations. Lust is basic a purely physical desire: seeing a pretty girl and thinking " I wanna fuck her."

Love May certainly have that desire as a component, but it also brings out the desires for companionship, protectiveness, cooperation, nurture, partnership. Now, someone like yourself, who adheres to a biological viewof things may argue that these desires are built into humans biologically for evolutionary reasons. Who knows. But they are definitely different impulses than pure lust. Like I said before, I've definitely experienced lustful feelings toward people I actively disliked,a nd I'm sure I'm not the only one.
posted by jonmc at 10:22 PM on December 20, 2003


I've never heard the two seriously discussed as opposites.

How odd.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:26 PM on December 20, 2003


or alternately let's examine the phenomena of crushes. Wheras a glance at a shapely posterior may make me think of sex, other women may ,ake me think of picking flowers for them or walking on the beach or sharing ice cream sodas (yes, I'm a complete sentimental cornball, shoot me). I've developed feelings like this towards women I havent even seen, so that's again a very different phenomenon from the desire for physical gratification.

on preview: stav, I ouldn't say opposites, just very different.
posted by jonmc at 10:27 PM on December 20, 2003


Yeah, I'm with you Jon - just answering Migs' question, or rather not, 'cause I don't quite get it, and because I'm more an agape than an eros kind of guy, anyway.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:40 PM on December 20, 2003


How can you love someone without wanting to devour that person totally, carnally as well as spiritually?

You kiss your *mother* with that mouth?

Seriously, what ever got in the way of love more than carnal desire, and what has the power to slaughter carnal desire moreso than love? Who do you know who's synthesized the two successfully? Granted they are a killer combination, but how can you define them as mutually essential? Define love as you wish, but if we're living in the same world, I expect to be seeing you down at the other end of the bar before much longer.
posted by scarabic at 10:41 PM on December 20, 2003


Love is lust rationalized.

or

Lust is love disrespected.
posted by rushmc at 1:03 AM on December 21, 2003


Some people (myself included) would argue that all emotions and thoughts are, when you get down to the gritty details, chemical and electrical.

It doesn't matter whether this is true or not, for most purposes related to the discussion. When people talk about seperating experiences into intellectual, emotional, and sensual, they're talking about a perceived difference in some aspect of experience. Even if you're a complete materialist, I don't see how that's any more objectionable than dividing sense experience into touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight.

But if you can prove otherwise, please go ahead.

From what I've read, nobody can prove this is all there is to it. Although there's very clearly chemical and electrical components to brain function, it's a bit reductionist and preemptive to say that's all there is to it. No, don't get me wrong, I'm not a dualist, and I'm confident that whatever surrounds personal consciousness, it will turn out to be physics. Whether it's something that's in line with our current models is another question.
posted by weston at 1:14 AM on December 21, 2003


"Daddy, why is the sky blue?"Filter.

Shaddup and eat your ice cream, kid.
posted by insomnia_lj at 1:28 AM on December 21, 2003


troutfishing, I just wanted to say that (as a biochemistry geek) you unintentionally made me laugh so hard I spit pop all over my monitor! I don't think lust has much to do with histocompatability!

(Unless, of course, you are looking to the object of your affection as a possible organ donor)
posted by chemgirl at 1:30 AM on December 21, 2003


chemgirl's a biochemistry geek, eh? i would have never guessed...
posted by joedan at 4:46 AM on December 21, 2003


spazzm -- OK, maybe I went a little overboard. Still -- denial ain't just a river in egypt, and alot of people cling desperately to myths that are noticably untrue. I can accept this at times -- but believing lust and love are identical is, while quite romantic, utterly flat-earthian.

Regarding seeing mind and body as identical -- you remind me of Pinker, noting that while World War 2 can be explained as the interactions of a tremendous number of quarks, such an explanation would not be useful. There are emergent effects that come from the operation of the mind, and though the nature of life and the body is singularly useful for determining why those effects got selected, the message is not actually the medium.

Miguel:


But my question is: isn't the distinction a little artificial? When you're attracted to someone physically and enjoy their body and have them enjoy yours, doesn't this experience and intense attention also engender an intimacy and honest obsession which, when repeated over time, becomes indistinguishable from friendship and even love?


No. People can screw quite a bit and never love eachother, or they can love eachother and never screw (we call this the friend zone). I'm sorry to be so blunt, but I think you know this is true...look what you say two paragraphs down:

Or perhaps men are too free with their favours. Giving yourself to someone is a pre-requisite to receiving.

No, not is. Maybe should be. If men are too free, you wish they were less free. You may indeed wish they always and automatically gave in proportion to what they receive.

But they don't have to. Often, they don't. Noticably, guys who do behave like you describe get their minds kicked in by girls who run roughshod over them. (And, of course guys can do their own mind-kicking.)

Now, I don't mind any of this -- it's the hustle and bustle of the world we live in, and complaining about it's like complaining the sky is blue. But denying it through overintellectualized definition -- sorry. That bothers me. It takes a process that's supposed to illuminate the truth, intelligent, detailed analysis, and turns it into something akin to a Star Trek Technical Guide -- a very detailed explanation of something that's fundamentally fiction.

Of course, we should note why this fiction is being told in the first place: Love is respected. Lust is not. If they're identical, we disrespect love by making people feel guilty about lust -- and it's just awful to disrespect love! It's a trick...maybe with noble goals (quit guilt tripping people about human nature!), but it can't work. You can't define the two as the same because everyone has had experiences where the two thought-lines diverge. They're not opposites, but they likely come from very different parts of the brain (nurturing vs. propagating), and each has their own motivations, schedules, and tragedies.

At the end of the day, this is our nature. Intellectual redefinition cannot change it.
posted by effugas at 6:04 AM on December 21, 2003


chemgirl - I'm glad I made you laugh. However.....this is a busy little subfield of research. Histocompatability, for those here who don't want to look it up, is immune system comparability or, in this case, the ability of two people to produce a child which doesn't have major immune system disorders. Although prior research showed that men and women prefer sexual partners with immune systems which are different from their own, apparently attraction for mates which smell like one's opposite sex parent is a more powerful instinct (apparently - it's a new field of research, obviously). It's been shown that woman select men who smell like their fathers - The Electra Complex? Well, no - it's clearly not conscious. So it's hypothesized that the decision is based on histocompatability - men who smell like their fathers will, in fact, be much more compatible. Not surprisingly, men are attracted to mates that remind them of their mothers. Then again, maybe it's displaced incestual lust.

