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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 19 of 19. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by alexandra_k on October 18, 2005, at 1:22:33
I just knew I'd come across this idea again...
'An interesting example with which to develop the Machiavellian perspective is romantic love. Most accounts of this emotion regard it as a device to create and maintain long-term pair bonds. According to Robert Frank, love is a 'commitment mechanism' a guarantee that a person will remain committed to a relationship even when temporarily more rewarding relationships become available (Frank, 1988). A special emotion is needed for this purpose, because simple means-end rationality will dictate choosing the current best option at each moment. Melvyn Konner, in contrast, has pointed out that in traditional societies few people have the option of forming a long-term pair bond on the basis of romantic attraction. Instead, he suggests that the irruptive, passionate love that western societies treat as teh occasion for the formation of life-long partnerships may have as its primary evolutionary function motivating behaviours such as mate desertion and copulation outside the pair bond (kinner, 1982: 315-316). This suggestion has become more credible since it was first made in the light of the increasing emphasis in behavioural ecology on female promiscuity. Females in a wide range of species search for the 'best genes' independent of the need in many of the same species to maintain a stable bond with a single male to provide economic support for offspring. In humans, mate desertion and promiscuity are risky behaviours as far as immediate survival goes. They carry a high probability of agonistic interactions with other members of the group. If the advantages of these behaviours for reproductive fitness are great enough, however, love might evolve as a special motivational system designed, not to enforce commitment when impulse argues against it, but to motivate adultery when prudence argues against it'.
Paul Griffiths: Basic Emotions, Complex Emotions, Machiavellian Emotions p33-34
Available from:
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000604/00/Machiavellian_Emotions.pdf
Posted by alexandra_k on October 18, 2005, at 1:34:07
In reply to romantic love, posted by alexandra_k on October 18, 2005, at 1:22:33
I should add that in the next paragraph he says
'The ideas of the last paragraph are grossly speculative...'
Posted by alexandra_k on October 19, 2005, at 2:47:44
In reply to Re: romantic love, posted by alexandra_k on October 18, 2005, at 1:34:07
I should also say that the 'grossly speculative' bit probably refers more to what he then went on to say in that last paragraph (after the quote).
That bit was the idea that...
As a society we JUSTIFY and sometimes even consider people to be COMPELLED to act on their emotions.
Romantic love is one example.
So he left his mate with 6 of his children.
But that is understandable because he and this other lady discovered they had LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT they were SOUL MATES and clearly one is COMPELLED to act on such emotion.It only works when society condones it.
Ours does.
Not so for some others...
Posted by alexandra_k on October 19, 2005, at 3:54:32
In reply to Re: romantic love, posted by alexandra_k on October 19, 2005, at 2:47:44
The notion of 'soul mates' in the sense that there is someone who you are 'just meant to be with'. There is the love at first sight and happily ever after fairytale...
And yes, there are some anecdotal reports of couples who say that they have been married for 60 years or however long and thats just the way it was. But... If you talk to them more you hear about how things were tough at times (they did not feel that way at times), and how they made a decision to work things through because they considered their marriage was a committment to do just that.
And there are other anecdotal reports of couples who felt romantic love and decided to take the plunge (why pass up your one and only opportunity to live happily ever after?) And then the feeling passed... And they saw one another as people for the first time. And things deteriorated from there.
It is surely UNDERSTANDABLE (and perhaps even FORGIVEABLE) if someone were to adulterate or desert if they believed they were 'in the grips' of romantic love. I mean it is their one and only opportunity to live happily ever after. What do we expect them to do? One *should* not pass up such an opportunity surely! The myth of one having found ones 'soul mate' compels one to act.
It gets me thinking...
The idea was around how much these social forces (in this case the romantic love -> happily ever after, soul dmate notion) control the EXPRESSION of the emotion. In this case it seems to provide a COMPULSION to adulterate / desert (though I am also extending it to marriage too I suppose).
And also... The more speculative idea that these social forces may control the PRODUCTION of the emotion in the first place. Perhaps we feel that feeling because others are more likely to excuse our behaviour as a result of that (which is not to say we realise this intentionally - we can also use this to justify our behaviour to ourselves).
Our society promotes the 'romantic love -> happily ever after' myth. How much is that just more of an excuse for adultery and desertion?
And how much does that encourage people to conflate feelings of romantic love (which surely come and go at times) with the different notion of respect for one another as people and a decision to commit?And what on earth does romantic love have to do with the latter?
