No. Why would they? These are hopelessly unscientific terms.

I'm talking about neuroscience. In neuroscience circles, it is the most uncontroversial thing in the world to say "the brain produces the mind". 

 

Is it published on the internet?

 

 

These are hardly moral philosophies.  These are actions that are beleived to be good due to them being in accordance with a rule set put forth by a higher power.  there is no real mechanism to explain why they are good other than to say "becuase God says so".

 

 

So Kant's categorical imperative is also out too?

 

 

 

At the very top of the article and in the bold print right under it.  It referred to people making harmful moral decesions due to lack of emotional morality.

 

 

1) I must have a damaged part of the brain since I wouldn;t hesistate to kill the baby if it meant that the others would live (i also wouldnt hesistate to kill kittens but thats a different issue).  The only thing that might keep me from doing so is how the group would act towards me for doing it which is not really morally based since I would still beleive they, and I, are in error if I chose not to do it. 2) Aren't you simply appealing to emotional attachment rather than morailty when you refuse to kill a baby?  And, this is not as contrary to our our nature as it might seem.  When humans were hunter and gatherers, infanticide was a rather common practice and it was done primarily beucase a group would not be able to provide enough resources for each other if they allowed the infant to live.  The only reason why we would say there is some inherent wrongness now is that we no longer live in such dire circumstances in which letting an infant live or die does determine the survivability of the group.  So the emotional response to not kill the baby in your example is more than likely due to a a change in our nature due to the change in societal structure rather than to some inherent wrongness of killing infants.

 

 

Not neccessarily.  Many would argue that by actually switiching the tracks to kill the one, you are playing a direct role in the killing whereas nto doing anything means you aren't directly killing anyone, thus, it would be immoral to switch the tracks since doing so suggests intention in killing the single person.

 

 

You tell me.  You are the one who claimed that example 1 is permissable and example 2 isn't.  If these claims are based on case studies then all you have in your defense is that people with "normal" brain patterns found example 1 permissable and example 2 not permissiable while the ones with "abnormal" brain patterns didn;t see a difference.  Which is not really an arguement for any morality stance but rather a demonstration of how brain patterns affect decesion making.

 

 

Well, that is how the metaphysics of utilitarianism works.  This view was developed and defined before we had knowledge of how brain patterns affect decesion making.  If anything, already having this metaphysical foundation for a morality system helps us make sense of this.  Furthermore, if someone disagreed with this, all this would mean, from a phiolosophical stnadpoint, is that they are no longer utilitarian and probably more a (very) weak form of Kantian Morality since the decesion made about example 2 suggests that murder is never ok even if the consequences "seem" to be better by doing so.

Wait, a what? What does that mean, a scientific experiment on morality? We could have a scientific experiment on any intrisic and inbuilt decision-making processes pertaining to what humans consider "right" and "wrong" which remains fixed unless such a part of the brain is damaged...but by morality per se are you implying the existence of some sort of indepedent set of moral truths? How on Earth, if such things existed, could that be the domain of science? It is a hopelessly unscientific concept.

Again, by your invocation of the incredibly unscientific term of morality per se are you invocing an indepedent set of moral truths?

The closest thing we can do to what you are attempting to reference is search deeply encoded brain functions to find out if there are indeed some things which most if not all humans universally consider "right" or "wrong". For some things, we can do that, such as the experiment with the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex.

A metaphysical basis? That's ridiculous. How is any human neurological function beyond physics? Do we talk of the metaphysics of canine neurology, or of simian neurology? Apart from a mutation along the long arm of the chromosome which holds the gene for myelin which coats the oligodendrocyte, and a neurological Homeobox 100 nucleotide set which encodes for neocortex size...what makes us special?

We aren't testing morality per se, if you are, again, invoking the existence of morality indepedent from sentient beings who hold the concept of morality, all we are doing is testing how the damage of brain function X changes the subject's perception of what is right and what is wrong. Whether the subject's perception actually is right or wrong is utterly outside the scope of the neuroscience debate, so if you continue to debate morality as if an independent entity from human neuroscience...then I am going to have to put my mod hat back on and ask you to create a new thread. That way, we can return to the discussion of the physicality of the human mind.

Then start a new thread. This is science. Not moral philosophy.

