Defining Love [forking from another thread]
In the thread What the study of Quantum Theory has taught me about Reality
I asserted that "Love is a moral judgement" which drew some responses. Let's hear some agreement/disagreement and alternative definitions if you would.
I asserted that "Love is a moral judgement" which drew some responses. Let's hear some agreement/disagreement and alternative definitions if you would.
Comments (57)
Something I've long found interesting to contemplate and never come to an adequate resolution on is the relationship of love to fear and hate. I traditionally thought of hate as the opposite of love, such that when I first heard fear juxtaposed as its opposite, back before I studied any philosophy, I thought that sounded really weird. But after studying some philosophy and learning the Greek roots "phobia" and "philia", fear seemed like a natural opposite to love; but so did hate, still. I wondered, does that make hate a kind of fear, or vice versa? Are they maybe opposite love on orthogonal axes?
The conclusion I came to is that fear is a repulsive feeling (pushing away from something that seems bad) in relation to an object that is more powerful than yourself (so repelling it moves you away from it), while hate is the same kind of thing but in relation to an object that is less powerful than yourself (so repelling it moves it away from you).
That made me think that there should be something that bears the same relationship to love. Love is an attractive feeling (pulling toward something that seems good), but in relation to an object that is more powerful than yourself, or less? And either way, what is the other? One thing is wanting to go to someone or something else, the other is wanting to bring that thing or person to you. Are those both "love"? Are there terms to differentiate them?
I disagree. We each value differently and you can value possibilities the same as you can value immediately actualities. Their current behavior is included yes, but everything they can possibly be is not included in their current behavior. Thus you, the wise parent value the possibility, see it as the goodness in them that lets you overlook their current, typically self absorbed behavior. You value, morally value, their potential, and thus you love them in spite of their being, at the moment, less than model citizens of the world.
In all your arguments for your love of your children you are stating exactly why you value them, and I assert that is an expression of your morality. You are not a hedonist annoyed that they interfere with your immediate pleasures. Your ethics looks forward beyond such immediate gratification to see the virtue in your children as what they can (especially with your guidance) become. It is still an actualization of your personal moral values.
Remember that my position is that morality is a personal thing, an individual's value system. You express yours as you express the love of your children as likewise you express your love of all whom you grace with that emotion, and as I posit, with that moral judgement.
You are describing love at the level of potentiality - ‘what they can become’ is an awareness of potentiality, but not of possibility. It’s quite common to view them as the same, but ‘potential’ is not the same as ‘possible’, and ‘could’ is not the same as ‘can’. ‘In spite of’ is not inclusive - this type of love still excludes or ignores behaviour I disagree with as ‘not important’, as something ‘we just won’t talk about anymore’.
Love is pure relation that can be as trivial as how I relate to a dress, or as complicated as how I relate to the unconditional possibility of the universe. It doesn’t have to go beyond personal moral values to be called ‘love’, but it certainly has that capacity. Love isn’t always a matter of overlooking current behaviour and focusing only on the potential in them that has moral value for me, but of seeing them also for the potential in them that could have moral value for them at the time (but not for me), and loving them for that, too. It’s about recognising that this is far from the last time they will do something I don’t agree with - but their personal moral values and the behaviour that comes from that is part of what makes them unique and special. It’s one of the more difficult parts of parenting: to let go of the assumption that my personal moral value system will be duplicated in my child.
I recognise that we each have an individual structure of value systems, but I disagree wholeheartedly that we cannot value other than morally (and I’ve had a similar discussion about this in relation to logical evaluation). Moral is, by definition, related to behaviour, so we can only value morally what relates to behaviour, although by extension we also have a tendency to morally value events (and people understood as events). Moral value is also often a reduction of value information to a binary system: good/virtuous or bad/evil.
But more importantly, the recognition that we each have different moral value systems is the reason why ‘love’ as pure relation has the capacity to go beyond our personal moral values. What is morally valued by you, but is not morally valued by me, can still matter to me simply because it matters to you, who matters to me. That doesn’t necessarily change how I morally value it.
The format here is pretty straightforward. I've made a universally qualified claim, you assert an existential counter example. So now I ask for that example. Give me some examples of values you personally hold which have no moral basis?
