Explaining love to a naive non-human intelligence that doesn’t have an analogue:
“We feel a strange sort of attraction (sometimes physical, sometimes mental) towards other members of the species, and sometimes towards the species as a whole.”
“Well, duhhh. Evolution maybe?”
“But you don’t get it—sometimes it goes so far as to cause us to let harm be done to ourselves in the name of love.”
“Lemmings walking off cliffs in droves? Birds evolving large showy tails that give them difficulty flying because it makes them more likely to attract a mate? Old individuals wasting away and dying? Fitness of the individual is not necessarily fitness of the species.”
“But some people can be so consumed by love that they pine away and even take their own lives! Surely that demonstrates that love is something apart from things like eyes, ears, and sexual reproduction?”
“Remember that evolution is mindless. Humans are not the first Earth species that contains individuals for whom a certain adaptation happens to go haywire. All that is required is that love have a net positive effect. After that, it doesn’t matter what downsides it has, it will propagate. Evolution doesn’t tend to work with the 97th and 98th percentiles of fitness, but with the 51st and 52nd. Small mutations, small adaptations, big effects. Love evolved, and the reason you’re having trouble coming to terms is that the organ you’re using to think about it is the organ where it arises.”
@Caledonian
No, it lacks the capacity to care about suffering and to choose whether to inflict pain. ‘Cruel’ is not a concept that applies.
‘Cruelty can be described as indifference to suffering...’
Your objections to ‘bloody’ and ‘bloody stupid’ are equally groundless—Google away. Caledonian, I presume you’re suggesting we should stop putting such an anthropocentric slant on things by...talking about them with human language?
Explaining love to a naive non-human intelligence that doesn’t have an analogue:
“We feel a strange sort of attraction (sometimes physical, sometimes mental) towards other members of the species, and sometimes towards the species as a whole.”
“Well, duhhh. Evolution maybe?”
“But you don’t get it—sometimes it goes so far as to cause us to let harm be done to ourselves in the name of love.”
“Lemmings walking off cliffs in droves? Birds evolving large showy tails that give them difficulty flying because it makes them more likely to attract a mate? Old individuals wasting away and dying? Fitness of the individual is not necessarily fitness of the species.”
“But some people can be so consumed by love that they pine away and even take their own lives! Surely that demonstrates that love is something apart from things like eyes, ears, and sexual reproduction?”
“Remember that evolution is mindless. Humans are not the first Earth species that contains individuals for whom a certain adaptation happens to go haywire. All that is required is that love have a net positive effect. After that, it doesn’t matter what downsides it has, it will propagate. Evolution doesn’t tend to work with the 97th and 98th percentiles of fitness, but with the 51st and 52nd. Small mutations, small adaptations, big effects. Love evolved, and the reason you’re having trouble coming to terms is that the organ you’re using to think about it is the organ where it arises.”
@Caledonian
No, it lacks the capacity to care about suffering and to choose whether to inflict pain. ‘Cruel’ is not a concept that applies.
‘Cruelty can be described as indifference to suffering...’
Your objections to ‘bloody’ and ‘bloody stupid’ are equally groundless—Google away. Caledonian, I presume you’re suggesting we should stop putting such an anthropocentric slant on things by...talking about them with human language?
Lemmings do not, in fact, walk off cliffs in droves. That was a stunt for the camera; they were being driven.
Just a nitpick.