Yes...that's because it is not adressing the question of whether some indepedent moral truths exist, as this is ridiculously unscientific. The closest we can get to your suggestion is to test how human beings decide what they consider right and what they consider wrong. That is how neuroscience defines "morality" when they test human perception.

Your perception of right and wrong is clearly a mental state, as evidenced by VMER experiments. Again, if you are making reference to morality indepedent of human consideration of right and wrong, then I am going to have to ask you to break the topic off.

By the way you are defining it, of course morality per se is not a mental state. But what you consider to be right and what you consider to be wrong, obviously is.

For the umpteenth time I iterate that if you are making reference to morality as if it was some sort of set of indepedent truths...then break off the topic, please.

Why? How on Earth could what humans consider right/wrong be anything other than the result of neurological processes?

More to the point, why invoke such untestable absurdities?

Pray, do tell, then what is it? Actually, don't answer that question. I'd just be begging for the threadjacking to continue.

Then, if you would be so kind as to account for morality indepdent of human neuroscience? As I said before, we are not here to adress the question of whether some sort of set of moral truths exist indepedently of the sentient beings who are able to hold notions such as "right" and "wrong". What neuroscience does is explain why humans hold certain things as right, wrong etc whatever. If you have ethical objections to the finding of neuroscience, start a new thread. If you want to discuss morality per se as opposed to what neuroscience discovers about why humans make decisions, start a new thread. If you want to make ad consequentiams, start a new thread. Can we now return to the issue?

Why? There are multiple ways to view the term morality. If you are making reference to something indepedent of the neurophysiology of sentient beings which understand the concept of "right" and "wrong", then how, precisely, does that account for "morality". Or rather, if you are holding morality to somehow, impossibly be indepedent of such beings,

 

a) why?

b) Why are you continuing to post such things in a neuroscience thread?

What neuroscience defines by your unscientific term morality is how and why humans percieve certain things and right and wrong, and how physical damage can affect such perceptions. That's it. If your discussion pertains to anything else, or ethical objections to these findings, start a new thread.

 

This makes sense and probably explains why it's more difficult for older people to change the way they (we) think and reason. "You can't teach an old dog new tricks."

I feel fortunate that at age 54 I finally saw the light of reason about religion and reality. However, I was having some doubts about the existence of a god years earlier which more than likely weakened my brain pathways and directed my thoughts toward disbelief.

If, however, I had held onto my belief in a biblical god since I was "saved" in 1972, chances are I would only be on this forum to try to rescue godless atheists from an eternity in hell. I would dismiss the opinions in this forum as the work of Satan. I would see the world as being controlled by evil and sin and be waiting for paradise after death.

That's why groups like The Rational Response Squad are important because it gets younger internet surfers to start questioning their irrational religious beliefs before their brain pathways strenghten making it more difficult to change later in life. I'm convinced that life is more fulfilling when beliefs are based on trustworthy evidence and rational beliefs.

 

"Rational beliefs bring us closer to getting good results in the real world." - Dr. Albert Ellis, Author of A Guide to Rational Living

 

"A sin is a sin is a sin. It doesn't matter if you're a homosexual or a mass murderer. There's no distinction." - Reverand Ted Haggard, New Life Church

Don't drag me into this. I repeatedly told him I wasn't talking about moral justification, and he repeatedly steered it back to that topic. Not my fault. I was responding to someone in the thread asking if morality (a kind of belief/desire) exists in the brain. My answer was yes. That is all.

I'll keep this work in mind.

 

Topher, I think i will take deludedgod's advice and start a new thread in which I will adress these questions since, despite my own feelings on what relates and what doesn't I have appeared to irritate quite a few people in here since they feel it is not related.

But this is a fallacy of composition. At the supramolecular level, there is a complete and total difference between experiencing the wavelength of blue via the optic nerve and having the appropriate neural pathways being burned into the VSC (visual association cortex), and learning via language and higher though about the scientific understanding of the wavelength of blue and how this stimulates the optic ducts along behind the eye, which in turn, creates different synaptic paths along the PTL (Parietal and Temporal Lobes). The fact that the eventuality of these processes can be reduced to identicality is utterly irrelevant. By that same logic, you shouldn't need to take any oxygen when you go scuba diving, there is already plenty in the water!

