I am wondering if we have justification to conclude that love is real in any universal sense, other than as we find it, as a bonding emotion in mammals, or more generally in organisms. — Punshhh

I can't think of any good reason to suppose that love belongs to the world in any way at all, apart from its appearance in creatures like us, as part of our animal nature.

Of course there are experiences -- for instance experiences associated with meditation or the practice of compassion, or associated with the endorphins that flow after a good workout -- that one might be tempted to describe as experiences in which sentience and loving compassion seem to belong to the whole world. But I see no good reason to treat those experiences as evidence that the claims in such descriptions are true; no more than I see a reason to imagine that the sky is angry when it thunders, or that the earth is angry when it quakes.

For example, is the complex and subtle love experienced by intelligent humans, in some way a real expression of something universal in nature, or of divinity? Or on the contrary is it an intellectual, romanticised, expression of our animal emotions. Emotions evolved simply to reinforce the processes of sexual reproduction and the survival of the species. — Punshhh

I see no reason to speak as though we can reduce an account of love, or of affect and emotion in general, to the mechanisms of mutation and natural selection. It's one thing to say that arms and legs like ours have been produced by and are the outcome of a process of evolution, and another to say what it's like to have arms and legs like these, and another to say what arms and legs like these can be used for -- and another for each of us to put his arms and legs to use in the way he sees fit on each occasion.

Of course mating, pair-bonding, child-rearing, and kinship bonds should be part of our story of love among animals like us. To do that story justice, I suppose we'd have to account for other emotional tendencies associated with love, such as joy and bliss, peace and contentment, reciprocal belonging and intimacy, mutual care, jealousy and possessiveness, envy and coveting, grief and loss, pride and rage.... We'd have to consider this complex of psychosocial forces at play not only among sexual partners and life partners, not only in families and kinship groups, not only among friends, but also as extending in us somehow to subcultures and cultures and nations, and to similarly generic social groupings, or even more generically, to humanity as a whole, or to all sentient beings, or to the whole of existence.

Thus we'd come full circle, back to the one who meditates or has a good run, and looks around, and feels the whole world full of love.

. Emotions evolved simply to reinforce the processes of sexual reproduction and the survival of the species. — Punshhh

That is what a lot of people will say. This is why I have come to realise the negative consequences of evolutionism on public discourse, even though it is a factual account of the matter. Unless [some trait] can be rationalised in line with the 'tangled bank' metaphor from the Origin of Species, then it probably isn't real. That's Daniel Dennett's 'universal acid' of Darwin's dangerous idea.

is the complex and subtle love experienced by intelligent humans, in some way a real expression of something universal in nature, or of divinity? — Punshhh

Love comes in many flavours and varieties. There is connubial love, erotic love, Platonic love, love of country, love of duty, and so on. As regards encounters with divine love, something that has to be considered is the role played by ecstasy and rapture. Those states connote literally going out of, or beyond, oneself. I think they are foundational in all the mystical traditions. An account of such a rapture by one of the correspondents of R M Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness:

The light and color glowed, the atmosphere seemed to quiver and vibrate around and within me. Perfect rest and peace and joy were everywhere, and, more strange than all, there came to me a sense as of some serene, magnetic presence grand and all pervading. The life and joy within me were becoming so intense that by evening I became restless and wandered about the rooms, scarcely knowing what to do with myself. Retiring early that I might be alone, soon all objective phenomena were shut out. I was seeing and comprehending the sublime meaning of things, the reasons for all that had before been hidden and dark. The great truth that life is a spiritual evolution, that this life is but a passing phase in the soul's progression, burst upon my astonished vision with overwhelming grandeur. Oh, I thought, if this is what it means, if this is the outcome, then pain is sublime! Welcome centuries, eons, of suffering if it brings us to this! And still the splendor increased. Presently what seemed to be a swift, oncoming tidal wave of splendor and glory ineffable came down upon me, and I felt myself being enveloped, swallowed up.

