Does the fact that emotions really are just chemical reactions take away from their power?
Asked by
TheBot (
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March 27th, 2010
Just a thought. Emotions are ultimately just chemical reactions…in your opinion, does knowing this take away from the power we invest in them? We have been scientifically managing stress and fear for decades, but what about love, or the experience of beauty? Should we stop considering these as quasi-metaphysical absolutes, and lower them to manageable chemical processes?
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Chicken or egg. Did emotion cause the thought, or the thought the emotion. Sometimes we have no thought but experience an emotion. Or we feel an emotion and therefore think about what it is.
its called the emotive loop.
Why “just”? Don’t invalidate your feelings. Does it really matter what their psychobiological ontogenesis is? They are feelings. You have them. Feel free to react.
When I have a headache I take an Ibuprofen, (stronger paracetamol), but when my boyfriend threatens to break up with me, I feel pain too, and recent studies have shown that in cases of emotional pain, not just physical, you can also take an ibuprofen or paracetamol, and it’ll work too.
That’s not really an answer to your question but I thought I’d share.
@whyigottajoin Well see, that’s just what I mean! Thanks for this great illustration ;-)
May I swoon at ontogenesis? Is that an emotional or physiological response? Do I care?
Just a compare here:
I don’t think that people think about it that way. Drugs causes “just a chemical reaction” but still have a powerful effect on people.
I don’t think the effects of drugs can be lessened by thinking “ok, this is just a chemical reaction.”
I think that goes for emotions too.
@mrrich724 I see what you mean, but yet isn’t it a common stress management technique to say “it’s just a bodily reaction, I have to learn to control it”?
Well I am not sure, not having stress issues myself, but I know my mother does that (following advice from a doctor), but maybe it’s not so common…
Also, I am sure many of us at one point had to deal with falling in love with an inaccessible person (ie just before moving some place else, or that person was already in a relationship etc). Isn’t stepping back from our feelings essentially the same thing as saying “stress is just a chemical reaction”? My question then being: does this reduce the importance we give to positive feelings such as love?
Yea, people can learn to control their emotions, but I don’t really think that lessens the “effect.”
They may control the outward signs, but they’re still feeling the emotion inside…
If we consider that you yourself are “just” a collection of chemicals in the first place, then why should we even care one way or another?
Fortunately we aren’t quite so reductive. Your question matters, misguided as it might be on its face; you matter, too.
Naaaaah..—mention that when I’m having a meltdown ;)
I used to get panic attacks before each chemo session (for breast cancer.) I learned how to control the panic with meditation and breathing. I still had to get the chemo.
“There was a faith healer from Deal,
Who said, ‘Although pain isn’t real,
When I sit on a pin,
and it punctures my skin,
I dislike what I fancy I feel.’”
Just felt like throwing that in.
No, because chemicals have energy, and energy fuels people. If we break it down into a manageable substance, all our feelings are gone and we shall be left a shell of a human.
We are made up of the same structures that stars are made from. Carbon, electricity, and some important chemicals mixed in between. (In my opinion), the ability to perceive at all is the gift, no matter what mechanisms cause it.
There is a movie that I am fond of entitled Dopamine that ponders a similar question.
G/Q.
The right memmory can be also a triger for the emotions.So it is not only a chemical efect in your brain who does it..,<><<><><>
Event and perception preceede hormonal involvement, so emotions are not “just” chemical reactions.
Not until someone can pinpoint which chemicals are involved and is able to turn emotions on and off using them.
No. Anyway, why does understanding the basis for any natural phenomenon decrease it’s power. On the day we understand the physiologic activety that is the basis for consciousness, will it be any less amazing?
Nah. If anything I think a good understanding of their complexity adds to their awesomeness.
Chemicals cause emotions. They’re not the entirety of emotion.
I don’t believe it takes any of the power away, if, indeed, emotions are chemical motivation for survival, in whichever trensition it took from us clubbing peeps with shin bones.
