*Love and Value Judgements*

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Since you have brought this down to the total definition of a word you should be aware of the trouble you are in. Many people use words differently. A dictionary is not an iron bound fixed reference on words. The words defined are researched by the people who compile it for the dictionary as to what is common accepted usage is and this is recorded. Over time this usage changes and the dictionary, to be useful, changes with common usage. Love is one of those big sloppy words that is used by many people in many different ways. In science or philosophy words used commonly in many ways are precisely designated to have a very limited meaning that is adhered to within the discussion and this may well not be how it is used commonly. In physics, for instance, the word "work" has a very specific and limited meaning that has only a slight relationship to the way the word is used in common discussion. You cannot ask for a very tight definition of "love" out of general usage. In a philosophical discussion you must decide yourself what it means and stick to that throughout the discussion. But it is unlikely or impossible for you to get a general agreement for the definition outside your specific discussion.

I am not asking for one, though I would appreciate people throwing in some of their interpretations to work with. I am interested in when and how people use it, what function the word serves in their lives, what effect the word has on them, ideas about what role the word plays in society, and how this impacts on people's functioning.

For instance to carry on where I left off on the last page, just as an example of what I am interested in; belief in "the power of love" encourages people to concentrate on the individual, to value "value judgements" as I said before.

It is like the holy grail of labels, which many people long to apply to their feelings/experience. Most people want that label. It's one of the top brands.

Many people for instance believe that "love" happens effortlessly, when two people "click". Like playing "snap" with a handful of value judgements rather than cards. Many people tend to label the match of value judgements "love". The high that so many people get from having their value judgements affrmed/reflected in this way, they label love.

The more shackled with/attached to value judgements we are, ( especially if some of them are slightly odd/unusual ones ), the more precious and desirable this "snap"/match seems to us, because so much rarer, almost unattainable.

The desirability of this label, its preciousness and rarity, inspires pursuit of it, and encourages people to concentrate on finding the "match" rather than on examining/demolishing their own collection of value judgements.

You say it's a "big sloppy word", but that's part of how it works. It makes people unsure about it, demand verification, seek role models for it, rely on others for confirmation, etc. It makes people talk about it, think about it, obsess about it, even more than people on WP talk about the vagueries of Aspergers; "Do I have it?", "Perhaps I don't have it" etc.
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Last edited by ouinon on 15 May 2009, 3:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What you seem to be asking for, as I originally indicated, is an almost infinite number of individual responses that correlate only very vaguely.

Even three or four responses would be welcome!

Yours for example; what role do you think the word "love" plays in society? What impact if any has it had on your life? Have you found yourself debating with yourself, your parents or friends, whether your feelings qualified for this label? Would you say that your criteria for awarding the label to your feelings were very different, slightly different or the same as people you have known who used the word? ...

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To take your request literally I would have to give personal experience to back up all my experiences of love. And love has many definitions. Basically, love is what makes me happy. Like eating an ice cream pop on a hot summer day, like pissing when the relief is terrific and I have been holding it in, like waking in the morning and realizing it's a holiday and I can sleep late, like looking at naked women who are beautiful, like catching a hornet trapped in a bus and freeing it when I get off, like saying hello to a dog I meet on the street, like going to bed with my wife when we were both young and very capable, like lying on my back on a clear night and looking at the stars, like seeing a lion meet some humans that had raised from a cub and finding they are still compatible, like making a successful three point landing in a light plane, like feeding a flock of pigeons that recognize me and gather around to be fed, like finding a small moth trapped in a drinking glass and freeing it out the window, like watching my grandchildren do extraordinary things, like being useful to my wife when she is sick and weak and needs my help, like writing a poem that is funny and bright and says something vital, like discovering an almost photographic image in a scuffed square of sidewalk, like taking thirty or forty photos and discovering two or three that are well composed and beautiful, like flying a model airplane and watching it soar, like inventing a new process for baking a cake and discovering a new flavor and texture in the process, like watching a superb execution of a ballet to music, like listening to old folk songs or Beatle music, like hearing Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet suite, like looking at works by Bonnard or Picasso or Henry Moore or Rufino Tamayo or Escher or Magritte or Francis Bacon or Giacometti or Nogouchi or Brancusi, like finding a very occasional post on this site where somebody can reason and think and has a reasonable grasp of reality and a good general education. If you can get a definition of love out of that I wish you well.

Thank you for your responses!