So.....histocompatability - I didn't sling out that big word fer' nothin' .

Miguel - You fleshy fling, you.

effugas - Thanks for that cartoon. I couldn't believe I'd never seen it before. I wonder if I could do a post which asked Metafilter members to self report what numbers they have stamped on their foreheads? Would they lie? Of course they would....I happen to have a very high number on my forehead, so I don't have to lie, of course.

"The curve of someone's buttocks makes your hormones surge" - johnmc, I've read about studies which show that, on average, men prefer a specific waist to hip ratio

"...Singh has shown that there is a preference among men for a certain waist-to-hip ratio in females. A 70% waist-to-hip ratio indicates, apparently, health and fertility in the woman, and is the male ideal. This holds up across different cultures, suggesting, like the Buss (1989) sex differences in mate preferences, that it is a universal reality. Singh has pointed out that even women who look very different may have similar wait-to-hip ratios. For example, he says that the famous actress Marilyn Monroe and the current skinny model Kate Moss both have the ideal waist-to-hip ratio. Even though they look quite different, their having the ideal waist-to-hip ratio would help explain their appeal, and why they have become stars when other attractive women have not. There is also a female preferred waist-to-hip ratio for men, of 80-95% (Singh, 1995). "

Humans also show a strong preference for bilateral symmetry in their mates - in other words, no giant protrusions sticking out of the side of the head allowed.

But love?.......Ah, love.......
posted by troutfishing at 6:09 AM on December 21, 2003


Oops - my spellcheck mistakenly turned "compatability into comparability". *number stamped on forehead decreases*
posted by troutfishing at 6:12 AM on December 21, 2003


Oh - and one more thing : what about the role of money, power, and fame in the love/lust equation?
posted by troutfishing at 6:13 AM on December 21, 2003


Some people (myself included) would argue that all emotions and thoughts are, when you get down to the gritty details, chemical and electrical.

sure, but there's a difference between immediate chemical reactions which need no precursor, and may even be provoked by other people's chemicals (the way when certain people are near you just can't form sentences properly) and extended emotions based on experience, communication, memories, imagined futures, etc.

Lust is easy enough to define; we all know what it feels like. Love, in my opinion, is problematic because we aren't necessarily all talking about the same thing. First of all, there's "platonic love" vs. "being in love". Platonic love is a deep friendship, and usually friends don't tell use the L word with one another right off the bat. Being in love is an even bigger thing; the first time one partner says "I love you" is a major turning point in most relationships, and if it's not returned, can be the end.

But secondly, what one must feel in a relationship to say "I love you" is much less obvious than what makes you say "you make me hot". Some people will say they're in love after just days or weeks; others would not approach that hurdle for at least six months. I don't think the relationships have to be different; it's just a different importance placed on the word "love". If someone told me they loved me after a couple weeks, I would think they were a simplistic romantic. Yes, in those first weeks you feel like that person is amazing, almost perfect, but you have to let some of those feelings quiet down a little bit before you can even think about love. (That lust shouldn't die away, but it relaxes, becomes controllable). I'd think being in love would have to include the build up, the lust at the start, but conflating the two is missing the complexity and depth of what most of us mean by "love", which is not about someone being perfect or gorgeous or overpowering in their presence, but more about their being human, and complicated, and so close to you, and so far sometimes, so real, and so intrinsic to your life.
posted by mdn at 6:23 AM on December 21, 2003


trout -- Fried Society is arguably the single best webcomic in history. Last I heard, the author was working for Comedy Central...anyway, hotornot is all about stamped-number-detection.

There's really interesting patterns regarding hotness detection for straight males. We're amazingly bad at evaluating the attractiveness of males, ourselves or otherwise, in absence of gross malformity like weight or giant protrusion. Girls aren't a problem -- we can walk into a classroom of thirty people and identify the three hottest girls before we sit down, no problem -- but it took a while before a gay friend realized he could point out any potential male as attractive and none of us could comment in one way or the other.

Seems kind of like color blindness. Took a while before aforementioned gay person believed we weren't just repressing. Kinda funny.
posted by effugas at 6:24 AM on December 21, 2003


Now, I don't mind any of this -- it's the hustle and bustle of the world we live in, and complaining about it's like complaining the sky is blue. But denying it through overintellectualized definition -- sorry. That bothers me. It takes a process that's supposed to illuminate the truth, intelligent, detailed analysis, and turns it into something akin to a Star Trek Technical Guide -- a very detailed explanation of something that's fundamentally fiction.

God, that's well said and written, effugas. You're so definite and articulate it seems undeniable once you've said. Makes you think, it does. A sure sign it's an intelligent thing to say is that I find myself pitifully wishing I could plea "But why can't we both be right"? We can't.

Still, for (so far as I can see) non-contradictable truth, I think rushmc, as is his wont, has encapsulated and condensed the problem best, i.e., most undeniably:

Love is lust rationalized.

or

Lust is love disrespected.


A real, life-changing nugget, that is, no mistake - at least for this so-called Latin lover. Luster, whatever.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:28 AM on December 21, 2003


effugas - I dunno, I think I'm pretty good at that. Repressed homoerotic tendencies? Maybe. Intellectually I know all the factors and so I can parse hotness that way...... But I think gay male "hot" preferences might be somewhat different from straight female "hot" preferences - although I think most gay males would be able to recognize that distinction, to an extent. And then there's the question, for both gay males and straight females : does "hot" = a good long term mate? So is "hot" always "hot"? Or are there different flavors of "hot"?

This gets into the X factor. Think - Bill Gates. Did he have a high number stamped on his forehead as a kid? I doubt it. But his number is much, much higher now, and that's not all due to money. Gates' wealth is mainly due to a ferocious drive (coupled with some luck, sure) which may not have translated into a high forehead number when he was in high school, but now it's apparent that he has the "stuff".

But beyond a ferocious drive for money or power......

Take Al Gore vs. Bill Clinton in the hotness contest. Guess who wins....But why? > Gore is, in most ways, every bit as smart as Clinton. And Clinton's a little chubby and less symmetrical than Al Gore, who has those chiseled Christopher Reeves features... You could, of course, boil it down to Clinton's extreme political genius. Still, for me, this doesn't seem to capture it all....

