Does love exist...

[The Almighty Aardvark]

I love it when there's a comic you can link that perfectly sums up your response

Spoiler: That comic

 

[sageoftruth]

It's still a stupid argument. Is it just chemical reactions in the brain? Sure, but so is everything else you do. I've heard plenty of bitter people on this site make that argument, but never 'Oh, I don't play videogames, dopamine is just a chemical!'. You're a sack of chemicals, you better learn to love chemicals.

Understanding the mechanism behind something makes it no less beautiful- Are sunsets less beautiful now we know it's a colossal ball of plasma, flying through space, and we're just spinning around it? Not at all! It's just more amazing.

Sometimes yes, it is less amazing. Some things are far more interesting when you're left guessing and only have your imagination to fill the void. It definitely shows in stuff like horror media. Things are much more intense when you're thinking "What the hell's going on?". Then you hear, "It's aliens" or "It's a monster" or "It's your imagination" and all of the tension fades away. I think Yahtzee talked about it in his review of Condemned 2.

That's really stretching the definition of beauty.

True, that wasn't a great example. That was more of an argument for something being compelling rather than beautiful. I guess you're right then, provided the mechanism isn't something horrendous that people would rather not know about, like how a sausage is made.

 

[Fox12]

Well, sure, love is the result of chemical reactions in the brain. But why on earth would that mean it isn't real?

It's all a matter of perspective. The human race evolved altruistic instincts in order to survive. If a man is drowning in a lake, and another man is standing on a dock, the man on the dock most likely feels compelled to help. Why? He gets nothing from this. There is most likely no real reward. In fact, he may be putting himself in danger by helping the drowning man. It's because he's compelled to, by chemical reactions in the brain. He instinctively understands that, if he were in that position, he would want someone to do the same for him. Love, empathy, team work, and intelligence is what has allowed our race to survive. You can say that it's just the result of chemical reactions in the brain, but you can say that about anything. The Aurora Borealis is just the result of atoms from the sun hitting atoms in our atmosphere. The sun, which gives us life, is just a ball of hot gas. The most beautiful book you've ever read is just words on a page. You can say that love is just a chemical reaction in the brain. I prefer to think that love is literally coded into our DNA.

 

[freaper]

Literally (yes, literally) everything is a chemical reaction. Love, hunger, pain, sadness, etc, but also the glare of the monitor you're using to read this line, the chair you feel squeezing against your buttocks, the bus you hear accelerating in the distance... Nothing exists outside your perception, and your perception is the reaction of chemicals in your brain, therefore all is chemicals (I don't remember what the school of thought is called that subscribes to this idea).

 

[09philj]

The more interesting question is whether morality exists.

 

[sageoftruth]

The more interesting question is whether morality exists.

I don't know about actual morality, but some tests conducted on children have implied that a sense of morality exists before children even know how to speak.

 

[Lieju]

Yeah, like many others have said before, even if it is just chemicals, so what? This chocolate I'm about to eat is just chemicals, I'm gonna enjoy it anyway.

I'm more interested in the differences between what starts out as a chemical rush (infatuation) vs what becomes pair bonding (long term love), what the process is between one stage to the next, whether humans are supposed to pair bond, whether infatuation is required to form a lasting relationship later (do we need a "spark"). Is it possible to skip stages?

Speaking as someone whose brain apparently doesn't do 'infatuation', yes. Although for me love is more 'well I'm invested enough in keeping you around and think you're a positive influence in my life'. So more a matter of being used to a person.

 

[Barbas]

Nein. There is nothing but fear, desperation und murder.

 

[stroopwafel]

Well... I love my dog.

And as far I know that has nothing to do procreation (I hope), I just love the son of a *****.

I think I understand. My parents have a dog and he's so cuuuuuute.

If it's about romantic love; I think it exists but more like as people we are naturally inclined to seek out companship and our brain 'rewards' us for evolutionary advantageous behavior like reaching out and having our feelings reciprocated. 'Love' is not so much love for another person but rather how that other person makes us feel. Ofcourse when people emotionally invest in eachother for years on end this can lead to deeper attachments than the fleeting surge of hormones and endorphines that is romantic love(or infatuation).

