From: Dickey, Michael F (michael_f_dickey@groton.pfizer.com)
Date: Tue Oct 09 2001 - 13:00:23 MDT
Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> Really? Across the board? Tell me, what scientific methodology
> to you use to determine you are in love? that you are happy?
> that a painting is really good (or bad)? that a person is or is
> not to be trusted and how much?
How do you normally tell you are in love? Excited to be around someone, you
'miss' them when they are not around. You think about them a lot. Being
excited is a measurable emotional state (e.g. heart rate increase, blood
pressure increase, various hormones present in particular levels) A feeling
of loss can be measured when they are not around similarly, memory itself is
rooted in nueral connections and molecular triggers. All of these things
are based on the interactions of matter, nothing is magical. If matter is
interacting, it can be measured. How well and accurately we can measure
these things is what is continually progressing in science. If love were
not rooted in some physical mechanism in the brain then it would not be
explainable or measurable by science. However, it is rooted in physical
mechanisms, just as the other poster said, and once passive atomic scale
scanning is viable the statistical correlations can be accumulated we could
determine if someone was in love or not (or thinking about someone they
love) by viewing the scan.
Just because love does not have a supernatural component to it, does not
mean it is less valuable or wonderfull or amazing to be in love.
Michael
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