Is Love Physical?

 

Editor’s Note: You can safely skip all this and go straight to the comment. Brevity is not just the soul of wit. It’s the soul of wisdom, too.

Our text for today’s sermon is provided by thought criminal.

Then there are those who just insist insist that free will just exists but it is non-physical, the latter is a well trodden road for example Rene Descartes and Emanuel Kant were both in that camp. I say the idea is not wrong but I never understood the point because if free will is not physical it doesn't explain anything in the physical world so why bother inventing it.

I don't mean sexual contact (anything from touching (kisses; holding hands) to intercourse); I mean, is the emotion “love” a physical construct, or is it not?

I’ve read assertions (I can’t call them “theories,” not in the vocabulary of science) that “love” is just hormones, or something physical. Which may explain why I love my daughter, but not why I love my wife. I’ve known her for 50 years now. My hormones ain’t what they were 50 years ago (that’s just science!), but my love is. It’s more than it was then, of course, but love is complex. It certainly ain’t nothin’ but sex misspelled. Or hormones I mistake for free will.

But if it isn’t purely physical, it doesn’t explain anything in the physical world. Right? How does that work? Love is an illusion? Love is a mistake?

What about music? That’s easier: music is physical. Sounds are physical; there’s a science of acoustics. Music is sound. But what is it affecting in the the elementary particles that are me? Can we calculate that? Why does music move people? We are the only creatures that make music. We are the only creatures that make art, or use language. Why? Because my elementary particles collide differently than those of my cat? 🐈‍⬛ 

Sure, why not?

Ok, so humans are one big collection of particles. What the particles do is described by the mathematics of the standard model. It's a lot of math and you need math if you want to answer difficult questions like what's going on in nhc [I'm not sure I heard her] collisions. For simple questions like whether free will exists we don't need to know much about the math, relevant is just that ultimately what you and I do is also described by the standard model, and that means, yes, we know the equations for human behavior, we can write them down. In practice that's a completely useless statement because we can't solve the equations for these 10 to the 30 or so particles that humans are made of.

And my cat is just a smaller collection of particles, and that’s the difference between us? “We know the equations for human behavior”? You gotta mouse in your pocket, or what? If we know them, could you please pass them on so psychiatrists and juries can improve their work output? Or just write them out and show your work. Of course, we know them, you say, but we don’t know them, because we can’t run the calculations in practice, only in theory.  You mentioned (and discarded) Descartes and Kant; let me introduce you to David Hume. He’d love to have you for lunch.

By which I mean, he’d eat you alive.

Not that Hume was a fan of free will or, but Jeebus lady, philosophers pretty much wrung out the last drops of this discussion 200 years ago, and you think you’ve solved it when you don’t even know what the questions are? It ain’t about the “ghost in the machine” critique of Descartes, which is fun for college freshmen to play with, but not taken seriously by anyone who knows anything about the subject (I don’t want to get sidetracked). In fact, your implicit model of mind (it’s all just particles colliding, right?) is akin to Hume’s: there is no “I,” just sensory inputs to the brain perceived as creating a self. But perceived by what? If the TV is on but no one’s home, does anyone perceive the show? If the brain is just a room full of TV screens, a la “The Matrix,” but there’s no one in the chair, no “Architect,” do the screens watch themselves? If all those particles collide according to mathematical formulas, how do those collisions produce the formulas? Sounds like monkeys banging on typewriters hoping to produce Shakespeare, to me.

In other words, you’re still stuck in step 2, where the miracle occurs that leads to the observable result in step 3. You start with the observable result, you employ a theory and call it working backwards to the cause (hello, Mr. Hume!), but actually you’re trying to fit the cause (theory) to the effect (observable result), and that’s why step 2 is where the miracle occurs.

Told you David Hume would have you for lunch. He showed that’s how causal reasoning works. It’s useful in engineering and law, but it can never be so precise as to produce an equation for human behavior. That’s the nonsensical theory of “psychohistory” Isaac Asimov invented for his “Foundation” trilogy. This isn’t science; it’s science fiction. It’s as fantastical as anything Tolkien ever came up with. As good as Tolkien’s work is, nobody confuses it for science.

Not sure I’d confuse this (quoted) reasoning with science, either.