It makes sense though that 'love' is such a powerful feeling b/c the survival of our species depends on it. People repeat behaviors that feel good and emotional attachments not only improves survival rate but in the case of romantic love also increases reproductive opportunity and emotional comfort and safety. Similarly loneliness and rejection have the opposite effect as it decreases our 'evolutionary' value and chances for survival. With negative emotions our instincts try to compel us to change behavior or adjust behavior accordingly to either establish connections or not waste valuable resources that could threaten group survival(which depression could be a by-product of). Our instincts formed during the pleistocene and as people our emotions are still evolutionary adaptive to that period(modernity only being a speck in human existence). Infact recent studies even showed that enduring loneliness is even more harmful for your health than obesity or smoking. It shows how dependent people are on eachother as a social species. 'Morality' is much the same. Humans are a co-operative species so (what we now define as) morality ensured group survival.

But anyways ultimately I think love is just something you have to 'feel' rather than think about. There is a reason why it's the source of inspiration for so many songs/movies/novels etc. Every person eventually experiences love in their own way even if its universally recognizable. Personally I never really experience infatuation but rather just a vague longing and my mind wandering off to that person or recalling past encounters. Not that I haven't been disappointed quite often though. The one love however that never disappoints is delicious strawberry cake.

 

[Tortilla the Hun]

Nein. There is nothing but fear, desperation und murder.

Precisely! Which is why I celebrate Valentine's Day by kidnapping people, letting them loose in the woods at night, and hunting them. Sometimes it goes on for days, but I always catch them. Speaking of which, I should really start prepping, I've only got a month left!

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

I'll offer a different perspective than the rest of this thread so far, because I honestly don't believe things like love, emotion, feelings, consciousness, and the whole human experience in general is just a result of chemicals in our bodies. I think there's something there, which I'll admit I can't explain, but I'd be lying if I suggested I believe otherwise, and it's as real to me as the objects on my desk, and it irks me that some people might suggest I'm delusional or something like that. I think insisting on our life experiences just being chemicals and chemical reactions is a close-minded point of view, and a lot of people who claim to love science are often those who have a fixed idea of what the world is and refuse to alter that perception or consider any other explanation (like many religious people do).

How is it closed minded? Is there any good reason to think there's more to it? It isn't closed minded to not believe in something we have no reason to believe exists. No reasonable person is going to alter their perception when all you've offered is an accusation if people don't agree with you. And I'm pretty sure people do consider the other explanation, they just judge it as bad.

 

[drummond13]

Saying love isn't real "because it's just chemicals in the brain" is like saying pain isn't real "because it's just nerves telling your brain something is wrong". Saying that to someone in pain isn't going to change anything. Just like telling me the feelings I have for my son "aren't really real" isn't going to affect them.

If you want to go even further, on an atomic level our bodies and brains are made up almost entirely of empty space. Why should we care about anything since no matter what it is, it's practically nothing?

 

[Arnoxthe1]

So people are discussing whether love is simply just chemicals or if there's more there.

If you believe in the soul at all, it could be that not only are you feeling love in your brain, you're also experiencing it in your soul. Which is why it feels much more profound than... Something else.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

If J-dude loves you, then it must be real! Or god, or any other of those strange ideas that comfort lonely people at night. Love in the sense of those movies where it is eternal, potentially life transcending and something that is part of your souuuul??...then probably no. Some complicated process of chemicals that attract one person to another to not-so-gently push us towards procreation to further this weirdly hypnotic sense of existence? Yes, more probably. But no less real or mysterious enough to create wonderful works of art and endless theories on our purpose here in this vast chasm of unknown. ( I have indeed felt things stronger than i ever could explain at the time. But time teaches many things, and i have had plenty of that).

If ever you want to play around with that chemical, there is plenty research to delve into about MDMA and its very interesting applications.

 

[JimB]

Saying love isn't real "because it's just chemicals in the brain" is like saying pain isn't real "because it's just nerves telling your brain something is wrong."

I am sorry to say I have heard that argument uttered in sincerity before.

This kind of conversation is so strange to me. Empirical evidence of love's existence causes people to respond by questioning whether love exists, because if love was real we wouldn't be able to prove it?

 

[Trunkage]

I'm gonna parrot what most of the people here say, yes love is a chemical reaction in the brain, but so is every single thing we are able to perceive. That of course includes all emotions that we feel, every thought we have, and really even our ability to perform scientific experiments and observe the results. In fact everything we experience is a chemical reaction in the brain, because that's how the human brain works. So everything we see, hear, feel, taste, smell, or experience in anyway is the result of a chemical reaction in the brain, because that's how our brains process the universe around us. Our entire lives are just series complicated chemical reactions that we define as being "life", as is the life of anything we classify as "living".