Here's what I mean (this is where it gets tricky) - I'm sure we all know of certain people who fail many of the the usual gross physical contest/hotness qualifications in that they may not be quite symmetrical (although not grossly asymmetrical either) and may have little flaws here and there.....but they outshine, nonetheless, people who are far more "hot" (in purely technical terms) and yet this seems to be due to personality, and also something else....Soul?.......Think - "Lit, as if from inside"
posted by troutfishing at 6:48 AM on December 21, 2003


I've been around and yet all the women I've made love to, I can't help feeling I loved them all...

So that's it: Miguel is... Billy Joel!

Tomorrow, a Migs post asking whether platinum isn't really, when you get right down to it and learn to see past your cultural blinders, the same thing as Pop Tarts.
posted by languagehat at 7:20 AM on December 21, 2003


trout -- the point is, you parse male hotness analytically, much an an autistic emulates empathy. There's no hardware accelerated yum factor, if you will.

There are certainly different types of attractiveness. See the holy difference between cute and hot (for girls):

Kittens can be cute. Kittens cannot be hot.

I'm not getting into the wealth vs. power thing, except by saying Bill Gates is the only person that wealthy who doesn't appear to exploit his wealth for girls. That's what's kind of tragic about the guy -- so reviled by geeks, and he personifies the dream of so many by remaining a geek himself despite every opportunity to...well...outshine Larry Ellison in one more arena.

One final note -- supply and demand affects perceptions of attractiveness more than we'd like to admit...

Miguel-- Thanks...now, the caveat. The fundamental conceit of science (it is useful to know the truth) is aggressively questionable here. Just because half of all marriages end in divorce doesn't mean the fact should be mentioned, thought about, or even believed during wedding vows. So -- if you're finding success by believing a myth -- don't stop what you're doing.

I don't know about the rationality vs. disrespect dichotomy. Lust isn't entirely disrespected (it sure as hell sells), and love...ummm...rational?
posted by effugas at 7:23 AM on December 21, 2003


Love is rational, effugas, because, ever since time began, people have asked "By why, exactly, do you love me?" and their lovers have thought about it; written about it... and even answered in person sometimes! If you search enough, there is a reason. It's quite inexplicable how tiny a percentage of other human beings we'd like to fuck/love/even spend time with. Bergson on laughter is all very well but Stendhal on love is essential.

But, yes, I see what you mean...and recoil! ;)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:47 AM on December 21, 2003


Oh, I think Effugas and Miguel can both be partially right. (Although the FPP went beyond proposing that they are "different" to "opposites" which is an even taller claim). The fact that two things are different, does not mean that they can't be frequently linked in our culture, or for a particular person. (Two great tastes that taste great together.)

For me personally, I have pretty much concluded that I'm a romantic. Zipless sex is worse than nothing for me, and I have a hard time feeling sexually attracted to people for whom I feel apathy or antipathy. (A short list of "sexy" media icons that are supposed to reduce me to a pile of drool but don't include Brittney Spears, Sean Connery, Orlando Bloom, and J Lo.) I can see how other people can experience lust uncoupled from love (which Hollywood sex symbol said of prostitutes, "I don't pay them for sex, I pay them to leave after sex"?) but it's not the way my mind works.

In fact, I would argue that there is quite a bit more in our culture saying that they are not opposites than they are. Self-help articles seem to insist that the quality of a relationship can be judged by the frequency of mind-blowing orgasmic sex. The three-date rule is considered to be a standard for determining of a dating relationship is "going anywhere." And so on.

on preview:

effugas: Miguel-- Thanks...now, the caveat. The fundamental conceit of science (it is useful to know the truth) is aggressively questionable here. Just because half of all marriages end in divorce doesn't mean the fact should be mentioned, thought about, or even believed during wedding vows. So -- if you're finding success by believing a myth -- don't stop what you're doing.

Of course, the 50% of marriages end in divorce has attained the status of myth its self. Also, one of the key points of evolutionary psychology and Pinker's mind organs is that these mind organs are highly adaptable and can be reconfigured to particular cultural contexts.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 8:05 AM on December 21, 2003


giant protrusion

Heh
posted by Slagman at 8:29 AM on December 21, 2003


Miguel-- Love is the most obviously irrational emotion we have. We can come up with good reasons to be angry or loyal -- they aren't necessarily the real reasons, but humans do find need to copy such emotions into the minds of others, and argument can help with that. But we almost never transfer love, and thus nobody ever seduced someone by saying their combined wealth would be sufficient to raise 4.3 children, putting 2.1 through college, while marrying off the non-college bound to others in successful families. The presence of simile and metaphor -- "meeting you was like the first glimpse of sunlight after wandering through darkness" -- suggests something that can only be induced weakly rather than deduced directly.

Best proof ever that inductive reasoning can be a hell of alot of fun :-)

Kirk-- Walk into a room of people younger than 30. Ask how many people's parents are still together. Half the people will raise their hand.

Every time I've tried it, it's been precisely half -- no standard deviation, it's just always 50%. It's spooky -- I've done it alot. That's why the figure has so much validity -- it matches our everyday experience. Of course, you can't trust anecdotes...but, if for the last fifteen years, there's been twice as many divorces as marriages, and you determine n% of those divorces are from those who have been married greater than 15 years, it's relatively straightforward to quantify the risk of a divorce filtering out the marriages of the past (since, um, nobody's getting married in the past, they're getting married now).

And the odds right now ain't so hot.

Funny to see you mention Pinker and cultural contexts...this is a man who's up for a Pulitzer Prize for his work on The Blank Slate, which argues quite convincingly that human nature isn't just a myth and that the Blank Slate (the idea that humans are born knowing nothing and can be infinitely molded), the Noble Savage (industrialism made us dark; man in nature is peaceful), and the Ghost In The Machine (there's something more to our motivations than can be captured in chemistry) are all tremendously false memes. The book is a bit...defensive...but it's brilliant nonetheless.

Yes, we're highly adaptable, but ultimately culture is a slave to human nature, not the other way around.