Posted by Declan on October 19, 2005, at 14:48:46
In reply to Re: romantic love, posted by alexandra_k on October 19, 2005, at 3:54:32
The soulmates thing seems to come from New Idea or Womens Day, I take the use of it as some sort of educational marker (in my generally superior way).
I think we are creatures who are designed to fall in love, and do so readily enough with our parents. As we get older it becomes less compelling and frequent. It's been around for ever. We used to be more tolerant of cheating (as it's come to be known) when appearances mattered more. That might have made a space for romantic love (mainly for men and adventurous women). By the time they had done the romantic attachment to their children maybe the women then didn't mind overly. (50 years ago, say).
I think it's the most fascinating state.
I live in an area where most couples consider it obligatory to split up so as to avoid the appearance of codependance.
'And they saw one another as people for the first time. And things deteriorated from there.' Liked that.
Declan
Posted by alexandra_k on October 19, 2005, at 19:53:26
In reply to Re: romantic love » alexandra_k, posted by Declan on October 19, 2005, at 14:48:46
> The soulmates thing seems to come from New Idea or Womens Day, I take the use of it as some sort of educational marker (in my generally superior way).
lol. but then it is also there in fairytales.
> I think we are creatures who are designed to fall in love, and do so readily enough with our parents.that might be a bit different. i dunno. i'm trying to get into the spirit of an evolutionary biological approach to the function of different emotions. i guess attachment (happy when around) is useful with respect to our parents. so that they care for us. the reproduction kind of love might be a bit different. a different mechanism. a different emotion...
> We used to be more tolerant of cheating (as it's come to be known) when appearances mattered more.
?? How do you mean?
> I live in an area where most couples consider it obligatory to split up so as to avoid the appearance of codependance.
lol. before or after children are independent?
> 'And they saw one another as people for the first time. And things deteriorated from there.' Liked that.:-)
Posted by Declan on October 20, 2005, at 14:09:35
In reply to Re: romantic love » Declan, posted by alexandra_k on October 19, 2005, at 19:53:26
Hi Alex
For a start it wasn't called cheating. I'm not sure it was even talked about much. My mother's way of putting it to me (when I was 10?) was 'your father believes in the double standard, but I don't.' I can't imagine her saying or feeling that it was cheating. For a start cheating would be the wrong word because cheating is done in secret. It was painful for her, of course.
Around here (northern rivers NSW), in my son's class in the steiner school (entirely unrepresentative of anything but a desire to be at the cutting edge)6 out of 40 kids (young ones) lived with both biological parents.
I'll have to learn how to do that thing you do with the arrows.
Did you actually find the words soulmate in any fairy story? Princes and princesses are cool. As an Australian I find the mate thing makes me distinctly uneasy, John Howard notwithstanding. But I like souls, as in 'in that Russian town there were 20,000 souls before the famine.'
Declan
Posted by alexandra_k on October 20, 2005, at 20:10:03
In reply to Re: romantic love » alexandra_k, posted by Declan on October 20, 2005, at 14:09:35
> For a start it wasn't called cheating. I'm not sure it was even talked about much. My mother's way of putting it to me (when I was 10?) was 'your father believes in the double standard, but I don't.' I can't imagine her saying or feeling that it was cheating. For a start cheating would be the wrong word because cheating is done in secret. It was painful for her, of course.
yes. but sometimes the options seem to be
1) put up with it and continue to have financial support etc for you and your dependent child
2) put your foot down and lose financial support etc for you and your dependent childput that way... what are you going to do?
and he... gets the best of both worlds.
> Around here (northern rivers NSW), in my son's class in the steiner school (entirely unrepresentative of anything but a desire to be at the cutting edge)6 out of 40 kids (young ones) lived with both biological parents.
yeah. lots of solo parents etc here too.
> I'll have to learn how to do that thing you do with the arrows.
?
> Did you actually find the words soulmate in any fairy story?nah. its something you hear people talk about sometimes though. i just wonder how much that idea JUSTIFIES giving up everything for the feeling of the moment...
>Princes and princesses are cool.
:-)
>As an Australian I find the mate thing makes me distinctly uneasy, John Howard notwithstanding. But I like souls, as in 'in that Russian town there were 20,000 souls before the famine.'
lol.
Posted by Damos on October 21, 2005, at 0:03:37
In reply to Re: romantic love » Declan, posted by alexandra_k on October 20, 2005, at 20:10:03
> > I'll have to learn how to do that thing you do with the arrows.
>
> ?Hi Alex, hi Declan,
I'm thinking he's referring to the > that appear in the message text when you click include prior post and then insert your responses to specific pieces of the post you're responding to. But I could be wrong.