Let's take this concept a bit further. You maybe aware that due to the interactions of things like cones, rods and the visual cortex that the world we see is nothing like how the world actually looks like (as if it understands 'looks like'). To start with we only see at a certain resolution and wave lengths. So why do we use vision if it is so faulty? We need some way to interface with the world. What's the purpose of emotions? In my opinion, to give value to life. We, as a species, seem to thrive off valuing things that we even made a piece of paper be more valuable than other pieces of paper, and it can be as valuable as food or other products.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Let's take this concept a bit further. You maybe aware that due to the interactions of things like cones, rods and the visual cortex that the world we see is nothing like how the world actually looks like (as if it understands 'looks like'). To start with we only see at a certain resolution and wave lengths. So why do we use vision if it is so faulty? We need some way to interface with the world. What's the purpose of emotions? In my opinion, to give value to life. We, as a species, seem to thrive off valuing things that we even made a piece of paper be more valuable than other pieces of paper, and it can be as valuable as food or other products.

It isn't that it's faulty, it's just that it happened to be just useful enough for us to survive more efficiently than the surrounding creatures. We are still evolving. albeit more socially than physically these days. But that is because it is how we work best; together. What we choose to value is our own until we die. Then...who knows? People always claim to. But they are more interested in controlling the alive than enlightening them. Love is our very personal magic we can choose how to inspire us. Be it to kindness, bitterness or worse, it is our own personal fuel. Some don't want to fill up or dont know how to. Some spend their entire lives trying to find out why...when, if the possibilty is no reason, we will never know even when we die.

(Edit: Rick n Morty is one of the bezt cartoon series..s going right now. Don't let any of the very quick jokes get to you, there is plenty more to enjoy and even more to muse upon. )

 

[Squanchy]

Saying love isn't real "because it's just chemicals in the brain" is like saying pain isn't real "because it's just nerves telling your brain something is wrong."

I am sorry to say I have heard that argument uttered in sincerity before.

This kind of conversation is so strange to me. Empirical evidence of love's existence causes people to respond by questioning whether love exists, because if love was real we wouldn't be able to prove it?

Hopefully you were in school at the time, or stoned. Those are the acceptable times to hear that argument.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

I'm going to hop into the "so what if it's a chemical reaction?" camp.
I'll admit, I'm a little poetic, if I'm going to love somebody, I want to treat it more deeply than the "reproduce" impulse natural evolution programmed me to have but I can be aware of it at the same time.
And you've heard this one already, but since it's a chemical reaction, I feel like that makes it more real, you know?

 

[Trunkage]

Let's take this concept a bit further. You maybe aware that due to the interactions of things like cones, rods and the visual cortex that the world we see is nothing like how the world actually looks like (as if it understands 'looks like'). To start with we only see at a certain resolution and wave lengths. So why do we use vision if it is so faulty? We need some way to interface with the world. What's the purpose of emotions? In my opinion, to give value to life. We, as a species, seem to thrive off valuing things that we even made a piece of paper be more valuable than other pieces of paper, and it can be as valuable as food or other products.

It isn't that it's faulty, it's just that it happened to be just useful enough for us to survive more efficiently than the surrounding creatures. We are still evolving. albeit more socially than physically these days. But that is because it is how we work best; together. What we choose to value is our own until we die. Then...who knows? People always claim to. But they are more interested in controlling the alive than enlightening them. Love is our very personal magic we can choose how to inspire us. Be it to kindness, bitterness or worse, it is our own personal fuel. Some don't want to fill up or dont know how to. Some spend their entire lives trying to find out why...when, if the possibilty is no reason, we will never know even when we die.

(Edit: Rick n Morty is one of the bezt cartoon series..s going right now. Don't let any of the verg quick jokes get to you, there is plenty more to enjoy and even more to muse upon. )

Many species have a sense that is better than ours. I agree, vision isn't faulty, its just at the level that makes multi-parallel processing efficient. Too much information cant be processed.

The value thing comes down to us needing an identity. For example, I've met plenty who have failed at achieving something. Instead of the loss being a failure, they class themselves as a failure, and they take this as an identity. For example (about love), a person who doesn't break up with a partner that doesn't match them due to the fact that they don't want to be seen as a failure (again).