About romanticism -- yup, meaningless lust doesn't interest me either, causing some noticably lost opportunities. (D'oh.) Sexless (I believe unrequited is the romantic word) love is a famous source of frustration throughout history too. So these are definitely things that go well together. As for stars -- I've noted that the "cute" prototypes like Katie Holmes seem to be more relatable than Jenny From The Block, and thus more attractive. But then, that's just my perception.
posted by effugas at 8:44 AM on December 21, 2003


mdn-- So there's this classic quote:

Three things are necessary for love:

A) You like them
B) They like you
C) This happens at the same time

American dating culture had made this even harder:

A) You say you love them
B) They say they love you
C) This happens when you're both ready, or else
posted by effugas at 8:50 AM on December 21, 2003


but ultimately culture is a slave to human nature, not the other way around

Effugas - I don't know whether to thank you or damn you. I find myself agreeing and hate you as much as myself for it. Perhaps, for now, I can do both?

You know, while I'm getting used to it? Your condescending remark, along the lines of "But hey, if it works for you, press on!", would have been obnoxious to me, hadn't it fitted in so well with what you're saying. Allow me, however, one remnant of illusion: illusion exists. And it's no less true and, certainly, just as rewarding. I guess. Damn you for having to add that last sentence. My only hope is that one day you'll fall hopelessly fall in love and become just as confused as I am. I've been way too wanton in my life (happily so!) and sometimes it seems as if my thoughts are designed to excuse me, rather than bring me closer to the truth. I shall spare you the "What is Truth?" spiel, because it would be insincere. ;)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:12 AM on December 21, 2003


"trout -- the point is, you parse male hotness analytically, much an an autistic emulates empathy" effugas - I am not autistic in the slightest. That is an illogical statement. Male hotness, in fact, can be broken down, or parsed if you will, through 19 differently index characteristics which, oddly, can also be viewed from an orthogonal perspective.....

Love 'ya comment. Hee hee.

Also, I think you misunderestimate me (hee hee) - One of my common points during heated argument is : "Do you know how what you're saying feels like to me? It's not what you say so much sometimes as how you say it.....tone of voice, emotion.....

Actually, I find the right hip-waist ratio yummy indeed. Hardware. Heh. And the software?...

Meanwhile, recent studies which show that people, during the initial first few month blush of "love" exhibit all the classic characteristics of obsessive-compulsive disorder?

"supply and demand affects perceptions of attractiveness more than we'd like to admit..." - Well, yes. In fact, there have been studies.......but I won't do any more study-citing today.

Love on the dissection table? Pass the scalpel, please.....

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Has anyone on this thread thought to examine the issue that there are many, many types of "love"? The Ancient Greeks knew this. Does the paucity of words for "love", or the poverty of the scrawny "Love"/"Lust" distinction reveal an actual emotional impoverishment?

Studies of touching rates among couples show that french couples touch far more than american ones. [ cheese-eating sex fiends that they are ] Is the Anglo tradition just emotionally impoverished?

Eskimos have so many words for snow, the cliche goes, because that's where they hang out - in snow.

So we have one word for love. Love. So where - in psychic and experiential terms - do we hang out then? Where, in the Anglo tradition do you find those Eskimoic profusions of descriptive terms?
posted by troutfishing at 9:34 AM on December 21, 2003


I just want to add that the f-word is being used a lot on this thread and I fucking love it.
posted by MarkO at 10:13 AM on December 21, 2003


Miguel -- Oh, I've been hopelessly in love. Three year relationship, celebrated monthly anniversaries 27 months in a row. Insanely goofy head over heels stuff. Maybe I haven't been so clear. It's not that love can't work. Clearly it can; there are lots of goofy couples out there, and I was one of them. So the point isn't that love doesn't work, it's that love doesn't have to work, that everything can fall apart in a heap of rubble tommorow, so enjoy and cherish today. Way, way too many relationships are focused on the future -- we have to press on, I want kids/a house/an unblemished record! -- or, worse, the past -- oh my God, if we break up now, I wasted the last three years of my life! The point is now. Not necessarily to act brashly, only for the moment, but to recognize that the time we have with eachother is genuinely special...when we partake in this field of life, we are trapeze artists, working without a safety net, placing our trust in one another to achieve the greatest heights one can fly.

Just ignore the broken bodies down below.

Trout-- Eskimos actually don't have that many words for snow. That's an urban legend; Pinker wrote about that too. Anthropologists were really, really awful around the turn of the century. But there's recent screwups too -- that page about the divorce rate not actually being 50% was full of it -- their stats refer to all marriages ever, ignoring the fact that divorce is much more common now. Anyway, googling for "census" and "divorce" was all it took to see 1996 figures.

About OCD -- I've always found it interesting that we have capacities for extreme addiction. Generally when modifying a system you didn't invent, it's much easier to make it express certain behavior at the wrong time than it is to invent totally new behavior. So human's capacity for OCD can be an unexpected leakage of love's seed. Hmm.

Interesting strategy for defusing arguments. Avoid the facts, turn it into "Please increase empathy for me. The more you hurt me, the more you hurt yourself. You don't want to hurt yourself, do you?"

That's a big gun you got there.

I agree -- we need more words that refer to significant forms of love. The anglo tradition only provides copious verbiage for verboten words, a la milk milk lemonade, in the back fudge is made.
posted by effugas at 10:40 AM on December 21, 2003


Is the Anglo tradition just emotionally impoverished?

I vote yes.

But at the same time, I would suggest that love is the tv of the species before there was tv.
posted by rushmc at 10:52 AM on December 21, 2003


Love is the most obviously irrational emotion we have.

I think lust is irrational, but if we mean something different by love, if we mean something based on shared experience and connection, it needn't be completely irrational...

About romanticism -- yup, meaningless lust doesn't interest me either, causing some noticably lost opportunities.

all right, how do we differentiate between meaningful lust and meaningless lust? Is the bodily reaction just the same - are you flustered and awkward in the presence of the person in both cases? Do you fantasize about the person in both cases? If yes, how do you know it's meaningless? If no, how do you know it's lust? There's a kind of abstract conception that someone is attractive that you can have without actually lusting after them...

