Thread: Love - learned or inherent?

While I'd agree with you that it is inherent (I'm not so sure about the exponential function hypothesis, though), I'm not sure that you've really made a case for it, Kleid.

While reactions can certainly be influenced by learning, I think that the basic reactions are inherent. As I mentioned earlier, we can probably find analogs to the various emotions we'd consider in other societies with whom we've had minimal contact. Additionally, it would be hard to account for the uniformity of emotional reactions* within a society, especially in children. Certainly some are exposed to many stories and tales early on, but many are not, yet they still seem to exhibit emotions to which they have not formally been introduced.

*The uniformity is, of course, not perfect, and there is obviously a rather large difference in the "implementation details".

Inherent, evolved to keep couples together for the benefit of their children, (without love, couples will constantly split as they find more attractive people who will take them on, that's bad for children)

Recognition of being in love is like recognition of other states, sad, happy, etc.

I say it's both.

The case of a person growing up with wolves (or any other non-human of your choice) is an interesting case, but I don't think it'll give a complete answer. Someone who grows up in an environment devoid of humans will have a lot of differences. Behavior would be learned from the wolves, and as such, they would not develop normally. While I think that the basic instincts/emotions are there, given such an atypical environment, they would likely develop in very different ways (or so it seems to me, at least), perhaps failing to develop at all.

Originally Posted by axon

The main topic is the following question, "are emotions learned, or inherent in the human being?"

I once read somewhere that they are inherent and are like reflexes; immediate responses to certain situations that you have no or little control over.

The theory that we 'discover' love because it is introduced to us seems a bit impossible: the first one who introduced someone to love must have experienced it from someone else. Love can't be caused by reading books etc. because it needs to have started from somewhere (religious people may argue that God taught us love and he started it).

I suppose one needs to define exactly what one means by "love", i think that strong feelings of attachment for a mate/potential mate that go beyond pure physical attraction is rooted in genetics (behaviour demonstrating attachment for partners appears to extend across human culture and even into the animal kingdom), though the way in which love is expressed will presumeably be highly dependent on learned behaviour.

There has to be some inherent connection between sensory input and behaviour.

I cannot tell you why, but when I listen to certain pieces of music, there are a number of chord sequences, not all of them overly complex, that will always make me laugh, and there are a few that reliably have me choking back the tears. This was the case when I was a kid, I didn't understand music then, I do now, but it doesn't alter the effect.

Now, is that an emotional response or a wired input/output response?

Define emotion.

Originally Posted by adrianxw

I cannot tell you why, but when I listen to certain pieces of music, there are a number of chord sequences, not all of them overly complex, that will always make me laugh, and there are a few that reliably have me choking back the tears. This was the case when I was a kid, I didn't understand music then, I do now, but it doesn't alter the effect.

I have that too - also when the right drum break comes in at the right moment etc.

Inherent, evolved to keep couples together for the benefit of their children

you really think so? I'm not great in anthropology, but isn't the "couple" unit a relatively young idea [note the relatively). Also how does your argument account for homosexuality?

Love can't be caused by reading books etc. because it needs to have started from somewhere (religious people may argue that God taught us love and he started it).

OK, I actually think that it is a mixture of both, inherent and learned. We have inherent emotions from birth, such as love, joy, sadness, etc - but we need stories to "coach" us to understand all these complex emotions.

I suppose one needs to define exactly what one means by "love", i think that strong feelings of attachment for a mate/potential mate that go beyond pure physical attraction is rooted in genetics (behaviour demonstrating attachment for partners appears to extend across human culture and even into the animal kingdom), though the way in which love is expressed will presumeably be highly dependent on learned behaviour.

see, clyde, you're getting exactly at my point - your definiton of love is not inherent, is it? you had to learn it from somewhere - that emotion (which we define as love) had to be "coached" somehow, in order for you to obtain that deeper definition of the emotion itself.

define emotion.

I like dictionary.com's definition just fine, I think it fits our discussion perfectly: "A mental state that arises spontaneously rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes; a feeling: the emotions of joy, sorrow, reverence, hate, and love."

This would be a good topic to discuss with my philosophy professor, I'll send him an email and see if he'll join the board's discussion.

Originally Posted by axon

OK, I actually think that it is a mixture of both, inherent and learned. We have inherent emotions from birth, such as love, joy, sadness, etc - but we need stories to "coach" us to understand all these complex emotions.

I'm thinking that we're born with some sort of innate ability to "love," (ie, have strong emotions for a person) but that the world around us (literature, stories and movies, our parents, etc.) focuses and intensifies it into a single identifiable feeling: love, hate, disgust, sadness, etc.

There have been (or at the least there has been a single) psycho-social studies done of the facial reactions to certain emotions--such as happiness, sadness, frustration--in cultures across the world. The results were that most common facial expressions could be identified to the proper emotion in just about every culture. This, I think, underscores the idea that emotion and feelings are mostly innate.

If I can find the link to the study, I'll post it.

i haven't thought about this long enough to make a long in depth profound post. but the whole time i was reading i was thinking about how certain animals have been known to mourn their dead. elephants, dolphins, apes (there's more, and maybe the ones i listed are incorrect, but the fact is that there are animals that do). to me this certainly provides some evidence of "instinctual attachment".

on a side note: i just realized i named the 3 smartest animals (i think, in the top 10 anyway). coincidence?

You forgot the mice... After all, they built the world...
(Alright, sorry, I couldn't help myself. Now back to your regularly scheduled philosophizing.)

On a more relevant note, the research that Ken mentioned fits well with what I mentioned earlier, namely that if there is some sort of reaction that can in some manner be more or less uniformly identified across various cultures, then this points to the emotions be inherent.

Now, the cultural context seems that it should be a major determining factor in exactly how those emotions are carried out, and what is associated with them in one's mind. While the definition of emotion that axon provided mentions a response that develops through some non-conscious process, it does not in any way specify how the mind would consciously respond to either the stimulus eliciting the emotion (or what the stimulus is), or for that matter, the emotion itself, and this seems to leave a lot of room for the particular ideas associated with love, hate, etc to be based largely on cultural factors.