Is falling in love just a chemical reaction or not

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So I was out drinking with a few friends (both male and female) and I said that I haven't been in love since I was 16 and that falling in love (rather than building a relationship through mutual investment, physical attraction and respect) is nothing but a chemical reaction. They said that I was wrong and that they wished me better luck in the future (so do I).

Was I wrong?
 
With that thinking i'm not surprised you are single.

Relationships take effort and investment.
You don't just wander up, sniff their scent and fall in love.

And why is falling in love somehow different than building a relationship?
 
The brain is an organ, and all thought is governed by chemical reactions according to the best/only theories in the business so love is just another chemical reaction (not that that changes anything about it, painting the Mona Lisa was just a chemical reaction).

There is the tricky business of qualia/awareness/soul not being at all explained by physics/chemistry/biology but pretty much every behavior and probably most thoughts are the result of chemicals.
 
Falling in love is a neurological process which does involve chemicals. But life is "Just a self sustaining chemical reaction" so it's somewhat reductionist, you can boil many complex things down to simple statements like that. If you want to believe that love is ordained by fate or something that's your prerogative, although the science isn't going to back you up on that. Whether you think a clockwork universe where humans are biological computers is less beautiful than one where things are magical is similarly up to you.
 
Nothing is real, the entire universe is just mass/energy bumping around against things meaninglessly.

That's sort of a conversation killer though. Gotta walk that Middle Path.
 
I think calling it "just a chemical reaction" kind of undersells chemical reactions. It's not exactly baking soda and vinegar.

Proton transfers are like 90% of all enzymatic activity/reactions in the body (wildly lying/estimating/hyperbolizing to make a point that most reactions in the body are boring until you figure out that vitamin b12 is a radical generator, thiamine creates CARBANIONS in the body, and learn that there is a reason we leave aromatic amino acid synthesis to plants)
 
Sentience is ultimately just an illusion. But since you can't break the illusion (outside of death), just roll with it and appreciate that the illusion has given you the ability to have emotions.
 
Yeah, so is the enjoyment from food, video games, movies, sex, and GAF.

Still enjoy that shit though. There's no reason to assume love doesn't matter if you can enjoy the above.
 
With that thinking i'm not surprised you are single.

Relationships take effort and investment.
You don't just wander up, sniff their scent and fall in love.

And why is falling in love somehow different than building a relationship?

you never became attracted to someone just like that?
 
Love is just chemical reactions. Your mind is just little interactions between neurons. Rainbows are just light refracting through water droplets. The posts in this thread are just zeroes and ones.

All of these things are true and yet still completely miss the point.
 
You're not wrong, but that's a really an unfortunate line of thinking.

Nearly anything can be likened to something so simple, but what's the point in that?

But aren't you limiting yourself if you decline what could be a wonderful relationship (based on mutual physical attraction, respect and commitment) just because you are waiting for some arbitrary chemical reaction (which your genes programmed you to feel to encourage procreation) to tell you that you found "the one"?
 
Yeah, but what causes that chemical reaction?
Basically other chemical reactions but in the end the chemistry involved in these things we call feelings don't just randomly happen.
 
What else would it be?

There are a lot of people out there who believe in dualism, the idea that mind is a distinct thing apart from the material world. A large majority of people really - I guess NeoGAF just has a high concentration of materialists for some reason.
 
But aren't you limiting yourself if you decline what could be a wonderful relationship (based on mutual physical attraction, respect and commitment) just because you are waiting for some bullshit chemical reaction to tell you that you found "the one"?
Can you clarify what you're asking? There is no "the one." We aren't characters in a fairy tale. Mutual physical attraction, respect, and commitment are keys to any loving, long term relationship.
 
No, read Husserl.

Theoretical abstractions aren't more real than the phenomena they were created to describe or explain. You have to be pretty backwards to think otherwise.

Next we'll be getting upset, since our brains are apparently 'meat computers', that we don't have infallible memory like real computers do. But these are just descriptive analogies, they don't touch the reality of our experience as humans being different from that of a computer. If we think otherwise and hold up 'meat computers' as our standard then suddenly human existence becomes a flaw because we aren't like computers. It's a ridiculous line of thinking because it's completely ass backwards. Things are what they reveal themselves to be through our experience. We'll never experience an atom, so why the fuck would we convince ourselves that, say, atoms are "more real" than the reality that actually announces itself directly to us?
 
Everything is in a very reductionist view.
Love is just chemical reactions. Your mind is just little interactions between neurons. Rainbows are just light refracting through water droplets. The posts in this thread are just zeroes and ones.

All of these things are true and yet still completely miss the point.
Yup.

There's nothing wrong or bad about love being a "chemical reaction". All emotions are chemical reactions, but it doesn't make them less real, powerful, or meaningful.
 
Can you clarify what you're asking? There is no "the one." We aren't characters in a fairy tale. Mutual physical attraction, respect, and commitment are keys to any loving, long term relationship.

So if you have mutual attraction, respect and commitment, do you need those chemical infatuation reactions to truly have a worthwhile relationship?
 
So if you have mutual attraction, respect and commitment, do you need those chemical infatuation reactions to truly have a worthwhile relationship?

You don't need dopamine surges every time you look at your partner to have a worthwhile relationship (in fact if you do, the relationship verges on a drug addiction).
 
So if you have mutual attraction, respect and commitment, do you need those chemical infatuation reactions to truly have a worthwhile relationship?
No. You can be attracted to and respect a person without loving them. Many people even stick with partners out of a sense of duty or social obligation. It's been that way for a long time. But that doesn't mean love does not exist, or that it's insignificant. I still don't understand what your point is.
 
you never became attracted to someone just like that?

sure but what does that have to do with falling in love?

So if you have mutual attraction, respect and commitment, do you need those chemical infatuation reactions to truly have a worthwhile relationship?

You know what can give you infatuation reactions? Mutual attraction, respect, and commitment.

You seem to be saying "if im not instantly attracted to her its not worth trying because we dont have love!"

And that isn't how it works.

Yes, but there is a very specific feeling or chemical reaction you feel (which I haven't truly felt since I was 16) which is conventionally called falling in love

no, that is called infatuation. That is a crush. That's not love
 
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