Has anyone on this thread thought to examine the issue that there are many, many types of "love"?

that's where I was trying to go earlier. There's a whole mix of emotions and reactions that different people use to define love. Some people don't think about it all, and some people overthink it. Who knows where the right middle ground is; just hope your partner has a similar misconception to you :)

a la milk milk lemonade, in the back fudge is made.

eww! if that means what it seems to mean. ick.
posted by mdn at 11:38 AM on December 21, 2003


Troutfishing: Cool, thanks, you learn something new every day!
posted by chemgirl at 11:44 AM on December 21, 2003


Being still in the process of trying to resolve an 18-year emotional miscalculation, I see no support for the assessment of "love" and "lust" as opposites but rather see them as X and Y axes on a romantic version of the MeFi-supported "political compass". The problem is, I can think of several more dimensions for the Romantic Compass, including "friendship", "commonality" and "empathy", which I have no time to try to explain in any depth right now...
posted by wendell at 12:52 PM on December 21, 2003


"Hard-nosed philosophers are apt to look askance at incommunicable knowledge"

But lust has such a great reputation when it comes to all things communicable! (Just ask the soft-nosed philosophers.)
posted by taz at 12:53 PM on December 21, 2003


Are we ignoring the possibility that for some people, romantic love and sexual desire *may* be irrevocably linked?

I think there are definitely some folks for whom the *only* ass in the room is the one attached to the heart they love, whatever its hip-to-buttock curve may be. And certainly for some folks, sex does strike like lightning to the emotional core, triggering feelings of great intimacy and bonding.

I just think that there are many more people for whom the interplay is more complicated. I certainly think that the dangers inherent in expecting love/lust to cooperate will train most anyone out of that unified zone after a while.

But we're not going to arrive at definitions here, no matter how good the arguments. It works differently for different people. In fact, I think it may work differently for the same person over time, in different situations, or with different partners.

Interesting discussion topic, but hardly a question that can be answered.
posted by scarabic at 1:43 PM on December 21, 2003


Lust is what I feel for women I meet in bars; love is what I feel for the bartender.
posted by nicwolff at 1:45 PM on December 21, 2003


miguel - It was a good thread, and a party for all. chemgirl - you're welcome. Maybe one day you could use your chem knowledge to invent some really, really good synthetic pheremones.
posted by troutfishing at 1:50 PM on December 21, 2003


effugas: Funny to see you mention Pinker and cultural contexts...this is a man who's up for a Pulitzer Prize for his work on The Blank Slate, which argues quite convincingly that human nature isn't just a myth and that the Blank Slate (the idea that humans are born knowing nothing and can be infinitely molded), the Noble Savage (industrialism made us dark; man in nature is peaceful), and the Ghost In The Machine (there's something more to our motivations than can be captured in chemistry) are all tremendously false memes. The book is a bit...defensive...but it's brilliant nonetheless.

I actually have a bone to pick with The Blank Slate in that much of his argument is based on, at best, an incompetent interpretation of Skinner and Watson, and at worst must be considered outright dishonesty. Hearing that it is up for a Pulitzer is both astounding, and yet not entirely unexpected. A colleague of mine once pointed out that the best way to make a name for yourself is to loudly claim that everyone else is wrong, even if you have to slander them in the process.

It is astounding that such a biased work would suddenly gain such popular acceptance. Pinker is quite obviously stacking his deck to overstate the Blank Slate (which is something that is argued, briefly, by first-year graduate students then forgotten in favor of more productive theories.) Many pages are spent selectively ripping apart Watson while ignoring that Watson was quite explicitly aware that human beings were not a Blank Slate, and that Watson was not arguing against an evolutionary psychology that would not exist for another 80 years, but a Social Darwinism which said that if you father was a lawyer, you are destined to be a lawyer. Skinner is given the same treatment (the current issue of Skeptical Inquirer does an excellent job of revealing Pinker's characterization of Skinner as a hack job.) In addition, developmental psychologists such as Jean Piaget are not mentioned. Jean Piaget proposed that brain development does in fact, matter a heck of a lot and has become the driving force behind contemporary childhood pedagogy.

The myth of the Blank Slate is not that humans are born knowing nothing, or that there is no such thing as human nature, but that the Blank Slate has been a dominant paradigm in our lifetime. The end result is that for me, the first half of the book so deeply mischaracterizes the nature of the field that the second half is hopelessly tainted. I work at a pretty mainstream school (that was, at one time, a behaviorist bastion) with a pretty mainstream Educational Psychology department and NO ONE I know believes a literal "Blank Slate". NO ONE denies that children are born with individual differences, preferences, and abilities and NO ONE denies that the way that we think is entirely independent from how our brains process information. Heck, even the grandfather of social contructivism, Lev Vygotsky, said right out that we can't compare human learning to animal learning.

Yes, we're highly adaptable, but ultimately culture is a slave to human nature, not the other way around.

I actually see this as a rather bad characterization of what Pinker has said in his work that actually is brilliant, How the Mind Works, in which he says regarding his own reproductive choices, "If my genes don't like it, they can go jump in a lake." In is writing, there are some truly deep ideas about systems thinking that can't be reduced to "nature determines culture" or "culture trumps nature." However, in his attempt to sally forth into politics, it seems that he's forced into making such simplistic reductions and sound bites. Of course it is quite possible that in the handful of years between How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate that he's made a radical change from a more systems-oriented approach to a simpler view that culture is a slave to human nature (which is also a view profoundly rejected by Thornhill and Palmer in their evolutionary psychology of rape studies.)

Miguel-- Love is the most obviously irrational emotion we have. We can come up with good reasons to be angry or loyal -- they aren't necessarily the real reasons, but humans do find need to copy such emotions into the minds of others, and argument can help with that. But we almost never transfer love, and thus nobody ever seduced someone by saying their combined wealth would be sufficient to raise 4.3 children, putting 2.1 through college, while marrying off the non-college bound to others in successful families. The presence of simile and metaphor -- "meeting you was like the first glimpse of sunlight after wandering through darkness" -- suggests something that can only be induced weakly rather than deduced directly.

Well, actually. Is it more the case that "love" is constructed to be irrational in our culture as a culture that rejects such notions as arranged marriages as hopelessly antique and quaint? Which gets to the point about there being many different kinds of love (or is it that "love" is used to describe many different things.)

For example, you equated sexless love with unrequited love (another relic of the myth of courtly love). I know couples that don't have sex due to a variety of issues ranging from the psychological (lack of interest) to the physical (medical inability.) These are couples that share a profound tenderness and do everything with each other. And I get the sense that the surviving partner would be devastated if something should happen to the remaining partner. In many cultures there is an idea of relationship development where sex becomes less and less important as time goes on. unrequited love is not about sex, but about affection.