"The idea of love is very much alive". Absolutely. The idea of it. There is only the idea, the label. Different people apply the label differently. They decide that "this" kind of feeling is "love", and decide that "that" kind of feeling isn't.

Love is not a feeling. It's a label we give to whichever feelings we think count as love. That can be pain, fear, excitement, addiction/dependency, self-abnegation, happiness, the high of self-affirmation/comfort of like-minds, delight in beauty, physical well-being/release, the satisfaction/security felt when doing what one believes is one's duty, or whatever.

In the course of a lifetime someone might label very different feelings as love, perhaps because the feeling they labelled as love before did not last, and/or led to disaster. Other people only ever apply the label to one or two feelings in their whole lives, ones which will be a fairly good guide to finding a longterm partner for instance, and will never see any need to revise their criteria for applying the label.

The thing is that the label has an effect on people. People will leave their family for "love", when exactly the same feelings experienced without the label love attached to them would not have that effect. People will invest in certain activities/people if they believe that the label "love" is on the line; if they have awarded their feelings with that mark of distinction, and not acting on them will cause them to lose that precious label, ( because "it couldn't have been love" ).

"Love" is as much a label/value judgement of one's feelings as "I feel bad", "I feel better", and "I feel good", but it's got a lot more clout.

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This is an intellectualization of love. Turning the workings of the heart over to the mind to shred. Mental gymnastics. Your point perhaps is to show that this is precisely what we are doing to love. Okay. Point taken. But I disagree with the premise. Love is definitely a feeling and to intellectualize love is to destroy it.

I think you need to more clearly discern between describing 1)the mind based perversions we engage in and 2)absolute truth. Now if you are saying there are no absolutes, and that includes love-----I have to disagree. But if you are saying we humans pervert love by forcing it into a label....well, even so, we don't always do that... Mentally imagining what love is, and allowing the mind to make an image and a label for love, isn't what love is at all. Most of us understand there is a difference between love and the idea of love.

When we feel love, we are feeling oneness with the universe---whether we realize it or not. Yes, it can run the gamut. Basically love is all-inclusive. It is love that allows us to know all is well...that the universe has a purpose after all and that we are an integral component of that purpose. It is love that makes us feel there is a point to being alive. That we are connected up with everything through love. When we feel sad, alienated, alone, disconnected---that is a byproduct of the mind entrapping us in indulgent thoughts that masquerade as reality. The reality is the love, connectedness, oneness.

When processing matters of the heart through the mind, we violate and distort said heart matters. This is imagination and mental indulgence. And we pay a price for it. Now this is perhaps what you are saying? I really haven't a clue.

Like any other word, "love" is a symbol of feeling but, as I reiterated several times, it is a big sloppy word covering many different feelings. You seem convinced that by merely labeling something as love that label alone is the motivation for people to act on it. Perhaps, for someone apparently addicted to verbal symbolism as you, it might be true. It is not true for me. I react to the actual emotion, whatever its label. Sometimes the emotion, as with sexual attraction, can be very strong but with pizza I am not in any particular union with the universe unless the universe is considered to be located below my bellybutton.

Accepting our place in the universe has everything to do with enjoyment.

Ducks and seagulls. They embody love, joy, peace. In a powerful way that is intoxicating.

Pizza doesn't do it for me. But enjoyment is enjoyment....and all enjoyment is healing. Healing, wholeness, ultimately enables us to take our place in the universe.

I wish the universe were so benign. It is well populated with disasters and cataclysms and everything from the Kuiper belt to the bacteria in our gut is out to nail us in one way or another whatever our current state of bliss.

But a symbol is not as simple an entity as a word translated into french from english. A symbol does not necessarily refer to any other part of reality, except in so far as it requires a certain amount of use, and/or agreement about what a word means, for it to survive. Symbols are not mere representations of things that we know "exist". They are part of reality, not something outside of it.


It refers to whichever feelings, and experiences, people care to apply it to. That is part of its power. If it only referred to one feeling, like breathlessness, do you think that it would inspire the kind of longing and pain and confusion that it currently does for many people?

People who have learned to apply the label to feelings of comfort/physical satisfaction will probably experience less confusion and pain than those people, a big percentage of the population, who as a result of social conditioning, ( upbringing and environment in childhood particularly ), apply the label to conflicting or painful feelings.

This is because they will only need to feel comfort/physical satisfaction in order to believe that they are experiencing "love", whereas the others, also under pressure from society which teaches that "love" is desirable, will seek out the experiences which procure for them these painful or conflicting feelings.

