If you strip a word of it's meaning, then yes, it becomes meaningless, as you have stripped the meaning from it!

Perhaps you should re-word this, as I'm not sure I understand your question, but Love, no matter what word we use to describe it will always be there no matter if the word is or not. We would just find another way to describe it, or another word to use

I'm trying to explain the Fallacy of Reification to my Muslim friend. He seems insistent on using "love" in the concrete since. Loving is not a concrete thing. It is an abstract word used to describe feelings and emotions.  Hes trying to use the old " science has limits because it can't measure love" argument. I told him love can't be measured because its an abstract term. Hince where the Fallacy of Reification comes in. So I guess my question is. Does love lose its universe of discourse if we try to turn into a concrete term?

Both you and your Muslim friend are mistaken.  Love is not an abstract concept; it is a measurable physiological response to external stimuli.  It is a process that occurs within our bodies (primarily our brains and our endocrine systems).  There is a great deal of concrete research on love (in all its forms), in the field of psychology.

What I'm saying is that while love may be an abstract concept, it is based on actual emotions.  The problem is that different sets of emotions are labeled "love" (thus the different kinds; we actually feel the various emotional states that we call "love&quot.  A problem of definition, yes, but not one that means there is no meta-definition.  

It's really just a semantic problem that is solved when we realize that some words refer to complex ideas; ones that arise as a result of interaction emotional/cognitive states.  It's kind of like how oxygen and hydrogen have properties of their own, but when they form water, new properties emerge.  With ideas, complex cognitive states emerge as a result of simpler ones.  I wish I understood the physiological basis for this better, but from what I've seen here so far perhaps others could help me out with that.  If there is any good literature or research being done in this specific area, I would like to know of it. 

I would suggest that the "Love" problem is not reification, but equivocation.

Love: The feeling when X,Y,and Z chemical agents cause A,B,C physical change at the cellular level, causing AA,BB,CC perceptual changes.

Love: The description of a complex set of emotions including affection, sexual attraction, jealousy, protectiveness, etc.. towards a mate.

Love: A sense of obligation, as in "I love my brother, but he's really an asshole."

Love: The neurological state of attachment to a mother, caused by something akin to 'imprinting.'

Love: Deriving great pleasure from:  "I love Steely Dan's music."

Love: Zero, in tennis.

Love: Rational concern for your fellow humans:  "Love thy neighbor."

When we say that we love someone, we usually mean that we feel a very complex mixture of feelings towards them, which may or may not include the same feelings that someone  else feels when they say the same thing.  This isn't because each set of feelings doesn't exist.  It's because nobody ever bothers to define love scientifically in colloquial conversation.

Love does exist, and if one definition of it is reduced to science, it is quantifiable.  In theory, we could, with accurate enough technology, measure down to the atomic level exactly how much emotion a person was experiencing, and we could say that according to X measure, so-and-so loves their cat more than their goldfish.  Susac is right.  There are concrete chemical changes that occur when someone feels any emotion.

The problem in these conversations is that the person using the "You can't measure love " argument will fall back on the nebulous colloquial meanings, which, of course, can't be measured because they're not scientifically defined.

The same exact thing can be said about other notions such as respect or honor.  Certainly we designate a combinations of feelings to these as well and no two people necessariuly feel the same combination of feelings when they honor or respect something.  Furthermore, if two people can feel radically different things when they say they love someone or something, shouldn't this simply render the term meaningless and unhelpful?  Again, look at how the uderstanding of God changes radically from person to person.  We, or at least I, use this fact alot when debating Christians to explain why I find little reason to beleive in the Christian conception.  Why must we drop God yet must keep love even though both seem to be defined by culture and one's own individual need at a specific time?

I would say it would be more important to be able to disinguish one emotion from another since, even with our limited understanding of the atomic level of things, we have little trouble with saying things like "You were not in love, you simply infatuated".  IN fact, it seems whenever someone guesses wrong about whom loves them, the "comforting" comment is usually "It must not have been love then".   

I feel like others have already addressed your point, but I'll try using different words and maybe it will help.