I suspect that a large part of our high divorce rate is that we place such high standards on loving a life partner. It's all about celebrating monthly anniversaries for three years at a time, coupled with the best orgasms of our lives three times a week until, at a minimum, we are in our 50s. Perhaps rather than this romantic ideal of irrational infatuation, we should be thinking about love as something we do, a process that sometimes is going to feel more like work than fun.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 2:30 PM on December 21, 2003


[ footnote comment - "A colleague of mine once pointed out that the best way to make a name for yourself is to loudly claim that everyone else is wrong, even if you have to slander them in the process. " Kirkjobsludder, I think there a simple sociobiological mechanism at work here : people who loudly place themselves in a tiny minority of "skeptics" - to broadly accepted scientific facts - stand out and are recognized by a media which looks for "balance". Think of Bjorn Lomborg. ]
posted by troutfishing at 3:08 PM on December 21, 2003


In my universe friendship and lust are two of the most powerful emotions I know.

Put these together, and then we can call it love. Lust is a building block for love--the sudden and often enduring, perhaps unexpected, spark whether it be from an initial meeting or after years of friendship. Lust of a non sexual kind can be a building block deeper friendships, too.

Of course, the mistake I think most people make is in assuming that "lust" must ultimately assume the object of desire be somehow sexual. Lust to me is an intense desire of another thing, or person, physically or emotionally. I can lust after things or people I don't want to have sex with. Even the formal definition of the word recognizes this. Why then, when discussing love, must lust only be used in the sexual sense. Why then, when discussing love, is lust almost always used with a negative connotation?

Unchecked, unrequited lust is a terrible state, no doubt, and I think from where lust gets most of its bad name. But two people, lusting after each other, can be a beautiful thing--whether the result be sexual or not.

I lust for time with my closest friends in different ways than I lust for my spouse--but the inexplicable desire to be with this person is still there. Add a basic imperative such as sexuality into the mix of friendship, and you end up with ridiculous amounts of lust, resulting in one of the strongest forms or love, but likewise one of the most brittle. Add lust for companionship into the mix of friendship, and you end up with companions and best friends that you cherish for years. If you're lucky, you'll find a lust for both--that's reciprocal--in the same person.

Lust forges the bond. Lust is the state itself. Love is just the word.
posted by Swifty at 3:49 PM on December 21, 2003


Miguel: Thanks.

troutfishing: After pondering it a little, I blame persian dualism too.

It's just that I don't like Descartes. I mean, his coordinate system was ok, but the proof of God? And the pineal gland theory? Come on - he's so overrated.
posted by spazzm at 4:39 PM on December 21, 2003


Regarding the inuits and snow:
Norwegians (who are not inuits, I admit) actually do have several words for snow. Some of them are adjectives that are only used to describe snow - it's usefulness as snowball material or how well it is suited for skiing, for example.
posted by spazzm at 4:52 PM on December 21, 2003


also re: the eskimo/snow thing, I think it both is and isn't true, in that the way their language works, you can make new "words" by attaching adjectives to nouns, so that they speak of "crunchysnow" and "iceysnow" and "wetsnow" and "unpackablesnow". We might speak of different kinds of snow using those adjectives and nouns as separate words, and they have the capacity to make up new words for new kinds of snow anytime they want.

So it's a myth in that the different words aren't actually completely different syllabic constructions, but it's true in the sense that they're more likely to amend the generic term with an adjective than we are. (we're not likely to say, wow, the whole area is covered by crunchy snow - if we're going to use an adjective to describe snow, it will probably be the entire statement, eg, this snow is crunchy.)
posted by mdn at 5:22 PM on December 21, 2003


mdn-- The issue is that the Inuit were supposed to have like eighty words for snow, and that's not true in the way that (for example) one might call a Japanese a status-obsessed language. I have to wonder about the agglomerations being individual words; spoken languages have no use for spaces, so iceysnow and wetsnow may literally be transliteration errors (the roots of adjectives and nouns being constant).

spazzm -- English has a couple words too -- snow, icepack, powder -- but its nothing like the urban legend.

scarabic-- Even if love and lust are irrevocably linked for some, they're still different concepts that _aren't necessarily_ linked. In other words -- I might be color blind and unable to differentiate red light from green, but I could not deny that there is a fundamental difference between the two. Causality is not identity.

Kirk-- Great post. First of all, I agree -- How The Mind Works is Pinker's truly brilliant work, and is the one that got me to read the rest (Language Instinct, Words And Rules, and Blank Slate). It's interesting that you rebutt his writings by claiming he's attacking a straw man, as if nobody was claiming these three concepts are how the world works. The point is -- even if there's been a bit of a recession in belief among those actively working in fields that are meaningless given tabula rasa, there's alot of people in the Humanities that aren't exposed daily to experimental evidence and thus continue to believe "facts" that are undeniably ludicrous. It's interesting that you mention rape studies, as this was the turning point in my respect for the book. Pinker takes to task that belief that rape is about power, not sex. Now, he's not the first to point out the ridiculousness of the claim (a thief may use the power of a gun to support his greed, but he's still greedy and still wants your money). But he is the first to point out that chemical castration has been argued against on the grounds that, since rape is about power and not sex, suppressing sex wouldn't stop rape. But, of course it does -- a 45% recidivism rate vs. a 3% recidivism rate. That means a given rapist is 15x more likely to rape again due to feminist policies and models of male thought.

Not mentioning Piaget isn't really relevant here. He's not claiming to be the only one to argue his side, and he's not saying all developmentalists are crazy (they're the least likely to be, since they have an experimental platform to test on.) And we both know Pinker's just the latest to attack Skinner's legacy. Whatever else he wrote (and I'm actively going to seek out the Skeptical Enquirer link), Skinner is quite well known for his studies on half starved rats, and he really did seem to be the flag-bearer for conditioning mechanisms.

Culture being a slave to human nature is more my reading of both books, and you're quite right -- it's an oversimplification. The sense I've gotten is that for culture to be effective, it must harness the pathways already extant in human behavior -- in other words, culture can't make people do anything without playing different motivations against one another. In that sense, it's the slave, but in another sense, it's the driver (since the master with a whip is playing on a slave's desire not to be whipped).