I felt myself going, losing myself. Then I was terrified, but with a sweet terror. I was losing my consciousness, my identity, but was powerless to hold myself. Now came a period of rapture, so intense that the universe stood still, as if amazed at the unutterable majesty of the spectacle! Only one in all the infinite universe! The All-loving, the Perfect One! The Perfect Wisdom, truth, love and purity! And with the rapture came the insight. In that same wonderful moment of what might be called supernal bliss, came illumination. I saw with intense inward vision the atoms or molecules, of which seemingly the universe is composed—I know not whether material or spiritual—rearranging themselves, as the cosmos (in its continuous, everlasting life) passes from order to order.* What joy when I saw there was no break in the chain—not a link left out—everything in its place and time. Worlds, systems, all blended in one harmonious whole. Universal life, synonymous with universal love!

Many comparable accounts are found in the literature of comparative religion. They are generally forgotten or left behind when their accounts are congealed into dogmas.

... ..is the complex and subtle love experienced by intelligent humans, in some way a real expression of something universal in nature, or of divinity? — Punshhh

Qualities are universal, including qualities we may love. But love is an experience, not a quality, an experience doesn't express anything, rather it makes us express it.

Some of our expressions of love might have universal qualities, as described in love songs, poems, plays and so on. But divine? Why would you muddle the philosophical question with religion?

An account of such a rapture by one of the correspondents of R M Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness: — Wayfarer

Have I heard you cite Bucke before? What a reference! I've just ordered a copy.

It's one of the - how should we say - Ur-texts of the New Age. Published in 1901 and regarded by its fans as a classic, although I think it is barely regarded in academic world. Has its quirks, but I think overall a marvellous book.

I am wondering if we have justification to conclude that love is real in any universal sense, other than as we find it, as a bonding emotion in mammals, or more generally in organisms.

For example, is the complex and subtle love experienced by intelligent humans, in some way a real expression of something universal in nature, or of divinity? — Punshhh

We are real, and we experience love, and we are part of nature and some think part of divinity too. So, sure. Love is real in a universal sense. We didn't invent love, it was given to us through evolution's good offices. It was likely given to other species as well, in a form appropriate to each.

It certainly won't hurt anybody to suppose that the love we experience and express is an expression of both the earthly and the divine. What might hurt some, maybe many, is to suppose that love is nothing but chemicals sloshing around in a system concocted over the eons to assure reproduction--period.

"Love, love, love, love.
The Gospel in one word is love."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epynV_tray0

I think the word 'love'' is only so meaningful as to allow for basic functioning of an organism. Some birds pair for life, animals have maternal instincts and humans feel it too. The moment the meaning of ''love'' is seen through the philosophical lens problems crop up - it is ambiguous and vague.

think the word 'love'' is only so meaningful as to allow for basic functioning of an organism. — TheMadFool

Gee I bet you're a thrill to be around ;-)

So love is something in experience? and we as experiencers may project it (psychologically) onto the world, imagining it as something, on occasion, external to experience?

But what about a universal love, is this similarly a projection?

Yes, I am considering the distinction between the perspective of "evolutionism", as opposed to something "immaterial", or transcendent.

I wish to identify something in the experience of love which indicates the later(transcendent), rather than the former(evolutionism).

Regarding spiritual experience, I have experienced something akin to what Bucke testifies to and have contemplated the role of love in spirituality. I am beginning to realise the the presence of wisdom in "love wisdom"(Alice Bailey), which I failed to grasp initially. I perceive this in the inevitable wisdom of the benevolence to be found in love. An expression of the gift of creativity and fundamental in the phenomena of extended existence.

I see how you consider love to be universal, in the expression of experience in beings who experience. I consider the divine, because the divine might be the basis of existence, this would necessarily include the basis of love.

Agreed.

Yes, I know what you mean. This comes to the heart of the issue I am considering. I am looking for something about loves which reaches, or expresses something, beyond this animal function.

So are you suggesting that all the romanticism about love in the minds of humanity, is a happy accident of physical evolution?

Gee I bet you're a thrill to be around ;-) — Wayfarer

:D

You mad old fool, you ;)

I am looking for something about loves which reaches, or expresses something, beyond this animal function. — Punshhh

I think if you ask around, this transcendental love you seek is to be found in true or selfless love. I'm quite sure that many people have found it - love of a person, an idea, a god, etc. - and defined their very lives with it.

