system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is love a lie, according to naturalism?

I've been having trouble comprehending the naturalist view of love. Naturalists would say, for example, that chemical substances such as oxytocin are studied in the context of their roles in producing human experiences and behaviors that are associated with love.

If this is true, does this mean that love is a lie? If love exists only as way to survive, what do we say to the people that have a great love for their family? How does this not turn love into one big lie?
gpt
You’re conflating naturalism with reductive materialism. The reductive materialist may reduce talk of love to chemical processes, but even then they wouldn’t necessarily call it a “lie”. They’d just say that ultimately there’s nothing more to be said about love once you understand the chemistry and biology underlying it.

The naturalist isn’t inherently committed to any such reductionism, but they are committed to ignoring supernatural explanations. So for the naturalist the chemical and biological aspects underlying love are important, but they’d also look at what role the concept of love may play in the lives of creatures like us. This takes us into the psychological and cultural aspects of what it means to love. What the naturalist won’t do is say anything about a topic that conflicts with the natural sciences. So if you take love to be some spiritual connection or something, then the naturalist would have to part ways.