About the american model of love always being intermixed with lust -- that's precisely what I meant, way back when, when I said the two were like wave generators that can occasionally reinforce but eventually go their own separate ways. The American Wedding is the perfect union of love and lust; the virginal white wedding dress and the debauchery of the honeymoon to follow. But, biologically, desire falls off after a number of years. The lust usually dies, despite what culture says, despite the fervent desires of both partners. (This has all the trappings of a hormonal shift, and thus I expect a marital bliss pill to be the biggest seller of any medication in history.) The biggest difference between the American model of love and the "arranged marriage" is the latter emphasizes "learning to love", i.e. there's no presumption that this behavior reflects the real thing, only that it's fiscally and socially advantageous. The former suggests that every day should be like the first few months were, holding nature at bay like a species of dog is bred stuck to a given strata of behavior. The latter suggests this is how we get through a messy, messy world, however we might feel.

The point, at the end of the day, is that culture cannot define love, either as inextricably tied to lust (american) or as something that automatically occurs to meet what are actually rational constraints (arranged). Love follows its own blissfully irrational path, to the benefit of those who manage it and the detriment of those who try to stand in its way. It's not the opposite of lust, nor is it the chainbound companion of it. It takes many forms, some of which never involve lust, others of which involve lust but only asymmetrically.

It's a glorious mess. Welcome to being human.
posted by effugas at 8:12 PM on December 21, 2003


"troutfishing: After pondering it a little, I blame persian dualism too." - spazzm, that made me laugh out loud, for the simple reason that I couldn't believe anyone picked up on that comment. I was serious too, mostly, although I could perhaps have backtracked even further since Persian Dualism didn't arise really all that long ago.

Another such construction might be - Love : Lust / Earth ( profane ) : Sky ( divine, holy )

Some have attributed this sort of thing to the period when hunting and gathering humans first learned to selectively breed animals and plants - the beginnings of horticulture and animal husbandry - and so conceived of themselves as somehow fundamentally different from all other terrestrial life and even, perhaps, first imagined the power relation of - God ( perfect, holy, all powerful ) : Human ( w/souls, of earth but somehow more also ) : animals ( without souls or perhaps with littler, lesser souls ).

I hope I haven't caused a tiff over the "many words for snow" meme I ignorantly launched.......

effugas - I haven't read Pinker, but I reached that conclusion independently - despite my cultural upbringing to the contrary - due to a general acquaintance with sociobiological thought - ["That means a given rapist is 15x more likely to rape again due to feminist policies and models of male thought."] - so thanks for voicing that.
posted by troutfishing at 9:12 PM on December 21, 2003


Also - have you heard about the scorn heaped on E.O. Wilson, during the late 60's, for his launch of the field of Sociobiology itself? That brilliant ant scientist ( a great nature lover also ) - now world famous - was somehow supposed to be an extension of "the man"......
posted by troutfishing at 9:16 PM on December 21, 2003


Because human nature was supposed to be, of course, a Tabula Rasa....
posted by troutfishing at 9:18 PM on December 21, 2003


To clarify regarding the norwegian words for snow: They are not compound words (unlike 'icepack') and they are not used in any other context (unlike 'powder').
posted by spazzm at 9:47 PM on December 21, 2003


Effugas: Not mentioning Piaget isn't really relevant here. He's not claiming to be the only one to argue his side, and he's not saying all developmentalists are crazy (they're the least likely to be, since they have an experimental platform to test on.) And we both know Pinker's just the latest to attack Skinner's legacy. Whatever else he wrote (and I'm actively going to seek out the Skeptical Enquirer link), Skinner is quite well known for his studies on half starved rats, and he really did seem to be the flag-bearer for conditioning mechanisms.

Not mentioning Piaget is quite relevant given that The Blank Slate is written as an attack on the state of the social sciences. His claim is that the blank slate is the dominant paradigm driving not only the humanities, but also the social sciences as well. To do this, he over-inflates and mischaracterizes the contributions of behaviorists like Watson and Skinner (who were quite aware that the mind was not a blank slate, but felt that behavior was the only experimentally tractable metric by which we could build a theory of mind.) And ignores developmental psychologists such as Piaget who would contradict his thesus that contemporary social science has problems because of the influence of behaviorism.

And hrm. I don't see his use of animal models as problematic. Or at least, I don't see it as any more problematic than the use of animal models in neuroscience and it probably fits better that the "mind as computer" fad in cognitive science. Pinker is not above invoking non-human models as evidence in his argument (for example, his discussion of "reverse optics".) But the problem is that Skinner is quite well known for what is really only a small part of his work (or things that never happened, like the "Skinner box"). While everyone knows about the animal studies, what is not well known is that he adapted Operant Conditioning to early models of machine-based instruction and computer-based instruction on humans. It is interesting that of all the theories in psychology, Operant Conditioning would be most friendly to Pinker and Wilson's ideas that human behavior is shaped by evolutionary forces. Who could argue with the claim that humans learn to avoid situations that are unpleasant and seek out situations that are pleasant?

In fact, I would argue that Skinner ultimately is the father of Psychology as a science. His insistance on theory developed from data rather than myth-making was an essential antidote to the Vienna school of psychoanalysis. And perhaps most importantly, Operant Conditioning works to explain so many different phenomena in animal behavior (including humans) that it can't be rejected out of hand.

The point, at the end of the day, is that culture cannot define love,...

Definitions are cultural constructs. There is no biological imperitive which says that the word "Compact Disk" should mean "A small optical disk on which data such as music, text, or graphic images is digitally encoded."
posted by KirkJobSluder at 6:32 AM on December 22, 2003


Kirk--

A DVD looks like a CD, it feels like a CD, it probably tastes like a CD. But if you put it into a CD player, nothing's going to happen. There is a "CD-ness" independent of our beliefs and behaviors. Love, despite being in the same hunk of tissue that contains our beliefs, is noticably similar.

American society preaches the myth that marriage is a sex-filled doe-eyed orgasm fest until the day we die, and no matter how much people want to believe it, the biological program for mating is serial monogamy at best. The culture, very noticably, cannot rewrite the program, try as it may.

The fundamental problem with conditioning is the ignorance of compatibility with instinctual drive. Certain species of dog can be trained to herd sheep. Others cannot. Certain people can be trained to be a neurosurgeon. Others cannot. Skinner's incredibly laudable desire to sweep out the Viennese school pushed him to minimize the individual contribution of his animals -- a standard rat, starved to reduce its resistance (hungry creatures are predictable creatures), is quite pliable.

