Is this a sentiment? It is clearly different from love. But then again, how would we define love?
As a pure chemical reaction?
As a unique inner, psychological experience?
As a label that we impose after seeing people take certain actions - caring about the well-being of others, hugging, kissing, protecting?
I adopt the last one as the closest to the truth; let me tell you why.
Imagine, for the sake of argument, the first man that ever felt love; he started taking certain actions like caring, protecting and worrying about another human being. Eventually, other people started taking actions similar to those of the first man who felt love; that is how we evolved as a society. With this many people taking certain actions because they felt something inside that compelled them, came the necessity of a word. So love is a word that was created due to the fact that so many people think they experience something similar, precisely because the actions taken on behalf of that feeling are similar. They would never use the same word to describe completely different actions - we do not associate love with murder and torture, for instance. Is the feeling of love exactly the same for all of us? Probably not, given the multiplicity and variety among humans, but, who knows it is similar enough.
However, what happens if no actions are taken on behalf of a feeling, such as Koi no Yokan? Then we get only the individual experience, which we might try to explain to others merely by words. If many people are familiar with the feeling (or think they are), then the necessity comes to use a word - Koi no Yokan. Personally, I have never felt Koi no Yokan. Or did I? If I did, I did not have a word for it, so I did not label it as a feeling. But now I have a word for it, so, in a sense, I am aware of a new feeling which I can freely talk about so that others will understand. This increases my empathy and connection to other people, even if they do not feel exactly what I feel.
This is precisely my point; let me give a final analogy which might help clarify.
Imagine that you are looking at the ocean from above and can see the whole of it. The ocean is one thing, so you use one word for it. However, the ocean does not behave everywhere exactly the same. There are regions of the ocean where waves behave violently - we label such behavior X; there are other regions where storms are very frequent, so we label it Y; there are instances where the sea is generally calm, so we label it Z. What is useful about this process is not that each behavior X is exactly the same at all times in all instances (waves exactly the same size, the same shape, during the same amount of time), but that it help us to communicate efficiently with each other so that we can talk about how the ocean behaves.
I think feelings are exactly like this. They do not exist as unique, universal, exact things; they are aspects of an ocean (an ocean different in each of us) and the real importance is not that they are or not exactly the same, but that by categorizing and labelling these aspects in a unique way we are able to suppose that they are the same, because now they are described uniquely. The use of one word or expression to describe things which we think are similar strenghtens the human bonds, even if they are not the same at all. It might even reinforce the idea that they are the same, when they are not.
In summary, I think that the use of unique words/expressions to describe feelings plays a very important role in social and emotional cohesion, precisely because it is capable of linking aspects of human beings which are not necessarily equal, nonetheless triggering empathy amoung us as if they were equal.
As a pure chemical reaction?
As a unique inner, psychological experience?
As a label that we impose after seeing people take certain actions - caring about the well-being of others, hugging, kissing, protecting?
I adopt the last one as the closest to the truth; let me tell you why.
Imagine, for the sake of argument, the first man that ever felt love; he started taking certain actions like caring, protecting and worrying about another human being. Eventually, other people started taking actions similar to those of the first man who felt love; that is how we evolved as a society. With this many people taking certain actions because they felt something inside that compelled them, came the necessity of a word. So love is a word that was created due to the fact that so many people think they experience something similar, precisely because the actions taken on behalf of that feeling are similar. They would never use the same word to describe completely different actions - we do not associate love with murder and torture, for instance. Is the feeling of love exactly the same for all of us? Probably not, given the multiplicity and variety among humans, but, who knows it is similar enough.
However, what happens if no actions are taken on behalf of a feeling, such as Koi no Yokan? Then we get only the individual experience, which we might try to explain to others merely by words. If many people are familiar with the feeling (or think they are), then the necessity comes to use a word - Koi no Yokan. Personally, I have never felt Koi no Yokan. Or did I? If I did, I did not have a word for it, so I did not label it as a feeling. But now I have a word for it, so, in a sense, I am aware of a new feeling which I can freely talk about so that others will understand. This increases my empathy and connection to other people, even if they do not feel exactly what I feel.
This is precisely my point; let me give a final analogy which might help clarify.
Imagine that you are looking at the ocean from above and can see the whole of it. The ocean is one thing, so you use one word for it. However, the ocean does not behave everywhere exactly the same. There are regions of the ocean where waves behave violently - we label such behavior X; there are other regions where storms are very frequent, so we label it Y; there are instances where the sea is generally calm, so we label it Z. What is useful about this process is not that each behavior X is exactly the same at all times in all instances (waves exactly the same size, the same shape, during the same amount of time), but that it help us to communicate efficiently with each other so that we can talk about how the ocean behaves.
I think feelings are exactly like this. They do not exist as unique, universal, exact things; they are aspects of an ocean (an ocean different in each of us) and the real importance is not that they are or not exactly the same, but that by categorizing and labelling these aspects in a unique way we are able to suppose that they are the same, because now they are described uniquely. The use of one word or expression to describe things which we think are similar strenghtens the human bonds, even if they are not the same at all. It might even reinforce the idea that they are the same, when they are not.
In summary, I think that the use of unique words/expressions to describe feelings plays a very important role in social and emotional cohesion, precisely because it is capable of linking aspects of human beings which are not necessarily equal, nonetheless triggering empathy amoung us as if they were equal.