I also detected a Denying the Antecedent fallacy, it begs the question of how a non-physical explanation would satifactorily explain the problems put forth, and indeed, the coherency of the term "non-physical" at all.

For a neuroscience based essay written by myself (I hold a neuroscience qualification) which deals with this, please refer to:

http://www.rationalresponders.com/vitalism_immaterialism_and_christian_dualism_have_long_since_been_debunked_response

But understanding and percieving are two different brain functions, handled by two seperate areas of the brain. Since we usually see the color blue before learning about the optical photonics and neurophysiology behind the experience, the science behind it would look like this (an extreme oversimplification):

-We see the color blue, the wavelength of blue along the optic nerve creates a physiological stimulation in the link to the Visual Association Cortex, which triggers a reciprocal synaptogenesis response along the neural bundles which make up this lobe. Henceforth, the experience of the color blue will cause a precise firing mechanism across the voltage-gated ion channel in this neuron, and any associated neurons.

As the Parietal and temporal lobes grow in size, the language associative engines in these lobes are rapidly expanding vocabulary. When the child is taught the word representing blue via visual association, a synapse forms between the neural networks. (In fact, neural networks continue cross over each other all the time, as visual association is linked to language, and hearing to visual association, and balance to kinaesthetics and mechanoperception etc). Now, a neural firing in repsonse to either situation carries information to the other. When you say or think of the word blue, you can therefore picture the color in your mind. (this is now hypothetical)

Perhaps much later, you learn about the scientific details behind the color blue and how it is percieved, which creates new synaptic pathways through the higher cortex and parietal lobe, which in turn form synaptic pathways to the original (you can imagine this being done billions of times for all sorts of bits of knowledge and perception and you can understand why the brain vaguely resembles a giant tangle of wires).

So Mary goes through all that but misses step 1, so she will have no synaptic pathways in the visual association cortex to link to the ones in the Parietal, temporal and prefontal lobes, which is why the mere act of learning the science behind it will not ever form such pathways in the VSC unless there is a blue picture in the book, which there is not.

Now, remind me where non-physicality or magic comes into this equation? I don't see

a) What the problem is

b) If there was a problem, why non-physicality would solve it.

 

Yes, but that subjectivity is gleaned from physical differences.

Also, the physical world is not objective. That is extremely Newtonian. Information physics and Relativistic kinetamechanics have told us the total opposite.

Again, I discussed this in the neuroscience article, and where the subjective experience comes from, and why it cannot be non-physical.

Dude, I can barely read your response. Correct your spelling.

This has nothing to do with Mary's Problem, which confuses cortex/paratiel knowledge and VSC perception, and then attempts to defent this confusion via a fallacy of composition. You are merely sidestepping the hole in your argument, where you attempted to explain this difference by pointing out that it does not exist when reduced by several orders of magnitude. This is irrelevant and a fallacy of composition. You might as well say that atoms don't exist, only combinations of neutrons and protons orbited by electron clouds, or that these in turn don't exist, only quarks etc ad infinitum.

This, again, has nothing to do with the thought experiment in question. The fact that we can hitherto not answer the problem of consciousness has no bearing on the fact that the thought experiment in question does not actually prove anything except a naive understanding of reductionism and neuroscience.

So what? That is totally different to actually having synapses. What are you trying to prove?

Did you actually read what I wrote? I said Regardless of how good Mary's understanding of the photonic physiology behind optical processing, as long as she does not possess any neurons relating to the blue-wavelength pathways in the Visual Association Cortex, the difference between understaning and perceiving said wavelength remains pronounced. It is irrelevant that Mary understands (which is to say that Mary's neocortex PTL understands), as long as her VSC does not percieve, it is pointless to discuss matters further.

BANGS HEAD ON WALL! That's because she does not have any blue wavelength pathways in the VSC!

This is because there is no synaptic link between the PTL, PFC and VSC! (My head hurts). Don't you understand? Understanding the science behind it is represented by neural networks in the PFC, the linguistics behind said understanding in the PTL, but the actual experience to which we are making reference can only exist in the VSC!! Hence, regardless of how good her understanding is, without the synaptogenesis induced by the actual observation of the blue wavelength, she will never know what it is like to see blue! What none of you seem to be able to grasp is that the mere act of understanding will not induce a synaptogenic response in the Visual Association Cortex, it takes the experience to do that! neurophysiology, scientific knowledge of the experience and perception of the experience are, organically, two totally different entities which are handles by parts of the brain which exist on opposite sides of the brain's long axis(this is why a patient with a corpus callosum incision cannot name the color they are observing).