However, true/selfless love is a paradox because we can never extract the self i.e. there's always something to gain through such acts of goodness. The most we can say about all forms of love, including the true/selfless variety, is that there's a fair exchange of benefits between the lover and the object of love. I don't know how such an exchange can make sense if one loves an idea, inanimate objects, etc. but this doesn't vitiate the import of my view that there can be no true/selfless love.

From this angle it seems like a hopeless case - there can be no true/selfless love. Everything, from inanimate rocks to humans, is about give-take economics.

However, if I were asked for some form of solution to the love paradox I would say that self-benefit is unavoidable. The catch is in selfless/true love one sees self-benefit in the benefit of others. There is a paradoxical balance between egoism and altruism. This is unique and significant enough to give comprehensible meaning to true/selfless love.

Yes, in true, or selfless love. This is not specific enough though because both forms can conceivably be due to some physical phenomena. Even if an unfortunate predicament of the accidental evolution of intellect.

This is not specific enough though because both forms can conceivably be due to some physical phenomena. Even if an unfortunate predicament of the accidental evolution of intellect — Punshhh

Reductionism has become, for better or worse, a human habit and going by how science seems to be tyrannizing all spheres of human activity, we seem to be on the right track.

However, reducing everything to the physical is to overlook the limitations of science. Science can only answer what and how questions and usually can't handle why questions.

I don't have any information about love and evolution but if I were to offer a guess I think love does make sense vis-a-vis evolution because it results in preservation and perpetuation of life.

Emotions evolved simply to reinforce the processes of sexual reproduction and the survival of the species. — Punshhh

Why does it necessarily need to be about erotic love? And, as for the survival of the species, why just humans? What about animals? The environment? Earth itself? If we assume by universal we are speaking about all things or Leibniz's teleological dimension of the interconnectedness of all things, what if universal love is a capacity to give love, of caring for all?

I didn't suggest it is about erotic love. I am refering to the mating/pairing between partners and the bonding process between family members etc, as the basis for the experience of love in humans(and other animals).


Yes universal love might be in some way "Leibniz's teleological dimension of the interconnectedness of all things", etc, or transcendent.

Yes capacity for love, of caring for all, is interesting. I still don't see how this might necessarily be transcendent.

Quite, the capacity for love in humans does seem to exceed that required for survival of the species though.

What about ones love for existence, the world, is this perhaps misplaced emotion(beyond where it is of benefit in survival of the self, or social group)?

Emotions evolved simply to reinforce the processes of sexual reproduction and the survival of the species. — Punshhh

This is a withered and partial account of 'emotions' in general. Who are we at this juncture in time to judge so definitively? How is any feature of our lives reasonably describable as 'simply' some speculative product of evolution? Emotions make us who we are. Grief, for instance, although generally and understandably characterised as negative, celebrates the lost, brings the dead back to life even as it faces the fact that they are dead, drives us to honour our fellows yet to know that it's too late, too late.

Philosophers get in a mess when they write about love, in my opinion. Best left to lyricists, poets and those who believe in the spiritual or divine.

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.

Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth... — Song of Solomon

Read the full Song of Solomon here ! (I know, King James' version, I'm a sucker for its rhythm)

From this angle it seems like a hopeless case - there can be no true/selfless love. Everything, from inanimate rocks to humans, is about give-take economics. — TheMadFool

You are right -- "self-less love" doesn't make sense. It's a hopeless case. Let's bury the idea of "self-less love" once and for all.

Where did this idea of "true love or the highest love means selfless love, self-denying love" come from? The lover and the object of love, be that a dog, a man, or a god has nothing to do with the subject of love denying himself, or being 'self-less'. The subject-self can not be subject-less or self-less.

Selflessness does not seem to be a feature of the kinds of love which are often cited as 'canonical' -- agape, eros, philia, and storge. Does the idea of self-negation come from "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."John, 15:13? As you noted, there is a give-take exchange in love. Christ's sacrifice, or anyone's sacrifice, is on behalf of, and intended as a enhancement of, or salvation of the object of love.

