"The difference is: humans have no instincts, animals do."
We have instincts. Unlike dogs, however, we can choose to ignore them at least part of the time.
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"I would argue that humans have no love either, except as extensions of our biological underpinnings -- that we share in common with many other mammals. Love your mate. Your parents. Your social group. Your offspring. All motivated by basic evolutionary pressures."
Only the human individual can love someone outside of parents, social group, offspring. You could argue the individual can do so only because he or she adopts the loved one into one of those groups, which kinda supports my point. Only a human individual can choose to adopt someone as parent, or into a social group, or as offspring. Only the distinctive 'I' that, insofar as we know, is unique to the human individual can love in that way.
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"Only bloviators like Henry here think you need high-falutin' language to qualify for love."
Muddled thinking doesn't look any prettier when topped with useless insult, pie.
Shame on you.
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"What sources do you have to back up your opinion?"
The same, best, source you have in determining the unique nature of love and how love is the action of the human individual and no other: myself, yourself, pie's self, Jim's self.
I can talk with you about love...we can dicker about its nature.
Find me the dog, the platypus, the cat, the chimp, the garden slug that can do the same.
You can't.
Why?
Because in all those cases, the animals haven't sufficient complexity, or complexity of a very specific kind, to, first, be 'self' aware and, second, to feel in the self-reflective way required to love.
Again: if you wanna generalize love to include 'familiarity coupled with good feeling coupled with physical pleasure' then be my guest.
Hell: I’ll even concede ''familiarity coupled with good feeling coupled with physical pleasure' is a kind of love, but a poor love as compared to what human individuals can feel and choose for one another.
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"Truly, I do not think it can be "proven" either way"
And: you may be right. However: conversations, particularly those labeled’ philosophy', tend not to go anywhere if everyone just agrees to disagree.
For myself: I think I'm on firm footing with my analysis.
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"but I believe they do."
As you should, Classic!
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"Only bloviators like Henry here think you need high-falutin' language to qualify for love"
Actually: what I'm arguing is that to love, one needs to be an 'I'. Along with 'I'ness comes language as tool for naming the world and making it one's own. Language is the esoteric version of the hand. The hand allows (demands!) manipulation of the world; so does language.
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Pie, you ought to take this, 'The fun thing about evolution (and science in general) is that it happens whether you believe in it or not.', out of your signature line. It’s obvious you don't believe a word of it. An appeal to the authority of anecdote is not science.
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I wrote: 'Actually, as 'we' use and understand love, no, your dog doesn't.'
Classic responded: 'ok, prove it'
Two things:
1-I made no claim, Pie did. The burden is on her, or her proxy, to provide evidence for her claim that her "dog…sure as hell understands it."
2-How is am I to prove the existence of what is absent?
I can point to the absence of evidence for God and still this doesn't prove deity's absence.
I can point to the seemingly unique nature of the human individual ('I'ness), and how that nature expresses in that most unique action, love. I can point to the apparent lack of 'I'ness in virtually all other life, and how this lack precludes love in a dog.
I can point to the human individual: the self-referencing, esoteric-seeking, instinct-denying, agent, and ask, are dogs like us?
And still: this won't prove to your satisfaction that only the human individual loves.
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"my past experience with training dogs and having them for so many years leads me to my opinion on the subject."
This could mean one of two things: you are far better schooled on the possibility of dog love than me, or, you're far too close to, and have far too much affection for, dogs to be objective.
Who's to know which?
