On Valentine's Day it seems appropriate to ask, "What is this thing called love?" To the materialist, it is nothing but the interaction of chemicals. 

Physicist Victor Stenger in God: The Failed Hypothesis rejects the idea that humans have souls. “If we do indeed possess an immaterial soul, then we should expect to find some evidence for it.”  Along the same lines, philosopher Daniel Dennett writes, “Nerve cells are very complicated mechanical systems.  You take enough of those, and you put them together, and you get a soul.”  Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker adds, “Every aspect of our mental lives depends entirely on physiological events in the tissues of the brain.”  And what happens to free will?  “It seems free to you,” biologist Francis Crick explains, “but it’s the result of things you are not aware of.”

The issue here is the effort on the part of atheists—some with impressive scientific credentials—to extend the materialistic understanding of nature to human beings.  Yes, we humans are material objects but are we no more than that?  Certainly we experience ourselves very differently from the way we experience the outside world.   All other things we experience indirectly, from the outside, through the apparatus of our senses; but ourselves we experience directly, from the inside, without the involvement of our senses.

Only about ourselves do we have this kind of “inside information.”  And when we examine ourselves we discover things about our nature that we don’t find in inanimate objects.  Based on our privileged and unique access, we know that the external or objective account of reality, however accurate it may be in describing raindrops and tree trunks, is not the fully story when it comes to describing ourselves.

For instance, we have consciousness and that is something that doesn’t show up under a microscope.  We experience love, one of our deepest human experiences, and this seems absurd to explain simply in terms of atoms and molecules interacting with each other.  We also are “selves,” which means that we experience our lives as unified wholes.  The molecules that make up my bodily frame change over the years, and yet I remain the same “me” all along.  We are intentional and purposeful beings, and our actions are much better understood in these terms than in terms of the laws of physics.  Finally we have free choice and free will, and neither of those are possible if we are simply material objects subject to the invariable laws of nature.

On Valentine’s Day I will take my wife out to dinner and gaze into her eyes.  Sixteen years later, those eyes have the same magic that they did when I first proposed.  I suppose that this can be understood in a purely scientific way, as a mechanistic response to some deep evolutionary drive.  But this response must remain deeply alien to the way in which the thing called love is actually experienced by all those who are in love.  The scientific outlook on love makes nonsense of every novel and poem ever written on the subject.  This is not to say that the scientific account is wrong, only that it’s very narrow and incomplete.  It would be like understanding the Civil War purely in the terms of the physical movements of the platoons with no comprehension of the moral and human factors that propelled the conflict.

The materialist fallacy, Schopenhauer wrote, is that mistake of “the subject that forgets to take account of itself.”  Schopenhauer was an atheist, but he recognized that the materialist understanding of reality is a very shallow one.  I’m not sure if today’s leading atheists like Dennett and Pinker have someone to care for, but if they did they would surely know, and would not need me to remind them this Valentine’s Day, that love is much more than chemicals.

This is not to say that the scientific account is wrong, only that it’s very narrow and incomplete. It would be like understanding the Civil War purely in the terms of the physical movements of the platoons with no comprehension of the moral and human factors that propelled the conflict.

Dinesh D'Souza

Although the U.S. divorce rate continues to hover at around 50% and Steven Pinker himself has been twice divorced, in his recent Time magazine article Pinker draws on current findings in neuroscience to make the case that romance serves as an essential precursor to the bonding necessary for life long marriage. Defining romance in purely mechanistic terms remains problematic, however, even for Pinker.

"This week in TIME Magazine Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker puts a surprisingly positive spin on so-called crazy love.

He says that romantic infatuation, with its ideational obsession, mood swings, and intense need for signs of reciprocation is different from lust and long-term commitment.

Lust is driven by testosterone, commitment fueled by vasopressin and oxytocin; but infatuation taps the dopamine system and so feels like untamed addiction.

While this sounds dark, (think: Fatal Attraction) Pinker finds something positive in passionate chemistry.

In this culture of settling for the best objective mate one can find, there is built-in vulnerability: one of you may meet someone even higher mate value.

So Pinker suggests chosing a mate who is driven to be with you, and not your objective 'mate value.' If the connection comes with involuntary reactions in the brain (increased heart rate, flushed skin, etc.) then there is less chance this person will drop you for someone with greater objective value further down the road."

Scientific American

http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=A8EF82B7-E827-7A68-1201682731D31045

Love in an Age of Neuroscience

Tom Wolfe's 2005 novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, depicts the dark underbelly of the prevailing ethos in American higher education. Wolfe raised the ire of many who in turn criticized the author mostly on form rather than substance.

But more insightful reviewers from The New Atlantis and National Review plumb the depths of Wolfe's themes recognizing that "the novel invites us to ask: Is love possible in the age of neuroscience? Or have we unmasked human beings only to discover that love is an illusion?"

"The setting of I Am Charlotte Simmons is truly “postmodern”—a world dominated by Nietzsche and neuroscience, a world which has jettisoned the moral imagination of the past. Not only is God dead, but so is reason, once understood as the characteristic that distinguishes man from the rest of nature. We now understand ourselves by studying the behavior of other animals, rather than understanding the behavior of other animals in light of human reason and human difference. We learn that it is embarrassing for any educated person to be considered religious or even moral. Darwin’s key insight that man is just another animal, now updated with the tools and discoveries of modern biology, has liberated us from two Kingdoms of Darkness. Post-faith and post-reason, we can now turn to neuroscience to understand the human condition, a path that leads to or simply ratifies the governing nihilism of the students, both the ambitious and apathetic alike."

The New Atlantis

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/10/craigfennell.htm

Send your letter to the editor to feedback@tothesource.org.