What's love got to do with it?

Kevin Lomax: What about love?
John Milton: Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate.
- Devil's Advocate

Breakthroughs in cognitive neuroscience are showing that the human mind is made up of many "modules." Kind of like a computer, our brains have programs for everything we do - language, face recognition, reaching for objects, vision. Rather that studying the mind as one complete organ, it is more appropriate to look at the subparts, the modules, the programs.

But don't we feel like we just have one mind? Our sentience, our consciousness feels to us like one continuous stream that is in charge of everything. How can we have multiple minds?

There are well known studies of brain surgery patients whose corpus callosum (the nerves that connect the 2 halves of the cerebrum) has been severed. These people literally have 2 minds! Since the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, if you show them an image only in their right eye, only their left brain gets the message, and vice versa for the other eye.

For example if the left eye is shown a picture of snow, and the right hand is instructed to feel several objects and grab the corresponding object, it grabs a shovel. Meanwhile the right eye is being shown a chicken, and the left hand grabs an object that feels like a claw. But what is fascinating is that if you ask the person why the right hand grabbed the shovel, the left brain which controls language answers "well I'll need the shovel to clean up after the chickens" with complete sincerity. The left brain is completely unaware of the real reason the left hand picked up the shovel, so it makes up a believable story to explain its actions, and it does this without even realizing thats what is happening.

The one conscious mind we feel is probably a lot like the left brain observed in the study. We have direct access to some of our mind modules like pain sensors, vision, and hunger, but like the split-brain patient maybe we don't have the connection to other modules that influence our behavior. (Most of the train of thought from the last few paragraphs is presented in The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker. If you find it interesting, I highly recommend all of his books. This entire post is highly influenced by my recent study of evolutionary psychology.)

So what's love got to do with it? What if we have "mate detection" modules?

1. I see a girl with a symmetrical face with unblemished skin whose features appear at the average of the population and some module says "she is healthy and has no obvious genetic defects."
2. I see that her body is proportioned in an hourglass shape and some module says "her body appears capable of carrying and giving birth to a child."
3. As I talk to her some honesty-detection module says "this person genuinely believes what she is saying."
4. As I get to know her and observe her behavior a trustworthiness module says "this woman is unlikely to abandon her child" and "this woman is unlikely to sleep with another man behind my back."

So while all those modules are processing information and the natural conclusion is that she would be an excellent long-term partner in reproductive efforts (as opposed to someone with only the first 2 characteristics but without the 2nd two, who might be only good as a short-term reproductive partner), what is my conscious mind feeling?

The pain-detection module doesn't work by giving your conscious mind a message like "excuse me, but this fire you stuck your arm into is causing severe damage which might impair your survival chances. I suggest you remove it from the heat source." It sends a message that I feel: "SHIT THAT BURNS!"

So the modules send me these messages:

1. This girl is beautiful. Her face is very attractive to me.
2. This girl has a smoking hot body. I want to have sex with her.
3. What a great person, I know she won't give me misleading information.
4. I know I can always trust this woman.

I don't register each of those feelings individually probably (well maybe 1 and 2). My mind gets each of those reports from the modules and tells me that I love her. My love of a woman is my conscious mind's reception of messages from several modules, that are designed to recognize the suitability of a reproductive partner.

For lots of people who grow up believing in true love and the purity of emotions, this kind of coldly scientific analysis of their most personal feelings could be pretty traumatic. It seems so... inhuman!

But thats the whole point of love in the first place. If a woman had the choice between 2 ideal suitors, and one of them says "I love you" and the other says "I have observed that you are a healthy female of breeding age, and I believe that you would be an excellent choice to raise several of my children" that isn't much of a choice for her is it? But picking the lovey dovey guy isn't just best from an emotional standpoint, it is strategically best for her genetic interests as well.

A man who appears to be motivated strictly by rational calculation will probably at some point rationally calculate that she is no longer worth investing his time into, and might calculate that hot young neighbor is probably a better choice. Now she's got 2 kids, and is knocked up again and alone, and some of her kids will be lucky to survive at all. Meanwhile that cold, calculating bastard is bringing home the bacon to the neighbor and the kids he had with her.

But the guy who is in love isn't acting on cold, inhuman logic. He is motivated by this crazy force he has no control over. He loves her so much that she knows he'll always be there for her and for their children. He writes her poems and buys her jewelry to prove his love, while the other guy is saying "it would be in our mutual best interests for me to save the money I would have spent on jewelry to buy winter clothing for our children, and I can't waste my time writing sonnets because it would be more beneficial if I spent those hours working and accumulating more wealth to insure our survival." Practical Joe has a good point, which hopefully will be of comfort to him when Enrique gets the girl.

So what I am supposed to do with all this information? What am I supposed to do if I'm in love?

I know when I feel love, but now I also know WHY I feel it. A problem is that my mental modules were designed to maximize replications of my genes in the more primitive hunter-gatherer environment in which 99.9% of human evolution took place. Society and technology have changed much faster than our minds could evolve. Since the environment is different now, I feel conflicts between my conscious rational strategies, and the emotions that are supposed to guide my behavior.

We aren't built to be happy. We are built to have as many healthy offspring that live to have as many healthy offspring as possible. Falling in love at 19 with a 15 year old girl makes sense in a hunter-gatherer world. By that point we're both more or less physically mature, and I can probably bring home enough food for myself and a wife and child. My hormones are raging, so I want to have sex with her, which leads to babies and being in love with that girl means those babies are more likely to survive and have their own babies eventually.

But think about all the people in our modern world who are all fucked up about high school romance. A teenage couple 150,000 years ago was just trying to survive. Now we have proms and condoms and go off to college, and our emotions don't know what to do.

We're jaded about love because our first one didn't work. Back in the day, the first one had to work for almost everyone, and if it didn't you were too busy trying to feed yourself and your kids without help from a partner to really worry about your hurt feelings.

We do have a remarkable luxury emotion we call humor, and I'm thinking we should all be willing to use it. Let's all laugh at ourselves and our anachrononistic emotions a bit more often.