And people who have learned to apply the label to feelings which are relatively rare/infrequent and/or fleeting will suffer too, from the apparently impermanent nature of "love".


You don't need to be "addicted to verbal symbolism" to be pushed around by symbols. Everybody, unless they have achieved enlightenment, is to some extent directed by the value judgements which are words/language. The thing is that the effect is most of the time invisible.

People believe that the label is the thing and divide up their experience of their world, to greater or lesser extent, by the rules expressed by the symbols.

For instance "man" and "woman" are two symbols, which most people believe correspond to two clear groups of humans. They think that there are ( only ) two sexes, and the symbols have such a hold over their "imagination"/perception that they find it almost impossible to think that this may not be true, and can become very disturbed and/or aggressive if anyone suggests that it is not.
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Last edited by ouinon on 16 May 2009, 3:33 pm, edited 4 times in total.

there may soon be a new thread:

Sex and Value Judgments

There is, within your general approach, an assumption that reality is not only the buzz and hum of the universe but something within the perception of the mind. It is not. Words are only one symbol system humanity uses. Our basic sense system is a collection of symbols devised by our physiology to deal with incoming data from the universe. Colors, sounds, tastes, touch are all symbol systems inherent in our body structure and they partake of various stimulations to enable us to integrate them into a model of the universe. Colors, for instance, are not something "out there" in the universe. They are the various ways our sense system reacts to a very small part of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum. That spectrum is, for the most part, invisible to humanity although other animals and plants which have different physiological structures are sensitive to and perceive different sectors of the spectrum. They are aware of a slightly different group of the universe's output.

Words are a different layer of symbology superimposed upon the various integrations we make of our more elemental physiological symbolism. But each of us, in our experience of interacting with our basic senses and applying those interactions to the intricate systems of words and grammar and general usage, erect a hugely complicated and unique to each mind architectural model of the universe within which we operate. Due to the fact we each have very similar physiologies and ways of using those physiologies we can reach pretty good consensus on communications but, as this discussion clearly indicates, that consensus is far from a totally congruent match. Different languages, cultures, styles, motivations all influence the way we understand and use words. To return to sensual basics it is very doubtful we each see te precise same world. I have observed for myself that my right eye sees the world slightly more to the red spectrum than my left which sees thing more in a bluish cast.
If I can detect this difference within my own system the difference between individuals must be far greater. The part of the spectrum I call "red" is most likely somewhat different from that identified with the same word by someone else. The superimposed symbolism of words is surely very different from individual to individual and, to return to the original subject, "love" covers such a wide range of different experiences that to try to pin it down precisely is not only a hopeless task, it destroys the utility of the word itself which can be more exactly indicated by modifying it in different contexts.

They are not superimposed. That is the common misconception/belief. As I said above. Language is not a layer of symbols pasted over our sense impressions etc of the world. Language is not in simple one-to-one relationship with the elements, ( "elemental physiological symbolism" ), of our experiences.


Yes, and I am not trying to do so, ( it is very odd that you think so ). My point is that it is a label, one that can be, and is, applied to as many different things as people choose/learn to apply it to.

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Thank you for reminding me of that definition of love. It's quite a common one, but I had forgotten it.


Most people believe this. It's another very widespread belief, that there is an "ideal"/"real" love which is different/distinct from the mere label which so many people use for so many other, lesser things.

It is the same attitude towards a label as monty expressed on the Science and Value Judgements thread. That there is some ideal version, and then there are the debased versions which people "wrongly" call by that name.

In fact there is only the label.


I understand that whenever you feel oneness with the universe/connected to it, when you believe that it has a purpose and all is well, etc, you believe that those thoughts and feelings are your "best".

In labelling those thoughts and feelings "love" you are simply "valuing" them/assessing their value, and putting it very high indeed.
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Last edited by ouinon on 17 May 2009, 1:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

It's not surprising that so many people experience "love" as an addiction aswell, because labelling any feelings with the word "love" indicates that a feeling is highly desirable. The word itself, ( the value judgement which is love ), "means" something is"good", very good. If attach the label "love" to painful/conflicting feelings one will be both drawn to situations/relationships which provoke/stimulate such feelings and resistant/reluctant, like the drug addict who knows the thing is bad for them but wants it anyway. The word "love" itself will keep telling them "This is good/wonderful stuff".

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