 

What are you trying to prove?

Yes, part of the understanding, but not necessarily required. Also, the understanding is not the same as the perception. All that can be said is that if we have the understanding, then it runs in conjunction with the perception (correct me if I’m wrong deludedgod). For example, if we understand the science behind perceiving colour, and we then perceive a colour, we may recall that understanding of what is taking place. But, if we lack the understanding, we still can perceive the colour.

In short, we can perceive colour without the understanding of what is happening, but we cannot have the understanding on its own and still perceive the experience of colour.


You still conflating the understanding with the perceiving. Here’s another example: we may understand everything about a heart attack, or a stroke, but that understanding does not entail understanding the experience or the heart attack or stroke, for that experience can only be had by actually having a heart attack/stroke.


Well, she can understand what takes place in the brain, but this does not entail she knows what the experience of colour is itself. Without the synapses she physically could not have such an experience since the experience would entail the synapses!

Take people who are born blind. They may understand exactly what colour is (i.e. wavelengths), exactly how it works (i.e. sent to the brain via the eye) and what happens in the brain and so on, you can even get them to associate objects to colours (e.g. that grass is green), but they would not have the experience of colour, which is the point being made. It seems that by your argument, a blind person would know what it is like to experience colour just by having knowledge of what takes place in the brain, yet this is clearly wrong.


So what?
This is because understanding and perceiving are separate matters. Understanding the science behind colour, how it works, etc and understanding the experience of colour are not the same. The latter necessarily requires the experience. Once you understand this, the problem you are seeing quite conveniently disappears.


Again, knowledge does no entail experience! No amount of knowledge will provide the experience. You seem to have a problem with this point.


This is only a problem if you equate understanding with perception.

No one is saying that a physical understanding of mind/consciousness will provide the experience of consciousness.

Indeed and the very concept of "physical" is purely part of understanding it is not part of perception hence the physical explanations will not encompass experiance. Conciousness is by definintion a phenomona of experiance. So can a concept like "physical" explain or encompass it?

Exactly. Understanding will never account for the experiance. But experiance is what the phenomona of conciousness is. When trying to describe conciousness we are trying to explain experiance with understanding. This is exactly where all to problems come from. 

What use is it to explain "fear" by a physical description? We will never actually fully explain the phenomona, it is an experiance and, as you point out, will be beyond understanding with concepts like physical. Concepts that exist in a sperate part of the brain.

This lead, I think, to a position of neutral monism. Namely that there is an underlying substance to the universe but that concepts like "physical" and "mental" are merely two different ways to describe an underlying reality.

Physical seems, at first, to be entirely objective. It seems to describe the underlying reality of the universe. But after some reflection I'm not sure that this is entirely the case. Certainly the concept of "physical" is very very useful and it certain must correlate strongly with underlying reality but it is, I think, incomplete and approximation if you like.

Think about it for a momment. What properties does a physical object have? How about

Hardness? Colour? Weight?

Well not necessarily it kind of depends on what levle we look at. At the sub atomic level a the colour of an object is meaningless. As is its hardness. Its weight also is meaningless in certain circumnstances.

How about position? Mommentum? Spin?

Well again at the qauntum level particles have no position or mommentum or spin. They have a wave function that will describe the probability of them having a position when we look, but only when we look. Prior to the observation event the particle simply has no position. The property of position is meaningless at this level.

Our concept of physical is, it seems, an arbitary way of compartmentalising reality. It depends on what level we look at as to how that concpt is applied. We have, throughout the history of science, changed and adapted what the term "physical" means. Maxwells electro magnetic waves are a good example, the virtual particles of modern physics are another and the probabilty waves of quantum mechanics are another. 

All this, to me, indicates that the term and concept "physical" is not fundamental. Rather it is a useful way of compartmentalising the underlying reality in much the same way as the concept "mental" is. As the discusion about shows, I think, trying the explain one compartmentalisation in terms of another is impossible. Explaining concious experiance in terms of phsycial understanding is impossible.

