It’s articles like these that make it clear that trying to extend rationalism to every aspect of the human condition is doomed to fail, and not only to fail, but to make anybody who makes the attempt seem like an alien to normal people.
There are people who have been Talking about the different types of love and what love actually means thousands of years. The Greeks talked about the difference between Eros and Agape. Today on poly forms, you can see people talking about all the different types of love they have for their partners throwing around words like “new relationship energy” and “limerance.” Well known biblical quotes like “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” makes it clear that there are different types of love.
Most people are just comfortable with context clues instead of working down a flow diagram to make sure they are using the perfect word at the moment.
For example, if someone asks me how I’m feeling and I say “bad” the fact that I have the flu vs if I just got a divorce is enough to clue most people in to the fact that the words “feel” and “bad” are referring to physically and emotionally respectively. Most people and situations don’t need more clarity than that for human relationships to progress.
Most people and situations don’t need more clarity than that for human relationships to progress.
As far as I can tell, a lot of romantic relationships are highly dysfunctional, and it is widely agreed that good communication is vital in a relationship. Given that, I think a lot of people would benefit from thinking more clearly about what love is supposed to be and what they expect from it.
If you mean “most people and situations don’t need more clarity than that for human relationships to procreate”, then I agree. But I think we can aim higher than that.
Would you be able to specify a scenario in which the general term for love would lead to dysfunction?
I think generally if people want to signal how they feel about someone they’re typically able to do so.
A lot of dysfunction is caused by people being intentionally ambiguous about the extent and quality and conditions of their feelings. In that way people may hide behind the ambiguity of the word love. Communication helps but I’m not sure if the imprecise nature of the word love is a significant barrier to communication.
“I loved her so much! How dare she dump me and start ignoring me! Now I will commit violence as revenge.”
In this line of reasoning we have selfish desires masquerading as a virtue. The thing I label love is a complex of desire, attachment, and (limited) altruism. If I lump them all together as love, I can more easily convince myself that my desire and attachment are actually virtuous. Thus I can convince myself that my feeling of anger is righteous rather than petty. Thus I am more likely to act upon that anger and lash out with violence, on a small or large scale.
I believe that this kind of thing happens a lot in romantic relationships. People mistake their selfish desires for virtues. And I believe that this is party because of the muddled concept of love and our cultural glorification of it.
I’m not sure—in dissecting the Frog something is lost while knowledge is gained. If you do not see how analysis of things can sometimes (not always!) diminish them, then that may be the crux. I agree with Wbrom above—some things in human experience are irreducible, and sometimes trying to get to a more atomic level means that you lose a lot in the process, in the gaps between the categories.
Could I please get you to elaborate on what you think gets lost when I replace love with more well-defined terms?
I can think of one thing. It is a kind of emotional attachment to an idea due for cultural/memetic reasons. People are brought up to think that love is something super-important and valuable, even if they do not understand what it is. In this way, the term love can have a strong emotional effect. It communicates less actual meaning than a more specific term, but it communicates more emotion.
I think I covered it in my OP when I conceded that the term can be useful when I am trying to convey emotion rather than any detailed information:
When I say “I love you” to my wife, I don’t intend this as a statement of fact with any well-defined meaning, but as an emotional signal like a kiss or hug.
If all that is lost could be defined, it would, by definition, not be lost once definition is expanded that much.
There is this video: https://youtu.be/OfgVQKy0lIQ on why Asian parents don’t say “I love you” to their kids, and it analyzes how the same word in different languages has different meaning. I would also add—to different people as well. So whatever you classify is always missing something in the gaps. It’s the issue of legibilizing (in Seeing Like a State terms) - in trying to define it, you restrict it to only those things.
A lot of the meaning of the word Love is contained within me, with my emotions, with my messy mind thinking fuzzy thoughts. If I restricted it to only defined categories I am bound to lose something. Instead, I enjoy the fullness of it by keeping it ill defined and exploring it’s multitudes.
Perhaps it’s simply the case that the answer is “you are missing a human universal” to the question in the topic. If you tried to define humour, analyze jokes, divide them in categories, and extract the hormones triggered in response to some stimuli caused by a certain joke, I would say you did not (on a certain level) understand humour better than a child who made a good joke and enjoy a good laugh.
