Is falling in love just a chemical reaction or not

Status
Not open for further replies.
So here's my question to the OP: Are you talking specifically about the concept of love at first sight, or falling in love in general? Because those are two different concepts
 
Love is a social construct.


Chemical reactions are the process by which love physically manifests/proceeds, but love cannot be explained by said chem reactions.
 
Am I the only one thinking this should be a Rick and Morty thread, since Rick calls love a chemical reaction that tells living beings to breed?
 
Melkr_ said:
Love is a social construct.
Click to expand...

I very much doubt that you could design a society completely devoid of love. From an evolutionary standpoint, love is necessary for creating the bonds that allow mammals like us to raise children to the age of autonomy and fertility, despite the very long timeframes that we need to mature. So while societies create cultural frameworks that regulate how love is expressed, it is ultimately a biological imperative for our species.

Despite what a few sociologists may claim, not everything is a social construct.
 
I would say it's a little bit of both. My first love experience was what would most people say as love at first sight. We just clicked together so well and I really enjoyed my time with him. But I have also been in a situation where being with someone was beneficial for both parties and there were feelings as well, but nowhere near as my first love. I still have feelings for the first one to this day(no, they are not toxic or negative lol), but I feel nothing for the other guy I was with after him.

I think there are biological elements to how we choose mates, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of it is also subconscious. I have asked myself "Why him? What's so special about him?" so many times, but I fail to answer sometimes. I have been in situations where I knew a person I was dating would be a good partner, but I just didn't feel like going with it just based on gut feeling.
 
Basically yes imo, but nobody really knows because of things like consciousness and life. I mean you might have a release of chemicals and that in turn may make you feel the feeling called love, but I don't believe that's all there is to it. There's probably a profound truth or two missing from that, along with more complexity.

So I don't think it's fully answerable until we better understand things like consciousness, life, feelings in general, and more fundamental things like that.

Edit: And to me there's an amazing amount of beauty in love and in everything else, even if it does turn out to be "just a chemical reaction". That is still an absolutely amazing thing to me. Even though I don't believe in any god, it's hard to not think of some type of "god" when it comes right down to it. Which just goes to show we have a long way to go.
 
On a certain level, yeah. As with other emotions. But that doesn't make them any less important or valuable. They are still "real" even if they don't come from the heart in a very literal sense. It isn't worth reducing everything to reactions and calling them false or lesser, because they are just as real if you let them be (and you should).
 
E11XrHJ.jpg
 
Of course you're not wrong. Not your fault many people have a completely illogical and mind-boggling lack of respect and awe for chemistry. That it's all just atoms doing their thing only increases the magic of existence in my mind.
 
Cyan said:
When you take those chemical reactions as a whole, they give you an intense emotional experience, a quicker heartbeat, maybe a flutter in your stomach. When you take those neuron signals as a whole, they create a gestalt that thinks and feels and experiences and is conscious. When you take those little bits of refracting light as a whole, you get a beautiful arc of many colors resting across the sky. When you take all those zeroes and ones together, you get letters, words, sentences, communication between people far distant from one another.

You can reduce something down into its constituent parts, but that doesn't somehow invalidate the larger whole.
Click to expand...

This is how I see it. Love isn't just a chemical reaction; it's that and all the amazing experiences we share because of it.
 
I think it technically is, but I also think that just referring to it as a chemical reaction is both really reductive as well as unexciting/unromantic. I think all emotions are just chemical reactions of some kind, that doesn't make them any less special, unique, or nuanced.
 
Why would we give our attempts at objectivity priority over direct experience, don't we have the capacity to determine what phenomena are in and of themselves just by virtue of having access to them? Doesn't that make theories about materiality (or idealism) extraneous? We already know everything by way of appearance, we don't have to concoct theories about some inaccessible reality behind our already immediate reality.
 
Everything is. Nobody should even have to tell you this. Every neuron firing in your brain pondering your feelings is a chemical reaction. Nothing you do is authentic.
 
umop_3pisdn said:
Why would we give our attempts at objectivity priority over direct experience, don't we have the capacity to determine what phenomena are in and of themselves just by virtue of having access to them? Doesn't that make theories about materiality (or idealism) extraneous? We already know everything by way of appearance, we don't have to concoct theories about some inaccessible reality behind our already immediate reality.
Click to expand...

Understanding the objective world that gives rise to the subjective perception of it helps to modify those subjective perceptions. So, no, not extraneous - but rather a method by which we can arrive at greater harmony with the function and operations of reality from which our subjective reality is derived.
 
Doing the whole science answer to an emotional thing looks salty as hell which is probably why they took pity on you OP, even if you were somewhat right.
 
Zaptruder said:
Understanding the objective world that gives rise to the subjective perception of it helps to modify those subjective perceptions. So, no, not extraneous - but rather a method by which we can arrive at greater harmony with the function and operations of reality from which our subjective reality is derived.
Click to expand...

That kind of mental abstraction doesn't make sense. All we have access to is a mixture of subjectivity and objectivity experienced as a kind of unity (what Heidegger might call "being-in-the-world"). There's plenty of reason to believe that pursuing some hypothetical ideal of "objective reality" exerts a delusive influence.

For instance if we think of our brains as meat computers, then next we find fault with our cognition because our memory is fallible while computer memory is not. We've then assigned more importance to the mental model we use to understand our experience than we have to our experiences themselves. It has nothing to do with 'matter' and 'consciousness', that's still imputing a kind of dualism. Reality is just what announces itself through experience, what else would it be?