So do desires, emotions and other concious experiances exist physically in the brain? No they do not becasue the term physical is simply the worng type of compartmentalisation of reality to explain these phenomona. But they certainly do reside entirely in the brain in the underlying "stuff" that makes up the brain. 

Hope this all makes sense. I'm actually just coming round to this way of thinking from a position similar to yours which I guess is substantial monism or physicalism.

I'm still not 100% convinced by my own arguments presented above BTW. That the beauty of philosophy though one gets to change ones mind. Its the activity rather than the actual results that are stimulating in my opinion.

 

 

Is it? I never was taught that when I studied physics at university. I may be out of touch as its over 10 year since I graduated but information emission as definition of physicality is not, as far as I'm aware, a standard and accepted defintion of what physical is. I could be wrong if so I would appreciate and articles on the matter as its an interesting idea.

But information itself I think is part of our compartmentalisation process rather than being fundamentaly intrinsic. Information could be thought of as "that which distinguished one object from another" that which makes it different. This will depend very much on how we choose to compartmentalise the world I think.

 

I agree its all material from one perspective. I only think that there is one substance to the universe. The position I'm advocating here is one of neurtal monism. But our concept of physical (material) is inadequate to describe all phenomona. It does not describe the objective underlying substance of the universe, it certainly gets very close and certainly is a pretty accurate analogy but it is not complete.

 

So my position is that there is a single "substance" ("stuff" is actually a better word) to the universe. This stuff is ordered and follows rules of interaction. Our concept of "physical" is one very good way of compartmentalising the universe and working out this order. We must follow the process of comparmentalisation other wise we would have to consider the entire interconnected universe when looking for the patterns in the simplest local phenomona. This would simply be impossible for our brains to do and, from a Darwinian perspective, a unecessary waste of brain power.

The notion of "an object" is also part of this physical description. But the very notions of "physical" and "object" are not fundamental properties of the universe they are human (and probably intelligent alien as well) constructs. Similarly we compartmentalise the universe in another very different way into experiances or mental "objects" (for want of a better phrase). As has been discussed these two processes of compartmentalisation happen in different areas of the brain. Trying to fully explain one type of comparmnetalisation in terms of another (i.e. mental in terms of physical) is where all the problems stem from, In fact I would say it is impossible to do this.

The mental constructs we create, the mental objects such as desire, beliefs, fear, hatred etc are all experiances. To understand them we must have felt them. We must remember the "what it is like to be". This is essentially a process of introspection. The brain is analysing the brain. This introspective loop is at the very heart of conciousness and this is, I think, what Douglas Hofsdater is going on about in "Godel Escher Bach" and "I am a Strange Loop". There is definitly a process of self referrence going on and it certainly has a pungent wiff of Godels Incompleteness Theorum about it.

 

No one is actually saying that understanding what the brain does will provide the experience in the first place.

We are simply saying that we can, to some degree, explain how the brain provides the mental functions, but we are not saying this explanation alone gives us an experience. The experience can, well, only be experienced, but this does not negate the fact that we can explain how and where experience originates from in the brain.

Mental experiences cannot be provided by anything. While we may be able to explain how something happens, you still need a brain of sufficient complexity to process the data into what we conceive as a mental output. Simply having the understanding, devoid of a brain sufficient enough to process the ‘data’ won't provide the experience.

As an aside, I hold that while mental states are ultimately brain states, the mental states are merely abstract representations of these brain states, which I think have a use in our inter-personal context.

Err, Yes. He's nailed you on a very clear fallacy of composition.

 

[mod edit:double post]

Ok good. So given that beliefs and desires and emotions are experiances and given that the concept of "physical" (in this context) is "what the brian does" how can we say that experiances exist physically in the brain? The concept of physical will not cut it when it comes to explaining or describing mental events.

Ok. But the experiance is exactly what we are trying to describe and encapsulate. Emotions, beliefs, memories ARE experiances that is what they are. The concept of physical can not hope to encompass them so it is, in my opinion, meaningless to say that beliefs exist physically within the brain. Its like asking if a proton is red or blue.

Indeed.

Indeed. I agree brain state generate and are fully responsible for mental states. But this is different from saying that they are physical states because this implies that "physical" is a complete description of the underlying "stuff" that makes up the brain. It is my contention that "physical" is simply a convienient way of compartmentalising the universe and is an approximation to the ultimate reality. Its a very very uselful, convientient and good approximation but it is still not complete.

