Love, like other feelings, I would deem to be like glasses.

Regardless where we look, we look through our glasses - so we are in love.

The putting on and off of the glasses is conscious, albeit spontaneous.

Feel, comes and goes like the wind; where does it come from, where does it go? Who knows?
But when the breeze washes over us, we are immediately conscious of it and know - the wind has arrived.
The way wind changes our temperature, so feel changes a part of us, and we conclude - we feel.

What exactly do we mean when we state a feeling? — Edward

The meaning is the feeling itself. The words are an attempt to convey the fact that this feeling is being held, and it can only be truly understood by someone who has experienced that feeling.The same is true of all qualia. The word "red" means the that property of perception that we label "red". A person who has been totally blind from birth cannot truly understand what red is.

The same is true of all qualia. — Relativist

Speak to me of "qualia" if you would be so kind? I have heard much around it in my time here on the forum and I never really looked into it. If you are busy then please disregard my question.

Qualia (which is the plural of "quale") are sensory experiences, such as the sensation of headache pain or the experience of the color red. Because a blind person (if blind from birth) has never experienced the redness of an object, they cannot truly know the color red (or any other color) - this quale "redness" is meaningless to such a person, although they can gain some propositional knowledge about the concept of color (e.g. wavelength range, knowing what objects are red, the concept of mixing paints or combining light colors...).

Imagine creating an artificial intelligence that can identify the color red based on measuring the wavelength of the light reflected by objects. This AI will still not experience red as we do. Some suggest that your experience of redness isn't even the same as mine - but there's no objective way to know whether this is true or not (I personally believe that we do experience redness very similarly, but not identically).

If our attention, or awareness, in a moment is focused on something that isn't love then how can we claim to be in love? — Edward

I think it's more of a linguistic challenge than a problem of certainty in emotion. We are always in love; from family, friends, and self-actualizing passions. The question 'are you in love?' in our contemporary society inclines more to asking if you're in a relationship, as oppose to having the capacity to feel love.

Love, is more of an action than a method of abstract status - like happiness or anger. This disparity also contributes to this problem more being linguistically, rather than of certainty.

If the provided answer was not enough perhaps the thought experiment 'Mary's room' will give more meaning?

@Edward

Don't think. FEEL. It's like a finger pointing at the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all of the heavenly glory. — Bruce Lee

I just can't resist posting this @Merkwurdichliebe:

Be water my friend:

Running water never goes stale.

Love is a traceable notion that supersedes time because it is nature. Love isn't an emotion, it's a biological commitment to mating for life. It might raise emotions within us, but it's based on something primal.

Love isn't an emotion, it's a biological commitment to mating for life. It might raise emotions within us, but it's based on something primal. — whollyrolling

That is how love is in the sense of eros. But at the level of philia, storge, or agape, such an explanation does not only seem inadequate, but also somewhat perverse.

Love isn't an emotion, it's a biological commitment to mating for life. It might raise emotions within us, but it's based on something primal. — whollyrolling

Also explain self-actualization or doing something you're passionate about, isn't that love?

Also explain self-actualization or doing something you're passionate about, isn't that love? — SethRy

Like the love of wisdom, right?

Self-actualization as in Jesus or Jann Arden, like in how to be successful class in high school? Passion is a drive toward something, a compulsion.

Passion is a drive toward something, a compulsion. — whollyrolling

Don't forget it is, at a primal level, like fear and sex

Self-actualization as in Jesus or Jann Arden, like in how to be successful class in high school? Passion is a drive toward something, a compulsion — whollyrolling

Maslow's theory of Self-actualization. Perhaps you've heard of?

Yes, I've heard of it, but I'm not sure what you're trying to communicate, you aren't saying anything about it.

How do we conclude what we "feel"?

Introspection.

What does it mean when we claim a feeling that we're not currently experiencing?

That in the relevant situations, which we're at least periodically in, we have that emotion.

How do we conclude what we "feel"?

To be precise, the actual experiencing of a feeling is not a conclusion. The describing or labelling of a feeling entails a conclusion that relates a standard semantic description of a feeling-word (or phrase) to one's introspective analysis of the feeling that is experienced.

Love is a traceable notion that supersedes time because it is nature. Love isn't an emotion, it's a biological commitment to mating for life. It might raise emotions within us, but it's based on something primal. — whollyrolling

Marriage is a commitment to mating for life - if it were biological, we wouldn’t need divorce. Love is doing what I can to enable another to do what they can - it is an awareness and actualising of potentiality. Yes, it is based on something primal, but I think it’s more primal even than biology. Love, in my opinion, is pre-conscious.

Desire brings another’s potentiality to our attention, along with its connection to our own, in a particularly profound way. This is because we have learned to be very attentive to this feeling. It serves us well as an organism. Love can develop from this situation, as it can also develop from similar interests, familiarity or sharing an intense situation, among other scenarios.

But one could just as easily ignore this deeper call to enable, encourage and support the actualising of potentiality in another, and focus instead on serving their own needs/desire. They might both call this ‘love’ for a time, but in reality one is focused only on receiving love and the other on giving it. This is a recipe for conflict, not love. Not to say love cannot eventually develop, but it won’t come easy.

As for being ‘in love’ - I think this is a complex emotion in which one is aware of love through desire. It is a whole body consciousness of this intertwining of potentiality: recognising that the two of us can achieve more together than we could alone. It is very much tied to our awareness, so is subject to our fears as much as our senses, and is far from a constant emotion.

But love itself is constant, and only needs us to be aware of each other’s potentiality.