That said, no matter how aware I might be that, my anger may be absolutely nothing but a reaction which serves to protect oneself from fear and humiliation for example, without actually giving any importance whatsoever to the actual cause, rather than the effect, I’m still gonna attribute it to whatever it is I reason that triggered it initially.
No matter that things like love may just be motivational factor for procreation, it won’t stop me from loving anyone.
In fact I don’t think emotions could even work, at least not as we seem to comprehend them, if we had nothing to link them to, no matter how close or far off it might be.
seriously…emotions are ‘just chemical reactions’… I don’t think so
Excuse me @TheBot. That’s quite a strawman you have there. Would you mind telling me how photographic film feels when light strikes it? What emotion do rusty nails express? Is my Alka-Seltzer angry at me when I drop it in the water? Are browning bananas in mourning? Were my light sticks overjoyed at the U2 concert?
Not in the least bit. Emotions are still powerful, no matter their source. Our five senses are physical, too, but we can still enjoy the experiences they bring to us (i.e. a beautiful sunset, a piece of music, or a chocolate-covered strawberry).
@whyigottajoin Mom, is that you? She always used to prescribe Tylenol to me whenever I was upset, as if it were an anti-depressant.
feelings are feelings, you feel them. What about the fact that your brain catches up to your stomach 15 minutes after it’s actually full. So it means that you are hungry 15 minutes more than you should be. And then it means that your brain is creating a sense.. hungriness… when you’re not actually hungry. So it could be like saying, you’re not actually hungry for 15 min but your brain is making you hungry. That doesn’t change anything, because in the long run you’re still hungry.
Fire is a chemical reaction; does knowing that make it less hot?
“Does the fact that emotions really are just chemical reactions take away from their power?”
The thing here is that the power of emotions is not based in the physical make-up of the emotion per se, but rather the power of emotions is how you are moved to respond to the emotion which has chemically stimulated your being.
And not only that, but there is great power in that which induced the emotional state you have entered; whether a dear friend or closer, or an evil nemesis, or a really good movie.
It made a difference for me. Being bipolar, I’ll grab at whatever dose of sanity I can get during an episode. Whatever works at the moment, is what I’ll take. There have been a few times when I have told myself “It’s only the chemicals. You’re okay” over and over again.
With understanding the cause comes the possibility that we can also somehow control it. Using @thriftymaid example of fire, once people realized where it comes from and how it works, they were able to control it.
Most definitely not! The fact they are chemicals rather than intangible things just draws my attention to their presence and makes me feel even more subject and helpless to them, like a drug.
@lonelydragon Lol! No I’m not! Don’t even know what Tylenol is. I saw that on the news a while ago.
It just makes drugs more attractive.
I take thyroid meds and I recently did a liver cleanse foolishly. I am assuming I flushed meds out of my system because ever since all of my emotions including passions have been diminished by about 60 percent, proving that you can alter chemicals in your body that affect emotion. However, this does not diminish the fact that God gave us these chemcal makeups to begin with and how amazing these emotions are. Taking my meds again and trying to get back to my normal passionate self..anybody experience anything like this?
The consciousness of emotion isn’t merely a chemical reaction (God my post up there was a bit curt…must have been having an off day! sorry :-/)
Nobody has yet been able to reduce the human experience of feelings – qualia to any specific set of scientific properties, which implies that although the emotions can be induced by chemicals it cannot be experienced subjectively by this alone.
When I smell something delicious, I do not think, “Oh, good. My amgydala is working well.”
@gailcalled why not? Are your neuroreceptors failing to receive the chemical signals that are sent to them? That could be serious, if it weren’t just a failed chemical reaction.
@CyanoticWasp: Let me check with my super ego and get back to you (if it lets me.)
@CyanoticWasp Some people actually name some of their body parts, such as “the boys” or “her rack”, but most of us simply think ”me” when it comes to the various parts of ourselves, including the hormones, enzymes, plasma and such.
@YARNLADY I understand, but why bother? After all, they’re all “just chemicals”.
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