It's not that the empirical sciences aren't useful in acquiring knowledge, but it's ridiculous to dive into some kind of Cartesian dualism where matter is real (for some reason?) and everything else is confabulation. All theories about the world are equally confabulatory, that's why they're theories, the only thing that isn't confabulation is that which announces itself directly. And there's real danger to letting theories cloud over what is actually real in the most immediate sense.
 
umop_3pisdn said:
. All theories about the world are equally confabulatory, that's why they're theories, the only thing that isn't confabulation is that which announces itself directly.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how anti-science you're being here or if it's only a few subjects, like theory of mind, that you think science isn't equipped to engage with, but I think scientific theories are much less confabulatory than any other kind of "theory". And I think that what we experience directly is the least trustworthy kind of knowledge we can have.
 
Literally everything in your brain is. I genuinely don't get what you're asking here, like is there something going with your brain OUTSIDE of it? No, that's incredibly unscientific and goofy thinking.

Yeah man love is ENERGY AND IT SURROUNDS US ALL.
 
Langdon Alger said:
I'm not sure how anti-science you're being here or if it's only a few subjects, like theory of mind, that you think science isn't equipped to engage with, but I think scientific theories are much less confabulatory than any other kind of "theory". And I think that what we experience directly is the least trustworthy kind of knowledge we can have.
Click to expand...
You think direct observation is the least trustworthy kind of knowledge? The sad thing is that this isn't even the stupidest thing I've read today.
 
ZehDon said:
You think direct observation is the least trustworthy kind of knowledge? The sad thing is that this isn't even the stupidest thing I've read today.
Click to expand...

I wasn't talking about direct observation or measurement of some external object or process. This thread is about emotions and mental events. I was talking a mental experience or perception. Like what science tell us about different colors being different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation reflected off an object is more accurate and objectively correct than our experience of color. Etc.
 
It is.

It's also more than the sum of its parts. It may be a chemical reaction, but it's a chemical reaction through the system of your body, the vessel in which you sensate all around you. Recognising where emotions come from can help you have better control over them, but being too literal can leave you dead to feeling. I feel that the healthiest mind state is to strike a balance -- allow yourself to resign to love when the opportunity arises, but recognise that you need not lose yourself in the rushing flow.
 
umop_3pisdn said:
That kind of mental abstraction doesn't make sense. All we have access to is a mixture of subjectivity and objectivity experienced as a kind of unity (what Heidegger might call "being-in-the-world"). There's plenty of reason to believe that pursuing some hypothetical ideal of "objective reality" exerts a delusive influence.

For instance if we think of our brains as meat computers, then next we find fault with our cognition because our memory is fallible while computer memory is not. We've then assigned more importance to the mental model we use to understand our experience than we have to our experiences themselves. It has nothing to do with 'matter' and 'consciousness', that's still imputing a kind of dualism. Reality is just what announces itself through experience, what else would it be?

It's not that the empirical sciences aren't useful in acquiring knowledge, but it's ridiculous to dive into some kind of Cartesian dualism where matter is real (for some reason?) and everything else is confabulation. All theories about the world are equally confabulatory, that's why they're theories, the only thing that isn't confabulation is that which announces itself directly. And there's real danger to letting theories cloud over what is actually real in the most immediate sense.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying that perception is in someway unreal... it very much is real. And in a certain sense, your subjective perception is an objective reality.

On the flipside, understanding the material functions might help further illuminate the subjective perception.

For example, having an understanding of the visual perception system will allow us to better understand the nature of absolute colours and relative colour spaces. Which in turn allowed us to significantly improve the state of art, allowing us to better and more profoundly express subjective internal states.

Similarly, understanding how love benefits us and how it breaks down would better allow us to dissociate the needless elements of the experience from the positive ones. I.e. understanding that highly emotive impassioned attraction is a short term biological function will provide us with a more graceful way to transition into a longer term love built on a more solid emotional foundation - rather than erroneously questioning if there's still 'value' left in the relationship.
 
Love is amazing and a challenge.

Sometimes it builds over time. Sometimes it burns hard and fast and then fizzles out. The worst is when it's one sided. I feel for those folks and the things they put themselves through. Either way, keep trying until you meet the right person. At the core of it it's just a genuine connection you share with someone. A closeness.
 
Well, technically it is. However I would also say that it's pretty lame to look at it this way.

That said, I think that what we today see as love (or what we think it should look and feel like) has been heavily ingrainded into us by movies and othe media. Kinda like brainwashing.
 
You're not wrong, but it's a little more complicated than that. What agents are produced and released into your body depends a lot on your state of mind. You're genetically predisposed to like or dislike certain smells, tastes, and your system reacts by releasing one agent or another when you come into contact with foreign objects. In the same way, what physical shape or personality traits you may find yourself being attracted to depends a lot on the way you are wired at the most fundamental level. No two bodies are exactly alike, both for genetic reasons and because personal experience tends to affect the way in which the system reacts to outside stimuli, so who you 'love' is still an inherently personal reaction.

It's true, of course, that you could theoretically engineer any emotion using the correct neurological signals, but the implications of such a treatment are a lot more involved than people tend to give them credit for.
 
I fell in love at first sight with my girlfriend and I still feel the same 8 years later. If I look her in the eye, I get the rush like the first day we met, shes amazing.
 
Love is "just" a chemical reaction in the same sense that your entire perceptive experience of the world is "just" a chemical reaction.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

The Pistacchio Diarrhea Love Triange. Or how my life falls apart
38
1K
Days like these... replied
With Love, Meghan (Netflix) is everything I dreamed of and more
44
3K
Days like these... replied
This is not a April Fool's 2025 thread
0
282
San Dan Glokta replied
Some dude just installed a defibrillator in our office
2
54
2K
NeoGiffer replied
Why is Led Zeppelin music not in Vietnam War movies?
24
1K
ClanOfNone replied
Top Bottom