Finale example I heard recently brought up again is Mary’s room knowledge argument—no amount of classification of blue, understanding of light spectrum data etc replaces the experience of seeing blue. Likewise with love.
To bring it back to your original question about understanding it in order to communicate to others—this is less found in books and more in self exploration through relationships with others. (I speak from perspective of someone in a happy long term romantic relationship with 0 issues and best communication I can imagine, none of which came from books on either of our sides).
There is this video: https://youtu.be/OfgVQKy0lIQ on why Asian parents don’t say “I love you” to their kids, and it analyzes how the same word in different languages has different meaning.
As I see it, the video is compatible with my claim. Aini argues that “I love you” is a useful emotional signal in many situations, which I agree with in my OP.
Aini also argues around 19-21 minutes in for clearer communication. Her example is that saying “I love you” is in some situations clearer communication than giving someone a platter of fruit. I agree, and I further argue that there are situations where it is better to be even clearer than that.
Thanks. I will get around to watching that video later.
If you tried to define humour, analyze jokes, divide them in categories, and extract the hormones triggered in response to some stimuli caused by a certain joke, I would say you did not (on a certain level) understand humour better than a child who made a good joke and enjoy a good laugh.
Finale example I heard recently brought up again is Mary’s room knowledge argument—no amount of classification of blue, understanding of light spectrum data etc replaces the experience of seeing blue. Likewise with love.
These examples do not seem to support your conclusion. If I can already laugh at a joke, then analyzing the humour and its neuro-psychology does not diminish that. I can still laugh at the next joke just as well as I could before. Nothing is lost.
I can avoid the term love as much as possible, and I can still experience all the feelings of companionship, compassion, and attraction as before. The muddled thinking did not create those experiences, and cleaning up the muddled thinking does not ruin the experiences.
(I do suffer from a kind of anhedonia, but I had that long before I started to dissect concepts such as love.)
Am I missing something in your argument?
I speak from perspective of someone in a happy long term romantic relationship with 0 issues and best communication I can imagine, none of which came from books on either of our sides
I do not understand what I am supposed to do with this. I apologize for my harsh tone in the following, but to be honest, to me this comes off more like a humblebrag than an attempt to explain or advise. Maybe you are unusually talented at intimate communication and/or were lucky to find a partner who is unusually talented at intimate communication. Or maybe you did some specific non-book-based self-improvement work to learn this—in which case, why not say something about that?
This comes off as if I entered a discussion about poverty and said: “I speak from perspective of someone with a stable career and 0 financial troubles, none of which came from attempts to overcome glass ceilings or discrimination or other systemic issues.”
It’s articles like these that make it clear that trying to extend rationalism to every aspect of the human condition is doomed to fail, and not only to fail, but to make anybody who makes the attempt seem like an alien to normal people.
There are people who have been Talking about the different types of love and what love actually means thousands of years. The Greeks talked about the difference between Eros and Agape. Today on poly forms, you can see people talking about all the different types of love they have for their partners throwing around words like “new relationship energy” and “limerance.” Well known biblical quotes like “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” makes it clear that there are different types of love.
Most people are just comfortable with context clues instead of working down a flow diagram to make sure they are using the perfect word at the moment.
For example, if someone asks me how I’m feeling and I say “bad” the fact that I have the flu vs if I just got a divorce is enough to clue most people in to the fact that the words “feel” and “bad” are referring to physically and emotionally respectively. Most people and situations don’t need more clarity than that for human relationships to progress.
As far as I can tell, a lot of romantic relationships are highly dysfunctional, and it is widely agreed that good communication is vital in a relationship. Given that, I think a lot of people would benefit from thinking more clearly about what love is supposed to be and what they expect from it.
If you mean “most people and situations don’t need more clarity than that for human relationships to procreate”, then I agree. But I think we can aim higher than that.
Would you be able to specify a scenario in which the general term for love would lead to dysfunction?
I think generally if people want to signal how they feel about someone they’re typically able to do so.
A lot of dysfunction is caused by people being intentionally ambiguous about the extent and quality and conditions of their feelings. In that way people may hide behind the ambiguity of the word love. Communication helps but I’m not sure if the imprecise nature of the word love is a significant barrier to communication.
“I loved her so much! How dare she dump me and start ignoring me! Now I will commit violence as revenge.”
