LOVE, emotion or learned behavior

love is innate. Every species can show love.
Even the predator lioness shows love for her offspring. i very much doubt that its learned.

Ohhh... the Shank-man raises another interesting question.

I think that what other people think is love is what they see and has been told (learned behavior) and sadly most people will go through life filled with suto-"love" situations while oblivious to what it really is.

However, how can you "learn" that pang in your heart when you really are in love? Or when you feel those butterflies in your stomach?

Now weather love really exists or it's just our body chemicals working with learned behaviour, that's a different question

Aken Sol

Note: sorry, didn't spell check :-P

That's a very interesting subject! I think we are all born with the power to love! I think we learn how we treat others based on how we were raised. Someone who is abusive has usually learned that behavior. The mind is a powerful thing and I feel we all have the power to control our actions. That's a hard question to really answer. I have always heard that babies that have never been touched and shown affection die! So I am not sure where I stand on this!

i think its something that people naturally feel, but if it wasnt for watching others, or hearing their interpretation of the feeling of love, we may not no exactly what it is when it comes.

Emotions are associative because certain experiances (even words, objects, people, etc.) cause the chemicals that cause us to emote to be released throughout our body.

What we percieve as "emotions" are caused by strands of proteins called peptides coursing throughout our bodies and being recieved by receptor's throughout them. Emotions are chemical rushes, just like drugs are. As we grow up we gain more and more associations to each emotion, causing more things to release or repress those chemicals and peptides that our body produces instantaneously during the course of an experiance.

Therefore, love is a natural emotion (having a peptide that causes a feeling), but it gets mixed with associations that result in learned behaviors. Each of us have peptides for love, but our neurologic wiring causes the feeling to be less and less "pure," for lack of better word, the older we get and the more experiances we have surrounding those "feelings."

In short, scientifically, "love" is natural emotion and related to associative behavior, not even necessarily "learned" behavior.

C. S. Lewis wrote a book entitled the four loves where he divides love into four categories. I forgot the order but it was something like this; The love between God and man, the Love between parent and offspring, love between friends, and lastly and most confusing to me,is erotic love, or the love between lovers. I am very excited about Kaitlin’s answer to Bobs question because it agrees with my scientific views on chemical balance
If you were to click into amazon.com and go to the book search and type in chemical balance and you will find that there is only one book, to those keywords, on the chemicals that kaitlin refers to. But I guess the idiot that wrote that book did not realize that chemical balance when referring to bio-chemicals is an oxymoron. lol but many are available on chemical imbalace I have not got the time right now to express my thoughts on Bob’s question But I could write a book on the comment that kaitlin made. Oh ya I did write a book on that lol

this is a few paragraghs from chapter one.........
No one heard from her for days after that. I missed her more and more, as each day passed. It was weeks later someone told me she called, and said she was coming to pick up her last check. I was excited maybe I would get one last look at the woman that changed my life forever. As fate would have it, I was on my way to turn in a receipt to the place she was headed. I was going to pretend not to notice her, even though I had looked forward to that moment all day. She was more than thirty feet away when she yelled my name. When she got closer she said, 'Hey Mike' how's it going. I said, it has been pretty good. Irene overheard, and looked at me skeptically, I thought it is time for me to joke so I can let go of a nervous laugh, so I said, 'Okay I lied it's just the same old shit.' Then something very strange happened. As I stood there gazing at her every intense emotion imaginable, seemed to hit me all at once. It seemed like my chemistry was changing like an adrenaline rush more intense than I had ever felt. My heart rate felt like it doubled. My breath was nearly taken away. My strength seemed to be draining from my body. I remember thinking I don't know why I am reacting this way, but I'd better try to get hold of myself. I eased into the lobby and stood there helplessly in a kind of trance. When I finally composed myself, I peeped around the corner just in time to see ' the Reaper of my heart' leaving.

okay well i ddint read all of these posts but here are my thoughts.

i did read the post about the lioness and her cubs. and althought she shows "love" is it really love or just a primal insitinct to protect? i see where bob was going with this and ive been contemplating it for a while and i would have to agree with whoever said that love is an emotion and the actions around it are learned. if your parents never ever showed you love of any form, does that mean you will never be able to love someone? no,it just means you wont be able to show it as well.
~Freak~