Are all emotions like love objectively real, or are they just subjective experiences?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Are all emotions like love objectively real, or are they just subjective experiences?". Your opponent's style: Philosopher

We actually dont posess feelings. they are just hormonal cocktails

You've just proved my point, not yours. Hormones cause the neurochemical states, but calling love "just hormones" is like calling the Mona Lisa "just pigment." What actually makes an emotion real, in your framework?

Well my point is that too. I call mona lisa just a pigment.

Then you're a radical physicalist, not a skeptic of emotion's reality. If pigment is real, hormones are real, and the organized pattern they create is real, then emotions are objectively real too. Why does reducing something to its parts make it less real?

what is an emotion?

An emotion is a functional state your body generates to solve a problem: love motivates bonding, fear triggers escape. If hormones create that state reliably and predictably, it's as real as gravity. So what makes something real if not its causal power?

see? you proved my point. its just a functional state generated by our body.

No. A functional state *is* real. Gravity is "just" mass warping spacetime, yet it's objectively real. You're conflating "reducible to physical parts" with "not real." Why does explaining how something works prove it doesn't exist?

Well, the feeling you call love is just oxytocin and vasopressin. and we just named it love. it exists because any living being has to be bonded to mate and reproduce.

You've just admitted love exists as a real biological phenomenon with causal power, then pretended naming it makes it subjective. Oxytocin produces the same state across humans reliably. Why is "objectively real neurochemistry with a name" somehow less real than what you'd accept?

No. hormones exist. not love

Hormones without function aren't love, but hormones *that reliably produce bonding behavior* are exactly what love is. You're splitting hairs between the thing and its name. So what would count as real if not reproducible physical causation?