Posted by Declan on October 21, 2005, at 13:32:01
In reply to Re: romantic love, posted by Damos on October 21, 2005, at 0:03:37
So do you just have to press that thing above the fullstop and you can carve people's messages up into little bits and respond to them at your leisure? Obvious, I guess. But how do you indicate how much of the original text to highlight?
Declan
Posted by alexandra_k on October 21, 2005, at 16:10:27
In reply to That's what I'm talking about » Damos, posted by Declan on October 21, 2005, at 13:32:01
I hit the 'include post' bit so when I reply I get the persons post that I'm replying to in my posting box already. The start of every new paragraph as a '>' at the beginning of the line already. I just keep the bits of their post that I want to leave in and if I carve it up I just type a '>' in myself at the beginning of a new line. Instead of using quote marks I suppose...
>But how do you indicate how much of the original text to highlight?
You get all of it. Just delete the bits you don't want to include.
Posted by AdaGrace on October 22, 2005, at 14:05:14
In reply to romantic love, posted by alexandra_k on October 18, 2005, at 1:22:33
Alex, I don't know how to talk to you on your level. And I dont' mean that in a condescending way. You are just so very much more intelligent than me. But I have to say this. Everytime I see this post it makes me cry. I just don't think romantic love is realistic. I think it sets us up for a fall and it just hurts even more when that happens.
I guess my recent emotional state is driving my response.
Posted by Declan on October 23, 2005, at 18:27:28
In reply to Re: That's what I'm talking about » Declan, posted by alexandra_k on October 21, 2005, at 16:10:27
Hi Alex
When I was reading that stuff on projective identification on Admin I found myself wondering in a vague way whether romantic love was a variant of it or at least depended on it.
Declan
Posted by alexandra_k on October 24, 2005, at 13:14:37
In reply to Re: That's what I'm talking about » alexandra_k, posted by Declan on October 23, 2005, at 18:27:28
> When I was reading that stuff on projective identification on Admin I found myself wondering in a vague way whether romantic love was a variant of it or at least depended on it.
Hmm. I didn't follow that stuff. Do you remember what it was about?
Posted by alexandra_k on October 24, 2005, at 13:16:28
In reply to Re: romantic love » alexandra_k, posted by AdaGrace on October 22, 2005, at 14:05:14
>Everytime I see this post it makes me cry. I just don't think romantic love is realistic. I think it sets us up for a fall and it just hurts even more when that happens.
((((gracie)))))
I don't really know what I'm talking about... Just thinking about stuff. Had to read that article 3 times to make sense of it... Still don't get most of it properly... But I had encountered that idea before somewhere...
> I guess my recent emotional state is driving my response.Yeah. And I'm not sure what to make of that... Or what to say about it either...
I"m sorry :-(
Posted by Declan on October 25, 2005, at 21:34:41
In reply to Re: romantic love » AdaGrace, posted by alexandra_k on October 24, 2005, at 13:16:28
Alex, I'm just making this up so.......
We have within us an idealised mother part which when projected into the desired other (who can't have been desired to much prior to thre projection or my theory won't work) makes them arttractive and stuff, able to be idealised. Actually I've never grasped projective identification, not even when I had more of my brain than I do now. Still my T was big on it and I think worked with it. (Holding the distressed baby part etc)
Declan
Posted by alexandra_k on October 26, 2005, at 5:38:58
In reply to Re: romantic love » alexandra_k, posted by Declan on October 25, 2005, at 21:34:41
> Alex, I'm just making this up so.......
lol thats okay. i make things up as i go along too...
> We have within us an idealised mother part which when projected into the desired other (who can't have been desired to much prior to thre projection or my theory won't work) makes them arttractive and stuff, able to be idealised. Actually I've never grasped projective identification, not even when I had more of my brain than I do now. Still my T was big on it and I think worked with it. (Holding the distressed baby part etc)
yeah. that sounds fairly psychodynamic. but how are we to figure whether this line of thought is true or false? thats one of the main criticisms of psychodynamic theorising... that if you choose to see things that way you can look to the world and find stuff that seems to support your theory... but if you don't believe it then what do you need to look for to show it to be false? there doesn't seem to be anything... and thus... some people have been led to conclude that psychodynamic theory is not scientific theory. which is to say... either it is bad scientific theory or it is not appropriately considered to be scientific theory after all.
lots of work has been done on trying to tie in psychodynamic theory with the neurosciences. i suppose... well its a little like how the behaviourists thought physics was the ideal science, the epitome of science. if anything was scientific then physics surely was and so if we want a science of the mind then this is what it needs to look like... (they messed up rather but that was their line of thought there at any rate). and so now... well neuroscience is surely a science if anything is and thus people often look to ground their theory in neuroscientific facts to lend it plausibility...
