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“Love…comes from the fact that neurons are lousy processors.”
Well, this thing called love has gotta function somehow, right? There must be some identifiable explanatory mechanism(s), right?
Does it add anything useful to the equation to wrap it within some forever-mysterious underlying cosmic teleology? NO! says neuroscientist David Linden of Johns Hopkins, in the video embedded below. Love, aka “our cross-cultural human mating system” as he puts it, is the deterministic outcome of blind evolutionary pressures which have gradually concocted the biochemical processes which we experience as love. YES! says theologian Randal Rauser of Taylor Seminary. Such a picture of love (as Linden’s) is “deflationary.” “A great example of why scientists…tend to make terrible poets, philosophers, and greeting card writers.”
I posed the following question to Rauser, and eagerly await his response:
“When you’re orgasming, do you experience any existential angst as to whether the underlying ontology of orgasm is this, or that, or that? No, you don’t. Right?! Might I humbly suggest that’s a good way to approach life generally.”
I’m a damn-near mystic on matters phenomenological; apathetic on matters ontological. Poets, artists: do your thing! Scientists: you do your thing too!