People can say that love is more than an emotion, but that is not exactly right.  What they mean is that it is more than one specific emotion or set of emotions.  I guess the best way to make the point would be to ask if it were possible to experience love if one had no emotional states.  That is, if a sentient being could exist that had no emotions in the way that we do, could they experience love?

I am tempted to say that they could not, but then I think that the point is that love is a disposition rather than a feeling itself.  That is, love may be a set of behaviors that arise due to certain emotional states, rather than some combination of said emotions. 

I think what makes this question so difficult is simply that we use the term 'love' to refer to not only the feelings that we have in association with people, things, and ideas, but rather the disposition as well.  That is, love can be thought of as the emotions, the disposition, or the combination thereof, and thus has this nebulous existence that is not really emotion and not disposition. 

The difference between this nebulous existence of love and that of god is simply that while we cannot pin down whether love is emotion or disposition, we are certain that the emotions and dispositions exist.  The person who associates those types of experiences with something transcendent is adding something to the mix that is unnecessary, and thus Ockham's Razor slices it away cleanly; there is no need to postulate a 'god'-thingy to explain or account for the feelings and dispositions we call 'love.'

If someone were to equate god with love, then I'm no longer an atheist.  I may not have a clean definition and explanation for the experience of love, but I know it's there because it's part of what makes up what I am, and I exist.  If we want to call it god, and thus theism is the proposition that said state of experiences exist, then I'm a theist.  But this is not what a theist means, I don't think, when they say that god is love.

Rather, they are associating their current state of being with a transcendent being which brings up all sorts of ontological and metaphysical problems.  If they think (as many theists seem to, in my experience) that emotions and thoughts are literally non-material things that their soul feels, then we can see how this error occurs.  If they think that love is their soul feeling god, they simply misunderstand how emotions arise in the body, and their error is deeper and more complicated than a simple equivocation fallacy, although that is part of it.

Shaun

It's a tricky proposition if you're going to word it properly.  Where "God is supernatural" fails is that there is literally nothing within the proposed categories.  "God" is defined as a contradictory being (by Christians) and cannot exist due to the law of non-contradiction.  "Supernatural" literally refers to that which doesn't exist, for natural is, by definition, that which exists.  So, saying God is supernatural is saying, "nothing is nothing."

Saying "Love cannot be measured" is difficult to analyze because the speaker is likely to be using multiple meanings, even within the one sentence.  Even if he is using only one meaning, it is possible that what he is referring to could be measured if we knew more about it.  In any case, whether love is a concept, an abstract, a behavior model, a singular or complex emotion, or some combination of all of the above, each of those things exists within the natural universe in positively qualifiable ways.

If I have a standard 12" ruler, I cannot use it to measure a paramecium.  The tool is inadequate to the nature of the task.  Similarly, if we want to measure love with a test tube, we're going to run into problems.  This does not speak to whether or not love or the test tube exists, only whether one is adequate for addressing the other in a meaningful way.

INdeed.  I have talked with many about the sensations one has when in love.  They can easily be shown to have a radically different cause or to be way to consequentialist to fit with any developed conception of what love is.  Of course these sensatiopns, as I have said, run the gamut from simply feeling heat ir warmth to feeling an emotional "pulling" (rapists and stalkers feel a similar "pulling" as well).  Speaking of heat though and what extreme heat can do, namely burns, if you burn your hand on the stove, there is little question to what caused it, as said earlier, extreme heat.  Even if you weren't burned by the action and you had this pain in your hand and you were curious as to why you felt this pain, we would help you out by asking you "What did you do today" and if you remember touching the stove while it was hot you would reply "I touched the hot stove".  Now, if you were totally oblivious to touching the hot stove and felt the same pain as you would when touching a hot stove and we asked you the same question, and you replied "I don't remember" or "I dont know" we would throw out ideas but never conclude.  Love works the exact opposite and many claim to know it in an instant even if their partner is totally oblivious.  Which would essentially be like someone telling you that you touched a hot stove, thus, is experiencing pain even though you were, as said before, totally oblivious to both touching the hot stove and the pain.  WHich is just absurd. 

