In one of those boring religious threads RJT mentioned that beauty and love aren't logic based. I kinda think that they are.

My assertions are that love is a biological urge dictated by our desire to procreate, and that beauty is a form of symmetry and a measured break from that. I assert that differences in taste are minimal, and people who think that their wife is the most beautiful woman in the world are both victims of that same biological pressure, and also are telling a bit of a fib that they'll keep on telling to their dying day.

This should be controversial, and it has nothing to do with religion. I'm gonna pat myself on the back now.

Discuss, and feel free to provide evidence for your claims if you want. I'm happy with reasoning.

Both are logically based and not very mysterious in their raison d'etre. Of the 3 billion potential partners in the world, it's amazing that the most beautiful one lives in my neighborhood.

luckyme

You mean I love my mother and my sister because ... boy, am I f..... up.

Perhaps I should have taken the other side. I figured that enough people would be on the side of it being a mystery for his side to be fun to argue.

you don't love your mother and sister as you love your gay partner or straight lover. It's not the same process at work, we just use an umbrella word to cover them all. saves letters.

luckyme

Let’s put it this way. We can say that it is logical the way a car is built. We cannot say a car is logical.

So yeah, perhaps I misspoke. But, this is how I meant it. I think you took me a bit too literal, but I'll take the blame.

I wonder whether it is nothing more than a confusion of language. I'm one of those people who maintain that "love isnt logical" however I dont mean that there is no logical reason for us to feel the emotion love.

I am merely making the (obvious) point that we do not choose who we will love via a process of logical deduction. In fact, we may even be able to logically deduce a "best" mate for life and still we will opt for the illogical third or fourth choice. This doesnt mean there's no reason for our behaviour, merely that it isnt logic driving our choice - it's hormones or whatever.

Hrmmm.

I guess the way I'm presently looking at it, love is logical. Mainly because it's a hormonal thing that is in the realm of the understandable (whether or not it's fully comprehended right now).

I guess I lump everything that is understandable as logical, and perhaps I shouldn't look at it that way. I'll have to think more on this. I think that I conflate the meanings of "reasonable" and "understandable," if that makes any sense.

I'm still lost on that car analogy, since a car is perfectly logical, reasonable, and understandable (also very well understood) to me.

Can you give me an example of something which isnt logical then? It seems like most things are understandable (at least in principle).

Well by that possibly useless definition, I can't really think of much. The god thing would be illogical since it's basically defined to be outside of understandability, but aside from that we're left without much.

I think I need to re-internalize the idea of logic, or perhaps I'm on to something that I haven't figured out yet.

Well you aren't using logical reasoning when you consider whether you love something or find something beautiful.
The stimulus either generates the appropriate response in you or it does not. You can't make logical errors in this process.

Whether the process is understandable by current or future scientists is another issue though. I think it's seperate from the what is normally meant when people say things like 'love and beauty aren't logically based'. People who score 120 on their LSAT can tell whether something is beautiful (to them) just as well as somebody who scores 180 can tell if something is beautiful (in their view).

I should add that when people do make errors about what they thought they loved or was beautiful to them it's because they try to use logical reasoning to come to to those conclusions. So, I guess you can make logical errors in love if you try to use logic. It just isn't where you should look if you want to know if you love somebody.

There's a lot of that going on around here. Overuse of the terms "logic" and "rational" in SMP reminds me of new age phrases on their last legs of fadish popularity.

PairTheBoard

Well, personally I have never found logic to detract from the beauty or mystery of things. The beauty is always there and you can always step down to the next level in the chain to find the mystery again.

There's a logical explanation for why we feel love and sense beauty, but logic doesn't justify love or beauty. That is, we may see something as somehow superior because it is "beautiful," but logically nothing is superior to anything else, or more "deserving" of love.

Please elaborate.

Recognition of danger, evaluation of health/fertility (as in a mate), streamlining/organization of information, sexual selection, social ritual, etc.

I'm with you that 'beauty' has some merits organizing mating/choice of partner; but I'm not sure how you relate beauty to the organization of information and I'm totally astray on that danger-thingie.

And why for instance is it logical that we consider a sunset , a flower , a drawing by Picasso or a poem by Pound beautiful ?

But most of all I'd like to know what 'logical' in this context is supposed to mean, eg anything that is not completely random ?

The information thing, that could really get us off topic. I think the brain often evaluates information in a simplistic way (for efficiency) and that it "communicates" that information to the consciousness by way of emotional responses. The sensation of beauty may be one of these responses.

In terms of danger, I think tranquil settings are beautiful largely because they tend to be safe. It's easier if you look at the other side of things - what we find ugly is almost always that which indicates either danger or sickness. Pure water is beautiful (safe), putrid water is ugly (dangerous), that sort of thing.

Specifics are harder - psychology is a field in its infancy, and evolutionary psychology even moreso. A flower might be indicative of food - lush scenery does indicate abundance. The sunset may trigger pleasant feelings of restfulness? Something to do with weather? I don't know. It would be interesting to explore. A painting might be beautiful for similar reasons, though there are compositional elements that appeal to us in the abstract - I can't even speculate about why, though I'm sure there are plenty of hypotheses. Language is even more complicated.

Of course, sometimes beauty is learned. Different cultures may find different things beautiful. That throws another wrench into things.

That it can be explained rationally. I believe that almost everything has a rational explanation, and the rest is random, but others believe in "something else" being responsible. When I say that our sense of beauty is logical, I mean that I don't think it's arbitrary that we find some things more beautiful and other things less beautiful.

It's plain that there are certain patterns underlying our perception of beauty. Now we could say .. therefore beauty is logical. But I don't think there's much explanation in that. The perception of beauty is just a way too complex matter.
Moreover these patterns of beauty only work statistically. If you show 10 pics of women to a group of men you may predict that 60% will find a certain girl most beautiful but you won't be able to predict how each and every man chooses.

Now that's better than nothing but is it satisfying in a 'logical' sense ? If I asked you why you had a car accident last week and you answered "Well, it's statistically proven that you have an accident for every 120.000 driven miles (number made up)" I wouldn't be satisfied with that explanation.

Are you sure any theory could possibly predict why a certain human finds "some things more beautiful and other things less beautiful" ? Could answer questions like "Why do I like Magritte but make nothing of Picasso? Go crazy about QOTSA but don't care about the Foo Fighters ? Adore ee cummings but dislike Pound ?

Absolutely, once neuroscience reaches that point. I think brain responses can definitely be predicted in theory (at minimum with a molecular-level simulation).

Well, I don't think we'll be able to .. just too complex. But let's not get into neuroscience in this thread