Christ's sacrifice was transfiguring, not self-denying or self-erasing. When someone has the opportunity to lay down his life for his friends (fortunately for us, the opportunities don't come along too often) the sacrificer is transfigured. Saints aren't fading, shrinking self-erasing personalities. The reason they are remembered is that they were such very, very strong, rich selves / personalities.

Did this idea of self-less, self-denying love arise from reading Christian (or other religions') literature which presented monastic self-suppression as the ideal? I don't know.

In love, the subject is self-affirming, self-exchanging, self-sharing, and self-giving, always with the object. (Nothing is perfect in human affairs, so our transactions are often pretty flawed.)

So love is something in experience? — Punshhh

Don't we experience love?

To say that we do, is not to "reduce" love to something like a "mere appearance" with no other place in the world apart from the "experience" of love. To all appearances, all the experience, all the thought, perception, emotion, action of a human person is intimately correlated with physiological processes in the animal organism with which that person is naturally disposed to identify itself.

Accordingly, it seems to me that ordinarily when I say, truly and correctly, "I love" or "I am loved", "She loves" or "She is loved", I am reporting facts that I observe. Just as when I say truly and correctly, "I'm hungry" and "I'm tired", "She's hungry" and "She's tired", I am reporting facts that I observe, facts about these animals. One way to noninferentially acquire knowledge of such facts is by way of third-person observational judgments based on ordinary sense-perception, as when I can tell, by watching her, that she's hungry. Another way to noninferentially acquire knowledge of such facts is by way of first-person observational judgments based on ordinary introspection, as when I can tell, by my introspective awareness of my own feeling of hunger, that I am hungry.

Such observational judgments, whether made on the basis of perception or on the basis of introspection, are fallible; and the relevant conceptualizations, for instance of hunger, fatigue, or love, may be more or less refined, and more or less confused.

and we as experiencers may project it (psychologically) onto the world, imagining it as something, on occasion, external to experience? — Punshhh

Along lines I've just suggested, I'm inclined to think of any experience of love as involving facts "external to experience" that also happen to appear "within experience".

Sometimes, infatuated with another, one may fall into confusion and mistakenly judge that his beloved loves him too, in the same way he loves her, with the same intensity, and with the same implications for action. There are many variations on this sort of error, many ways to go wrong; I suppose we could say some of them involve a sort of unwarranted "projection" of the love one feels himself into a misconception of reciprocal love in his beloved, perhaps construable as a sort of delusional misfiring of empathy.

It seems reasonable to expect that a similar illusion obtains, when the meditator or runner experiences a powerful, blissful feeling he associates with a conception of reciprocal love, of loving and being loved, of a world radiant with love, in association with his whole present consciousness, with everything in his current field of perceptual and introspective awareness, and with his intellectual conception of Totality.

Of course there's something external to the experience in such cases of confusion, namely, the physiology of love in the one who is thus blissfully confused.

We can have the same experience, without consenting to the judgment here supposed to be confused. If the experience can be the same, with or without the accompanying judgment, then on what grounds would we affirm or deny the judgment?

But what about a universal love, is this similarly a projection? — Punshhh

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "universal love" in this conversation.

I have a conception of myself and of others like me, as loving all human beings, as loving all sentient beings, as loving the whole of existence. I'd say this is a sort of "universal love" that really does exist in creatures like us, in hearts and minds like ours, in animal bodies like ours. I might say this is one sort of conception of universal love, the love of one for all.

It may be tempting to try, but I'm not sure how I might reasonably support an assertion like "Each human being in fact loves all humans, all sentients, all existence, no matter how confused he happens to be about this fact", or "Each sentient animal in fact loves all sentients and all existence, no matter how confused it happens to be about this fact", or "Each molecule or superstring loves every other molecule or superstring", or…. It seems to me that once we begin to speak this way, we lose touch with the objective basis against which we may test and define our conceptions and judgments about love; we lose touch with the objective basis according to which we may coordinate our discourse and adjudicate disagreements on the subject; we pass over into poetic sentiment, wishful thinking, and arbitrary fantasy.