i'm not sure what we are to make of psychodynamic type claims...
something that has sparked a fair amount of fairly recent interest is the notion of evolutionary cognitive neuro-psychology. the thought is basically that... we have evolved. our brain is composed of arrangements of different modules. different modules have different functions. we know this because we can study what happens when certain parts of the brain are damaged. we can work out what function they have because we can see what ability the organism now lacks. we can work out what function it serves because we can say what selectional advantage that ability conferred, and we can say how organisms without that functional mechanism would have been worse off. language production is one example of a mental module that has been selected for. within that modules... there are other modules of increasing degrees of specificity. there are perceptual modules too. edge detectors etc.
so... i suppose it is looking a little like phrenology. the phrenolegists got it right that there is localisation of function (to a certain extent). the facultys / modules they posited were way out, however. and the notion that the more developed the module the bigger it would be was way out too. and the notion that the skull fits the brain like a glove was wrong. but i don't suppose one can get everything right all the time ;-)
so we have these localised modules. we can figure out what different parts of the brain do because we can see what happens when people suffer cerebral trauma to that region. we can also damage that area on purpose in animals. we can figure out what it does. then we can theorise as to what selectional advantage that function confers on the organism.
so while psychodynamic theories posit mental structures such as the 'id' 'ego' and 'superego' which are best understood metaphorically (for the simple reason that there are no such structures on the neurological level) people are working on the mental structures that are there on the physiological level.
so you have
neuroscience (different damage, different behaviours)
cognitive neuroscience (forming hypotheses as to the function of the areas that have been damaged)
evolutionary psychology (forming hypotheses as to the evolutionary function of the areas that have been damaged)and ideally... there should be some convergence going on.
with respect to psychodynamic theorising... well... where that fits into the picture is very unclear... some people want to turn it into a science and thus they attempt to map psychodynamic structures onto neurology... other people say it is best conceived of as an art. not science.
i think...
art, not science.while the early psychodynamic theorists were influential with respect to the experiments that were conducted on childhood development in particular... psychodynamic theorising doesn't help with respect to scientific theorising / progress anymore best i can figure.
it is interesting though...
i do think it is interesting...
i'm just not sure it captures literal truths...
Posted by alexandra_k on October 26, 2005, at 5:47:58
In reply to Re: romantic love » Declan, posted by alexandra_k on October 26, 2005, at 5:38:58
i think... an infant is pretty helpless. defenceless. unable to care for itself. without someone else to look after it. to feed it. to protect it. to keep it safe. it will die.
and thus...
there is an evolutionary advantage conferred on infants who are able to elicit more / better care from others.
smiling...
responsiveness to touch...
cuddling...are such mechanisms... reflexes really. but they mean a lot to us. how happy does a babys reflexive smile make its parents???
doesn't it make you go all gooey?
yup.
thats the point...attachment to mother elicits caring behaviour from mother.
another mechanism.
you can observe filial imprinting in... goslings i think it was. Konrad Lorenz. I think the story goes that... he took some eggs? anyways... they hatched and the first thing they saw was Konrad and so they imprinted on him (attached to him) they followed him around just like they would follow mummy goose around. they are biologically hardwired to attach to... the first big living thing they see (or similar). the mechanism isn't perfect (it doesn't map the truth perfectly) but it is good enough mostly... mostly the first big living thing they see is mummy goose so everything works fine. but then ethologists come along and do stuff like that... to confuse the mechanisms... to see whether it is possible to confuse them... to see under what conditions they break down etc.
the 'projecting of an ideal'.
i dunno.
it just seems to lead to further questions...
does everyone have this?
why do we have it?
where does it come from?
is this really what is going on?
how are we to decide?
Posted by alexandra_k on October 26, 2005, at 5:55:56
In reply to Re: romantic love, posted by alexandra_k on October 26, 2005, at 5:47:58
i dunno...
of course answers should always raise more questions than they answer... thats what keeps things ticking along i suppose...i'm just not sure whether psychodynamic theorising is converging on what the rest of the natural sciences are telling us...
and so that puts pressure on the notion that they are capturing literal truths.
i dunno.
i know this seems harsh but...
survival
reproduction
the crucial bits for evolution
reproduction...
makes sense that there would be some fairly powerful mechanisms behind that... to make sure we jolly well do it... makes sense that that would be experienced as a 'compelling urge'... and 'love'... justifies it.i dunno im just talking too...
This is the end of the thread.
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