[BazookaMusic]

A simple proof that love is not just hormones is that love can last for some time. If it was just a chemical phenomenon why does it happen repeatedly. Why can someone feel love for someone just by bringing to mind the symbol which represents that person? Why can someone feel love by seeing an illustration of someone they love?

[famouswaffles]

How is that a proof of anything?

Do you imagine all chemical reactions to be instantaneous with effects that last only a short while ?

>Why can someone feel love for someone just by bringing to mind the symbol which represents that person?

>Why can someone feel love by seeing an illustration of someone they love?

Why would other things triggering hormones and reactions mean it's not just hormones and reactions?

[BazookaMusic]

The point is that it is a phenomenon connected with memory and thinking processes. The reaction and release of hormones is part of the phenomenon, but not the entire phenomenon.

Take this in contrast to an allergy for example. Can you trigger an allergy by remembering the food? If you see an illustration of a food you are allergic to, do you get an attack?

A more similar phenomenon instead is a phobia. It is also a release of hormones based on some internal or external stimulus (you can apply all my examples about love). However in a phobia it's even more clear that the phenomenon is based on thinking patterns. Reducing the complexity to saying these are just "hormones and reactions" is the same as saying a computer is "instructions and interrupts". That is to say that a computer has these elements but what makes it work is that there are a bunch of other systems including the humans writing the software that organize these into a functional system.

[famouswaffles]

Memory and thinking processes are reactions and synapses firing in the brain.

It's not "just" in the sense that there's a lot of emergence and complexity when these things all work together but it is "just" in the sense that these are all physical unmagical processes.

[BazookaMusic]

My point was that the original comment is a low-level view with missing details that gives little insight on the complexity of the phenomenon, not a support for dualism. It's all brain tissues and the information they encode.

I think we agree and it was fun to write this out.

[dist-epoch]

Thinking about food makes your mouth salivate.

Thinking about someone could release the hormones.

[BazookaMusic]

Thus the experience of food is reduced to the release of saliva?

Your point proves that the experience of food is also not just a chemical process which happens in response to food.