emotions are simply chemical interactions in the brain
Can you prove that this is all emotions are? I invite you again to do so.
Yes this can most certainly proven. Placing an individual under an fMRI scanner will reveal ALL of the underlying neural regions that are activated by precise, specific emotions. Neuroscientists have been mapping these brain regions out for years and they all center around the amygdala, prefrontal cortices, ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens, to name some of the more important brain areas.
We have also identified a long list of neurotransmitters that are involved very specifically in the transmisison and processing of emotions AND motivation : dopamine, serotonin, glutamate, GABA, to name only several. When ANY of these neurotransmitter pathways are altered by pharmacological compounds that interact with these receptors, are emotional experience of the world and our sensory perceptions are completely altered.
Electrical stimulation of particular brain regions will produce a specific emotion such as pleasure, aversion or bring up specific memories of emotionally salient experiences.
We all enjoy the comfortable delusion that there is some undefinable "ghost in the machine" but we are gradually learning that this is simply not true. Our minds, our emotions, and the very ESSENCE of who we are as individuals is ultimately reducible to biochemical interactions and bioelectric signalling cascades through highly complex neuronal circuits.
The very fact that WHO we are can be so easily altered by changing the levels of a given neurotransmitter or throwing the neural machinery off balance, simply testifies to the fact that we are simply highly complex, bio-electric, neurochemically driven machines......