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Love is the end in itself. There is no purpose. I have nothing else to say for now.

"For Piaget, emotion is the motivating force of action emanating from outside the individual in the form of sensations emitted by objects. ... — Pop

This is an awful misreading of Piaget. I highly recommend Mischel’s Cognitive Conflict and the Motivation of Thought.

“...there are good reasons for holding that Piaget does not really regard affects, qua psychological phenomena, as "energizers of behavior in any literal, physiological sense For one thing, he insists that "consciousness seen as energy seems to us a fallacious metaphor" (Piaget, 1954b, p. 142). Since afiects , as psychological phenomena, fall under what Piaget calls the "point of view of conscious-ness," it would be "fallacious" to identify them with the energies that activate the organism. Further, Piaget repeatedly maintains that "compre- hension is no more the cause of emotion than emotion is the cause of comprehension (23), because it simply makes no sense to ask whether affective developments cause cognitive developments, or conversely (Piaget, 1954a, pp. 56, 150). Since affect and cognition are correlative aspects of one and the same psyehological phenomenon, the Relation between them is not an external causal relation between separately identifiable entities. Finally, when Piaget deals with needs, interest, and other affects, he explicitly rules out consideration of their physiologicul conditions (Piaget, 1954a, p. 30) and focuses instead on their "functional Significance. " And "from such a functional point of view, need is essentially an awareness of momentary disequilibrium, and the satisfaction of need, that is , awareness of re-equilibration.” (Theodore Mischel).

What would Piaget think of love? My guess is he would say that love is a form of interest.

as psychological phenomena, fall under what Piaget calls the "point of view of conscious-ness — Joshs

This is an interesting point that I've been considering in regard to introspection - is it a disassociation, or is it an engagement with a constructed model? I suspect it is a comparison of a constructed model to observed psychology, so a little of both.

Finally, when Piaget deals with needs, interest, and other affects, he explicitly rules out consideration of their physiologicul conditions (Piaget, 1954a, p. 30) and focuses instead on their "functional Significance. " And "from such a functional point of view, need is essentially an awareness of momentary disequilibrium, and the satisfaction of need, that is , awareness of re-equilibration.” (Theodore Mischel). — Joshs

This is a very truncated understanding.
The full cascade of elements belonging to a thought are missing from this sentence. The emotions, which are feelings which are painful or pleasurable, which cause affect, are missing. What has been focused on is the computational aspects - the first thought of - disequilibrium, and the second thought - equilibrium. The mechanics in between have not been considered. The unanswered question within the sentence is what drives a system to reintegrate?
The only answer I can see is that the system is biased to integrate - biased towards order ( this is to be expected in a universe biased towards order ). The emotions we feel are an expression of the bias towards order. The more disordered the state - the greater the emotional feeling, the greater the impetus to recreate order.

Its been 40 years since I read Piaget. That we construe rather then perceive has remained foundational in my understanding, but not much else stuck. I think he did well to remain very scientific, materialistic, and functional. Clearly in this area he is a genius. Unfortunately it is not a complete understanding, in my view. Every thought has a feeling which is either painful or pleasurable - this has to be accounted for in any understanding.

Every thought has a feeling which is either painful or pleasurable - this has to be accounted for in any understanding. — Pop

Does this make you feel better?


“...emotions play a role in constraining and structuring the realm of explicit deliberation, restricting deliberation to a small number of options and structuring patterns of reasoning, so that we remain focused and relevant in our activities, able to act towards goals without becoming distracted by trivia. Thus emotions and feelings serve to constrain and focus our attention, so that we only consider from a pre-structured set of options. Damasio's (1995, 1996) more specific hypothesis is that emotions are cognitively mediated body states. He christens this theory the “somatic marker hypothesis”. The idea is that somatic (body) signals are associated with perceptual stimuli, either as a result of innate or learned neural connections, and thus “mark” those stimuli. Different perceptions can be associated with various kinds of body states, which may serve as alarm signals or, alternatively, as enticing invitations. According to Damasio, a complex of such signals focuses and structures our cognitive interactions with the world. Once we incorporate complex learned associations between perceptions and body states, a vast web of somatic markers can develop. These signals serve to eliminate certain possibilities, which feel bad, from a choice set and focus deliberation upon other feel good signals. Thus cognition is constrained, enabled and structured by a background of emotion-perception correlations, that manifest themselves as a changing background of implicit representations of body states.”(Ratcliffe 2002)

Thus cognition is constrained, enabled and structured by a background of emotion-perception correlations, that manifest themselves as a changing background of implicit representations of body states.”(Ratcliffe 2002) — Joshs

Yes that's more like it.
I am focused on the idea that consciousness = self organization, and am exploring the idea that self organizing systems share the same mechanics. So when a system becomes a self, does it then work like all other selves? The disintegration of perception, met by a bias to integrate seems to fit as a mechanism for a self, for consciousness and all self organizing systems, within a monistic / panpsychic understanding.

