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From: stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens)
Subject: Re: Thought Question
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Date: Wed, 25 Jan 95 22:09:23 GMT
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In <3ftu70$10g@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> prem@ix.netcom.com (Prem Sobel) writes:
>In <1995Jan22.001651.17689@galileo.cc.rochester.edu> 
>stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens) writes: 
>>In <3fqtbl$6js@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> prem@ix.netcom.com (Prem Sobel) 
>writes:

>>>... Via love to identify with another. This identification
>>>can be learned. it is more then empathy, much more than deduction from
>>>observed exterior behvaior. It is the same identity of consciousness
>>>that allows us to be self-aware. We know ourselves because we are
>>>our self.

>>Breakdowns of love, 

>.. snipped pessimistic stuff....

>Because something "breakdown" does not mean it always must be like that.
>Giving flowers and having sex is not love, although they are expressions 
>of love. 

But you seem to be forgetting that "love" is a word which we have defined
and which we understand through our interaction with the world.  How do
you have access to what you understand the definition of the WORD "love"
to be but through your experiences?

From what have you ascertained what the word "love" actually refers to?
Your experiences of love?  Reading books that talk about love?  

I learned what the German word "Hund" means by having to related to an
English word I know.  I learned what the English word "dog" means by,
when I was younger, being exposted to dogs and the word "dog" concurrently
with enough frequency to relate them.  

Is this not the same general way in which you learned what "love" means?
If not, how did you learn the word?  If so, how can you separate all of the
expressions and manifestations of love from what it *really* is?  As I
maintained in my post, in a segment you deleted, if someone has learned
to associate the word "love" with having sex, through personal experience,
then that is what this person has learned the word to mean.  You claim that
you have learned the word to refer to some kind of understanding of another
that transcends sensory perception, behavior or interpretation.  I'm
wondering whether you have had that kind of experience, and how you know
you have, except through perception?

Greg

stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