So to sum up.

There exists an underlying structure and order to the universe. It is made up of "stuff" (there isn't really a better word). The state of that stuff and how it interacts with other stuff will determine what events occur in the world. This is true for the state of the brain. The brain state will generate certain events. These events can be conceptualised as emotion, beliefs or desires (mental events or objects). They can also be conceptulised as neurons fireing, atoms moving etc (physical events or objects). But it is erronious to try to use one set of concepts to describe another. Clearly the two conceptualisations share a single source and clearly there will be a correlation between phsyical events and mental events (i.g. these neurons fire and we feel fear) but it is still wrong to say that "beliefs" exist physically in the brain as we are mixing two conceptulaisations of a single source thing.

Its like wave partical duality I think. An electron can be described as a wave or a particle. But trying to describe its wave properties in terms of its particle properties can not be done. The wave and particle descriptions of the electron share a single source, and underlying structure but this is neither wave or particle it is a mathematical abstraction.

Does this make sense or am I talking out of my arse?

forgive me if this has been covered, and i do mean this as an honest question, but if every action, ever "abstract" thought every feeling, intuitive deduction, everything that makes you a human, and a mammal is based from chemical reaction that cause the feeling, or choice, or emotion, where is the freedom?
perhaps it shouldn't be brought up in this context but i have heard so many denounce religions for a lack of freedom i thought it merited mention.

Well the classic example is love. Love is a brain state, neurons firing and chemical reactions. However, we tend to view the mental state of love as a non-physical/intangible force or concept. In the inter-personal/social context we don’t refer to love as a brain state, chemicals and neurons, instead we remove all the ‘irrelevant’ information (irrelevant for this context).

Well they exist in the brain as neurons, synapses, cells, chemicals and whatever else plays a role in their functioning. When we experience an emotion physical changes take place in the brain. This is how they exist in the brain.


Well I think mental states are just abstractions of the brain states. It’s how we convey the scientific descriptions of, say, an emotion, into everyday activity via language. The mental states tend to act as a means of communication rather than detailed explanation. So when someone ways they’re angry they are not saying “the chemicals reactions in the brain are making me angry” (even though this is what is causing the experience of anger), rather they are communicating to someone their views of a given situation. So the mental state is ultimately an indirect description of a brain state.

To sum up what I’m getting at: We have two have two means (scientific/non-scientific or direct/indirect) of describing the same thing (physical brain states).

Here’s an interesting article you might like: 10 Unsolved Mysteries of the Brain

I’m not too sure what you’re asking here. We know love is a brain state. While there are different contexts of love (i.e. beginning stage of a relationship, long-term relationship, mother/child, etc) these contexts are irrelevant to my point – that love is ultimately a brain state. Here’s some info on this:

”In 2005, Italian scientists at Pavia University found that a protein molecule known as the nerve growth factor (NGF) has high levels when people first fall in love, but these levels return to as they were after one year. Specifically, four neurotrophin levels, i.e. NGF, BDNF, NT-3, and NT-4, of 58 subjects who had recently fallen in love were compared with levels in a control group who were either single or already engaged in a long-term relationship. The results showed that NGF levels were significantly higher in the subjects in love than as compared to either of the control groups.^[8]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love

and:

“Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that a consistent number of chemicals are present in the brain when people testify to feeling love. These chemicals include; Testosterone, Oestrogen, Dopamine, Norepinephrine, Serotonin, Oxytocin, and Vasopressin. More specifically, higher levels of Testosterone and Oestrogen are present during the lustful phase of a relationship. Dopamine, Norepinephrine, and Serotonin are more commonly found during the attraction phase of a relationship. Oxytocin, and Vasopressin seemed to be more closely linked to long term bonding and relationships characterized by strong attachments.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_%28scientific_views%29

So what I am saying is the mental concept of love nothing more then an abstract explanation of this brain state.

The point being made is they are all brain states. That’s it.

As for testifying to being in love… the research shows that those who testified to being in love actually had different chemical reactions in the brain compared to those who were not in love.  So they are not just claiming to being in love. Scientists know what happens in the brain when we are in love, the type of chemicals that are released, etc.

To repeat my point again: yes, there are various types of love, such as the love a parent has for their child, and the love two adults in a relationship have for each other, etc. But both are brain states.