But the fact that we aren't all trying to kill our fathers and bed our mothers doesn't mean everything we believe came from conditioning in our lifetime. It may come from previous lifetimes, though. I happen to personally believe in the Neo-Lamarckian concept that instincts suffer a chicken and egg problem that's only resolved by experiences in one generation affecting genes expressed in the next. (I note nobody has proven the entropy of gamete survival and fitness. Natural selection does not need to be random, but there's alot of fear if it isn't.)

Look, I've got a simple question: Do you deny that a significant portion of the social sciences, including some very notable figures, continue today to draw predictive and/or public policy conclusions based on the idea that humans are mostly a Blank Slate?
posted by effugas at 7:56 AM on December 22, 2003


My quick thoughts on love, as most of the definitions being tossed around don't account for the love of a pet, or a family member, only romantic love.

Love is the condition where someone else's happiness is essential to your own.

That's the definition I've been running with for most of my life, and it's always held up.
posted by Jairus at 8:32 AM on December 22, 2003


Jarius-- Interesting. That's the first definition I've seen that explains the Stockholm syndrome.
posted by effugas at 8:48 AM on December 22, 2003


effugas: A DVD looks like a CD, it feels like a CD, it probably tastes like a CD. But if you put it into a CD player, nothing's going to happen. There is a "CD-ness" independent of our beliefs and behaviors. Love, despite being in the same hunk of tissue that contains our beliefs, is noticably similar.

Bad example in this case. Both CDs and DVDs are cultural artefacts. But you missed my point. Definitions have nothing to do with the ontological features of the object but rather the arbitrary link between symbol and object. There is nothing in nature that says we should call an plastic optical disk holding data "compact" or even a "disk".

The way in which "love" is defined is entirely arbitrary. It may in fact refer to a specific something out there that we are interact with, but there is no inate reason why we should say "love" as opposed to "agape" or "phillipos" or "amore".

American society preaches the myth that marriage is a sex-filled doe-eyed orgasm fest until the day we die, and no matter how much people want to believe it, the biological program for mating is serial monogamy at best. The culture, very noticably, cannot rewrite the program, try as it may.

Which, of course, is not a claim that even Pinker makes. He is smart enough to avoid mind-as-computer metaphors such as "programming" hence his rather bold claim in the opening chapters of How the Mind Works "If my genes don't like it, they can jump in the lake." Pinker (at least as of HTMW) is not proposing that human minds are programmed by genetics, but adaptable with certain parameters. We have an inborn capability to balance benefits and risks of long-term relationships, and to make decisions based on that evaluation.

The fundamental problem with conditioning is the ignorance of compatibility with instinctual drive. Certain species of dog can be trained to herd sheep. Others cannot. Certain people can be trained to be a neurosurgeon. Others cannot. Skinner's incredibly laudable desire to sweep out the Viennese school pushed him to minimize the individual contribution of his animals -- a standard rat, starved to reduce its resistance (hungry creatures are predictable creatures), is quite pliable.

Which again, is such a ludicrous oversimplification of what Skinner actually said that it becomes libelous. For example, it ignores the reseach he did applying operant conditioning to foreign language and math instruction using well-fed autonomous high school and college students. Likewise in his writings he was quite aware of the existence of individual differences (as was Watson, but we only get the first half of his famous quote about nature/nurture) and the existence of differences between species.

So I see no evidence within Skinner's work that he would ignore the difference between border collies and bloodhounds. However, if you watch border collies in competition, most of what handlers are doing can be explained in terms of operant conditioning: providing good feedback for good moves and bad feedback for bad moves. A lot of the rest has to do with zoosemiotics, and there is an evolutionary argument to be made that the success of dogs as social companions is due to the fact that dogs understand human emotional signs while wolves, no matter how well trained, do not.

But I think that you miss one of the basic points behind Skinner's radical behaviorism which is that individual differences and species differences must be described in terms of differences in behavior, rather than in terms of hypothetical constructs such as "instinct", "drive" or "complex."

Of course, this is where he falls down in that he was highly critical of the cognitive science idea that we can infer how the mind works from behavior. But still, the basic idea that we need to ground any theory of mind on what can be observered, rather than what we imagine must exist, is something that must be considered to this day. One of my criticisms of evolutionary psychology is that so much of it is based on "just so stories" that are based on stereotypes of what early humans were like.

But the fact that we aren't all trying to kill our fathers and bed our mothers doesn't mean everything we believe came from conditioning in our lifetime.

The problem is, I don't know of anyone who actually makes the claim that everything we do comes from conditioning in our lifetime.

Look, I've got a simple question: Do you deny that a significant portion of the social sciences, including some very notable figures, continue today to draw predictive and/or public policy conclusions based on the idea that humans are mostly a Blank Slate?

I think this is misleading. I think that most of the focus has been on changing human behavior, because this is where psychology has had its greatest impact. A German general said after WWII that the Germans never underestimated American industry or technology, but they did underestimate American education in being able to go from the least-disciplined and least-trained armed forces to the best-disciplined and best-trained armed forces. A lot of this had to do with a large investment by the War Department in instructional theory and research to create instructional programs for new recruits. (As a holiday note, Chuck Jones and Dr. Seuss met as part of this effort, making the television version of The Grinch an intellectual war baby.)

Because most policy decisions are concerned with how X policy is going to determine Y behavior, then it seems reasonable to focus on theories that explain how policies influence behavior.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 10:50 AM on December 22, 2003


Good stuff, KirkJobSluder. Such an interesting thread from such an unpromising start.

Also, you said (and I understand it was just a slip of the fingers) 'thesus' upthread. I love this, because it made me think of university laboratories experimenting on 'thesus monkeys'.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:01 AM on December 23, 2003


One last thought before this thread vanishes into obscurity. I wonder if the conflict is less over nature/nurtre than the implications of what we know about it. Pop evolutionary psychology tends to see the glass as half empty, what flexibility humans have is hoplessly constrained by inborn abilities. The other side sees the glass as half full, the inborn abilities are potential building blocks for complex adaptable behavior.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 5:34 AM on December 23, 2003


KirkJobSluder - Genotype vs. Phenotype.
posted by troutfishing at 6:12 PM on December 23, 2003


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