My feeling is that the original self organizing system that led to life is still embedded in the system we have become. It would be the foundational element that later structure is built on, and so can not be displaced lest the whole structure would fail. So it seems there should be a correlation between our system of consciousness and other self organizing systems as I assume in the beginning they were the same thing. But its early days yet, and this is little more then an idea.

The mechanism described above would roughly fit with Radcliffe's description, I believe. The body states (emotion) drive integrity, whilst perception would be a disintegrative force, met again by an emotional integrative force, and so on, and on. Of course there are multiple streams occurring simultaneously, and enormous functional complexity and subjectivity is being driven by this mechanism.

It seems simplistic, but fundamental elements are simplistic.

If it was a matter of something that could be explained like a purpose or a means to something, you wouldn't have to ask about it. — Valentinus

I don’t ask for any purpose of my own. My relationship with the concept of love is mine alone :) I ask because I’m curious to know what other people feel/ have experienced. I ask for a sharing of other insights

I did not mean to impute any purpose or motive be assigned to you for asking the question. I don't understand what love is. I am on board with the different ways that display what it is not.

Kierkegaard and Krishnamurti take the same approach by saying what love is not. That is a country mile from saying they agree with each other.

However one tries to frame it as an idea, our lives are bound up with our capacity to love or not. I could start with that and stop with that recognition without understanding much else.

I might be a ditz, hopeless romantic, but to me real love is something so infinite and inconceivable that once you dare to define it you actually confine it and it eventually disembodies. We tarnish it with our stupid gibberish of language and our pseudosocial norms. Now if you're talking about the twopenny type of 'love', you know the type of 'love' that cheesy Hollywood movies and tacky worthless pieces of literature have been shoving down our throats for decades then it's nothing. Just a pleasant recess before we snap back to our routines. It's just a contrived delusion to give a sense of 'meaning' to our finite existences.
I am not religious at all, but in my opinion, the best way to describe authentic love is through the words of Apostle Paul: 'Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.'

Nice first post. :up:



My best attempt at a soundbite definition of what I take love to be: Love is a cohesion of sentient being which dissipates ego. This form of love is hence utterly different from - though at times intertwined with - intense liking. To intensely like (love, in this sense) money or ice-cream is not to love in the first sense specified. From non-egotistic/narcissistic forms of self-love, to non-obsessive love for a romantic partner (sexual as well as non-sexual), to love of family members, friends, or any other cohort of beings, love is about expanding one’s sense of self to encompass other beings such that one’s self, one’s ego - as an individual unit of being that is separated from other individual units of being - begins to vanish. It doesn’t much matter if the experience is pleasant or if it hurts, it is always an experience of ego-diminution via the widening of the intrinsic value other beings hold relative to oneself. As one consequence, when one loves, what others value become of equal worth to what one oneself values, even when others’ perspectives and one’s own perspectives differ.

Well … something along these lines.

I am not religious at all, but in my opinion, the best way to describe authentic love is through the words of Apostle Paul: 'Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.' — PM24B

If this is love then while I can say I have tasted it, I have a lot of work to do. My work is cut out for me :p

I am very inclined to agree with pretty much all of what you said. I feel love is not even just “putting others before yourself” as you are equally worthy of being the subject of love, but rather a dissolution of the boundaries between the “who’s” and “what’s” of love - like a melding of ones being with the being of the world around them. No longer a victim, no longer an “I” and “you” or “us” and “them”.

I can’t remember who quoted “love is boundless” but true love I really believe is not constrained by definitions or partition. One is either a source of empathetic love for all they meet regardless of insult or attack (because they come from a place of understanding) or they are not (they selectively choose what or who is worthy of love and who/what is not - they are more so attracted to certain things then loving despite differences of any kind

After reading C.S. Lewis' 4 Loves about Need Love; Erotic Love, Brotherly/Family Love and Agape (God's gift love); I landed on the same conclusion that he in some sense did; that Appreciative Love and not Desire; is one of the main (Alicia) Keys.

What is the purpose of love? Where does it come from? Is it needed? — Benj96

"Love. - All dissertations on this subject always start with the same question. What is love? But this time, by myself, I will start with another question, a question that seems more fundamental. What makes Man create this concept, feeling, emotion - categorize it as you prefer - of affection? Oh! What more brings hedonistic wealth and personal accomplishments than convincing another individual that it belongs to you and that you belong to it? And what makes human beings act like that? I will tell you in a clear and good tone, your "Owness". Not who you sternalize and who you think you are. Your ego decides that."