I dont think love is anything.  My criticism is that some people think it is something.  And if the best response you can give is "love is being applied to something real, therefore, we should treat it asif if it is something real" (i apologise if I paraphrased incorrectly but I dont know what else you are trying to say with "there is a universe of discourse&quot, then there is a "universe of discourse" for God too since many people are having, or claim to have, trancendental experiences that they attribute to God.  It does not matter what you believe is the actual cause of such experiences, "God" is the word applied to them or at least designates a conception that is intimatly linked with the real feelings as the cause.  Is this response also "not adequate"?

I recognize that the comparison is faulty because touch is not the same as emotions, which are more complicated. The only point I was making with the comparison is that we would know that the feeling was real. The nature of the feeling (e.g. magical or non-magical) would still be an open question, but the feeling itself could be called real.

I suspect you would probably agree with me, though (correct me if I'm wrong), that the term "love" is loaded with an entire catalogue of connotations ranging from magical warm fuzzies to hot steamy passion. For this reason, whenever you start describing love in a particular way, attempting to nail down its identity, it can simply change jackets and escape out the backdoor. It's the Carmen Sandiego of emotions.

Thinking of the term "love" as describing a single, discrete emotion is most likely the problem.

It would be no different than someone saying that they have felt "sadness". For all we know, they might be referring to

disappointment

melancholy

grieving

separation/missing someone

loneliness

dissatisfaction

despair

shame

discouragement

homesickness

etc.

And even with every word on that list, we can conceive of a variety of situations where the term might apply in a slightly different way.

I'll try and phrase it this way: emotions are real; we know because we feel them.The term "love", though, is arbitrarily applied, depending on individuals and circumstances.

I'll get to reciprocation in a moment.

You've mostly got what I was trying to say, though not entirely (which I'm not saying is your fault or mine).

Whatever the feeling is that is being felt when the word "love" is used is real, and that feeling is the only thing we have to treat as something real. When I say that there is a universe of discourse (borrowing OP's words, but we may be using them differently), I only mean that there is a very limited number of things we can say about the emotions people categorize as "love" simply because they are real---a sort of meta-discourse about them that expresses how we feel about those feelings. For example, we can say that we are feeling such a thing or we are not; we can say whether these feelings are positive or negative; we can say whether or not we want to take a certain course of action based on these feelings (i.e. to prolong them or to curtail them); etc. So in a very limited sense, we can discuss the emotions and be certain of what we mean.

But as I pointed out by comparing "love" to "sadness", there is also a universe of discourse about love in which we can't be certain of what we mean, namely when we are trying to pin down the specific attributes of "love" and not just discussing how we feel toward it.

I think this answers your question about love not being reciprocated as well. Whatever the feeling is that is not being reciprocated, we can discuss it in a very limited sort of meta-discourse (e.g. "I am disappointed that this very positive feeling I call 'love' is not being reciprocated); but when we try to say specifically what it is, things quickly become nebulous.

Some food for thought, though:

According to a discussion I've seen from Helen Fisher, love is not in the same category as other emotions because it not merely an emotion---it is also a drive. So while we can equate it to a mere emotion, like happiness, we can also equate it to a mere drive, like hunger. Love is apparently intertwined with two of our drives: 1) have sex, 2) be a social animal. When we are achieving these extremely important biological goals, we receive extremely pleasurable feedback. It is the gene's way of saying, "Please continue doing this for me... er... us."

I can't elaborate very well on this because I've only watched her giving a short talk on the subject and I haven't read her book (books?).

Right, and the attributing to god is where I draw the line on what we can call real. We can call what they felt real because they really felt it. We do not have to accept whatever they are citing as the source of the emotion (read: god) as being the true source, or whatever they believe to be the true nature of the emotion (read: transcendent) to be the true nature.

Like the word "love", the word "god" is being arbitrarily applied in whatever way the user deems fit (as all words ultimately are).

I suspect we might be thinking along the same lines but that I'm just doing a poor job of communicating a very minor point.