But this is where you must be mistaken, for caring for someone else more than for yourself is a form of self-pleasure, the way pain is pleasure to a masochist. It seems as if it should be repulsive, but it's not; it's perceived as "feels good."
For this reason, it's become invisible to you - as it is to the crustacean. Incapable of seeing it, realizing it, giving or receiving it.
How do you know what I or a crustacean can, or are capable of seeing? Gee, talk about desperation...can you reach any lower! LOL.
But, according to your definition of what love is, a mother duck who spreads her wings and gathers her ducklings under them when faced with mortal danger is capable of love. In her case, however, it is dismissed as "instinct."But ours could just as easily be an irrational, atavistic genetic vestige of our developmental history to which some silly Platonists have attached a nobler, "higher" title.
In the real world, humans can choose values beyond satisfying animal desires.
What other desires do we have? What else are we?
Nope. By definition. It's not. If you're caring more about your [self] pleasure more, then it's not the same as caring for someone else more.
Whether you can conceive of it or not.
I'm taking you at your word.
What other desires do we have? What else are we?
More than crustacean, more than ducks. Consciousness, reflection, compassion, love, beauty… Humanness.
No difference? You've collapsed it all, reduced it all. Humans=ducks=shellfish=planarian=...
It could be. But the fact that you can consider whether it is also means that, if it is, you can choose otherwise. Ducks (as far as we know) can't do this.
You have this choice.