Is there teleology in nature?

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I fail to see any problem. If emotions are biochemical, that’s what they are. Our experience is driven by our biochemistry. After all much simpler organisms than higher primates experience emotions of some degree.
 
The problem arises by trying to determine the causal direction of emotions and neurochemistry.
 
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Which I don’t see as a problem unless one is trying to insert some form of dualism
 
A dualism is a fair answer if you can’t determine the chicken or egg in this scenario.
 
niceatheist said:
If emotions are biochemical, that’s what they are.
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Accept that it makes no rational sense to say that the experience of love and the biochemical processes that cause that experience are essentially the same thing. One is quantitatively measurable, the other is not. Unless you want to suggest that the biochemicals involved have both an immeasurable and measurable nature, or both a quantity and no measurable quantity at all.

Can you not see the problem with that?
 
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niceatheist said:
Which I don’t see as a problem unless one is trying to insert some form of dualism
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The biochemistry is certainly a cause of the experience of emotions, but it seems nonsensical to identify them as being the exact same thing as, as identical to, the experience of emotion. The qualia problem. And that’s without getting into the intentionality problem.
 
Except I think you can determine thee direction of causation, providing you’re not trying to assert some unevidencrd phenomena (the soul)
 
If you can, there are millions in cash waiting for you from various academic organizations like Nobel.
 
Why do you call what geese do “love”, for that matter?

That’s just pairing.
 
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oldnskeptical said:
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Vonsalza:
Why do you call what geese do “love”, for that matter?
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Why do you not?
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Sorry, I don’t have to prove the negative.

It’s on you to prove the affirmative. House rules for the last 3000 years 😉
 
niceatheist said:
No, because I think emotion is measurable
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We can measure the physical processes that are involved in the actualization of that experience, and you can also measure the behavior humans express in the grasp of love. But what you cannot do is assign a physical quantity to the actual experience of love. Correlation is not evidence that they are the same thing, and our experience suggests otherwise, unless you are dedicated to materialism as an explanation.
 
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oldnskeptical said:
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Vonsalza:
Sorry, I don’t have to prove the negative.
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It’s not a matter of proving a negative. Some may call it pairing, some may call it love. The question is…why call it one thing in one case, and another thing in another case?
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Again, sorry.

If you want to conflate what geese do as being the same as human love, make your case.
 
I fail to see how our experience suggests any such thing at all.
 
Yeah, at that point Voltaire would argue that your discussion with @niceatheist is effectively over.
 
Apparently I do. I fail to see how a lack of a complete explanation AT THE MOMENT is any way an open door to dualism. We can observe emotional behaviors at a physical levels, we know what the release of hormones can do (and can even reproduce some emotional responses via hormones and direct activation of certain brain centers).
 
One might make the case that while both geese and humans feel the love bond as an animal passion, only humans grasp love as an abstract universal via the rational intellect. And, being rational agents and not just acting on instincts, humans have what is properly called a will, such that our actions proceed both knowledgeably and voluntarily, whereas the geese are lacking in knowledge. And furthermore, that while the sensitive passion might be shared between humans and geese, even if varying by degree, human love also has an intellectual component, such that by love we can mean two things: (1) the sensitive, passible emotion and (2) rationally choosing to will the good of another.
 
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niceatheist said:
We can observe emotional behaviors at a physical levels
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But objectively, we do not directly experience emotions at a physically testable or quantifiable level. We do not observe the experience of love in a test tube. Clearly there is reasons to think that there is a duality, even if you disagree…

It’s just one of those things. You either get it, or you don’t.
 
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