Like they say, anything's possible. I can imagine that each quark loves every quark, and that each quark loves every animal; and I can imagine that no quark loves at all. On what grounds shall I take any such judgement or conception seriously, and integrate it into what I count as my own reasonable expectations about the world according to the balance of appearances?

what about a universal love? — Punshhh

Two examples come to mind.

In the Christian tradition, the term is 'agapē'. Agapē embraces a universal, unconditional love that transcends, that serves regardless of circumstances. It is considered to be the love originating from God or Christ for humankind. Cf. Matt 3:17, Mark 10:21; the covenant love of God for humans, as well as the human reciprocal love for God; the term necessarily extends to the love of one's fellow man.

Compare with the Buddhist bodhicitta - (Sanskrit: बोधिचित्त), "enlightenment-mind", is the mind that strives toward awakening, empathy, and compassion for the benefit of all sentient beings. The mind of great compassion and bodhicitta motivates one to attain enlightenment (bodhi) for the benefit of all beings. A person who has a spontaneous realization or motivation of bodhicitta is called a bodhisattva.

Buddhism also has terms for other kinds of compassion, namely, mudita - the joy that comes from others' success (kind of the opposite of schadenfreude); karuṇā; and maitrī which means 'benevolence, loving-kindness, friendliness, amity, good will, and active interest in others'.

(adapted from Wikipedia).

My belief is that such states have a real source, although they're obviously depicted in very different ways in the two traditions mentioned. But they denote a transpersonal type of empathy and the awareness of the suffering of others culminating in a sense of kinship or solicitousness towards 'all mankind' (//edit// in Buddhism, 'all sentient beings').

Quite, the capacity for love in humans does seem to exceed that required for survival of the species though — Punshhh

Do you mean things like love of animals, trees, music, writing, etc.? If yes, then it would seem that human love is in excess of that required for mere survival. However, I think this is untrue because one essential feature of love is, well, expansion of the ego - the object of love is absorbed by the subject's i. Thus united, the subject and object of love, become one and what follows is obvious - the object's loss/gain is equivalent to the subject's loss/gain.

The excess of love you see is actually not excess. What you see as excess is nothing more than an swelling of the selfish ego born from the realization that the self stands to benefit from this expansion - transiting from the ''i'' to the ''we''.

I love the King James Bible.
Yes I agree with your observation of a "withered and partial account" and the extent to which who we are is shaped by our experience and the presence of love in our lives. What I am trying to identify is a distinct universal, or transcendent, love in all of this. As opposed to evolved feelings and behaviour.

I bring this up because about 2 weeks ago, while travelling in New Zealand, I had an experience of something which I interpreted as a realisation of universal love and I seek to account for it philosophically.

I was not questioning whether we experience love, but rather asking if from your perspective, it is solely within experience? I agree with the rest of your account about this and the ways people can become confused.

Regarding universal love, the way I am treating it in this conversation is in the sense of the principle, the reality and the experience of love and realities of which love might be a derivative, having some real and fundamental presence in the processes of existence itself, or the existence we find ourselves in. For example our existence might be hosted by a demiurge through a process of creative love and life for that demiurge might be all within the realm of mind where intellectual compassion and love is as concrete as physical matter is for us.

I see the examples you give as indicative of a spiritual reality in which the person awakens from ordinary emotional love and realises a more, as you say, transpersonal love and other kinds of spiritual and transcendent love.
By analogy a person in the world is like a plant developing to the point where it develops a bud. When the bud flowers, the flower, awakens, into a rarefied transcendent realm(also inhabited by butterflies, who have undergone metamorphosis).This is perhaps alluded to in the symbolism of the thousand petalled lotus of the crown chakra in Hinduism and Bhuddism.

This is all very well, but can we identify something obviously transcendent, universal in any of this? Something which isn't accounted for in the materialist evolutionary account.

For me this is evident in a sentiment, or experience of, a universal love which transcends the planet. Specifically the planet, because in evolutionary terms the processes are blind to any reality beyond this planet. I describe this as the fixed cross of the heavens(Alice Bailey), which I have been contemplating for some time.

Perhaps, so what is all this religious and spiritual love? What purpose does it have, in terms of survival of the species?

I do know the answer to this question, but I am suggesting it is not required, perhaps it is a byproduct.