In this line of reasoning we have selfish desires masquerading as a virtue. The thing I label love is a complex of desire, attachment, and (limited) altruism. If I lump them all together as love, I can more easily convince myself that my desire and attachment are actually virtuous. Thus I can convince myself that my feeling of anger is righteous rather than petty. Thus I am more likely to act upon that anger and lash out with violence, on a small or large scale.
I believe that this kind of thing happens a lot in romantic relationships. People mistake their selfish desires for virtues. And I believe that this is party because of the muddled concept of love and our cultural glorification of it.
I’m not sure—in dissecting the Frog something is lost while knowledge is gained. If you do not see how analysis of things can sometimes (not always!) diminish them, then that may be the crux. I agree with Wbrom above—some things in human experience are irreducible, and sometimes trying to get to a more atomic level means that you lose a lot in the process, in the gaps between the categories.
Could I please get you to elaborate on what you think gets lost when I replace love with more well-defined terms?
I can think of one thing. It is a kind of emotional attachment to an idea due for cultural/memetic reasons. People are brought up to think that love is something super-important and valuable, even if they do not understand what it is. In this way, the term love can have a strong emotional effect. It communicates less actual meaning than a more specific term, but it communicates more emotion.
I think I covered it in my OP when I conceded that the term can be useful when I am trying to convey emotion rather than any detailed information:
Is that what you have in mind?
If all that is lost could be defined, it would, by definition, not be lost once definition is expanded that much.
There is this video: https://youtu.be/OfgVQKy0lIQ on why Asian parents don’t say “I love you” to their kids, and it analyzes how the same word in different languages has different meaning. I would also add—to different people as well. So whatever you classify is always missing something in the gaps. It’s the issue of legibilizing (in Seeing Like a State terms) - in trying to define it, you restrict it to only those things.
A lot of the meaning of the word Love is contained within me, with my emotions, with my messy mind thinking fuzzy thoughts. If I restricted it to only defined categories I am bound to lose something. Instead, I enjoy the fullness of it by keeping it ill defined and exploring it’s multitudes.
Perhaps it’s simply the case that the answer is “you are missing a human universal” to the question in the topic. If you tried to define humour, analyze jokes, divide them in categories, and extract the hormones triggered in response to some stimuli caused by a certain joke, I would say you did not (on a certain level) understand humour better than a child who made a good joke and enjoy a good laugh.
Finale example I heard recently brought up again is Mary’s room knowledge argument—no amount of classification of blue, understanding of light spectrum data etc replaces the experience of seeing blue. Likewise with love.
To bring it back to your original question about understanding it in order to communicate to others—this is less found in books and more in self exploration through relationships with others. (I speak from perspective of someone in a happy long term romantic relationship with 0 issues and best communication I can imagine, none of which came from books on either of our sides).
As I see it, the video is compatible with my claim. Aini argues that “I love you” is a useful emotional signal in many situations, which I agree with in my OP.
Aini also argues around 19-21 minutes in for clearer communication. Her example is that saying “I love you” is in some situations clearer communication than giving someone a platter of fruit. I agree, and I further argue that there are situations where it is better to be even clearer than that.
Thanks. I will get around to watching that video later.
These examples do not seem to support your conclusion. If I can already laugh at a joke, then analyzing the humour and its neuro-psychology does not diminish that. I can still laugh at the next joke just as well as I could before. Nothing is lost.
I can avoid the term love as much as possible, and I can still experience all the feelings of companionship, compassion, and attraction as before. The muddled thinking did not create those experiences, and cleaning up the muddled thinking does not ruin the experiences.
(I do suffer from a kind of anhedonia, but I had that long before I started to dissect concepts such as love.)
Am I missing something in your argument?
I do not understand what I am supposed to do with this. I apologize for my harsh tone in the following, but to be honest, to me this comes off more like a humblebrag than an attempt to explain or advise. Maybe you are unusually talented at intimate communication and/or were lucky to find a partner who is unusually talented at intimate communication. Or maybe you did some specific non-book-based self-improvement work to learn this—in which case, why not say something about that?
This comes off as if I entered a discussion about poverty and said: “I speak from perspective of someone with a stable career and 0 financial troubles, none of which came from attempts to overcome glass ceilings or discrimination or other systemic issues.”