Mind you, we may find our disagreement is fundamentally semantic or definitional. I am, ultimately defining morality to be our value system so by my cooked definition I win the literal debate. The big question is whether there is validity and utility in my definition. I think it is a relevant question in this era where we are stepping back from authoritarian ethics. If morality is not defined by the church or the state or the dude with the biggest baseball bat, then what?
Perhaps, let’s see...
Value (verb): to consider something to be important or beneficial.
Value (noun):
1. The importance, worth or usefulness of something.
2. Principles or standards of behaviour; one’s judgement of what is important in life.
3. The numerical amount denoted by an algebraic term; a magnitude, quantity or number.
4. The relative duration of a sound, signified by a (musical) note.
5. The meaning of a word or other linguistic unit.
6. The relative degree of lightness or darkness of a particular colour.
The way I see it, you’re attempting to structure ALL value relations using a specifically moral valuing system, and finding it insufficient for an accurate understanding of reality as we experience it. That’s to be expected. We use many different value systems in our understanding of reality. Understanding the dimensional relation of potentiality is a matter of understanding how these different value systems relate to our experiences and to each other - and recognising that there is no single value system ‘to rule them all’.
I was describing one manifestation of love "at a level of potentiality" namely that manifestation where we love an ill-behaved, weak little "monster" we call a child. I think that plus (for some of us) our value at being needed, at being proven useful to others by the existence of that need, brings us to love children. It is in the nature of making the distinction between child and adult that what we value switches between the potentialities toward the actualities.
I'm not sure what you mean by Quoting Possibility. There may well be pureness in actualization of love but it is also, quite often impure. The mother who backhands her child whom she indeed loves is an example. In such a typical scenario that parent has held onto the delusion that her love is "pure" and thereby turned a blind eye to building resentments and anger which thus grow to a point where they trigger her.
Mind you, we conceptualize ideals as horizons and limit points toward which (or away from which) we orient ourselves. Pure Good vs Pure Evil, Pure Love vs Pure Hate, etc. I assert that these do not exist in absolute purity though we can see extremes so far from the norm that we needn't quibble about the differences from where we stand.
But I also believe thinking in such absolute terms can be counter productive. If we hold say Hitler as the embodiment of pure evil and assume we could never do what he did we forget the fact that Hitler was acting according to the morality he held. He was "protecting" his homeland from what he perceived as a threat in his sick deluded way. But we can be likewise taken with cognitive dissonance in our moral structure, be it the "pure" and visceral rejection of immigrants or our "pure" and visceral rejection of anyone who wants to have a real conversation about the pragmatic need to moderate immigration. We can, if we are not careful channel our inner Hitler.
And, to complete the symmetry, one may take the ideal of pure love so to heart that one may amplify self critique into self loathing and be unable to accept love in any form. My first girlfriend had this in spades. I presume she grew past it as she's now (happily so I presume) married. I only wish I'd not be so immature at the time to have dealt with it better. I only knew that "my love was pure" and its very existence was all that mattered. Now after several decades I recognize that that love, that value, is only meaningful as it places value on my actions. If I fail to act it becomes meaningless.
But in the end, when we distill all the potential choices we might take at any given moment, we must select one and only one actual behavior. That is the actualization of our entire value system at the time, our ethic. Mind you we all have inconsistencies in our value system. There are unresolved conflicts as there are also uncertainties as to the results of our actions. It is a value system not a singular valuating principle, at least for most of us.
Our morality evolved from and still encompasses the survival/propagation ethic of our animal past. And still those who do not retain some of that don't stick around long enough for us to worry over. But much of what follows builds upon that foundation. Love of truth derives from the pragmatic fact that ignoring the snake doesn't make us immune from its venom. But it can rise in some of us to an ideal in and of itself that we are sometimes willing to take a survival risk to protect.
I agree that we use many different value systems in reality in the sense of valuation of a quantity or ordinals comparisons of qualities. We can rank order fundamental particles by size, we can use point systems to value piece placements in a chess game. But in the end we are each a singular actor choosing one action out of the wealth of possibilities. Even if a particular action is capricious or whimsical it is still the manifestation of a value system.."sometimes you just gotta say 'what the heck!'" There is an implicit good referred to in that statement, some notion of preserving one's sanity or stress relief or recharging of one's mental energy.
Darwinian rationalism does not constitute a philosophy. The point about love is that it has to be its own rationale - as soon as it serves something other than love, then it ain't love.
I think you should consider, if you haven't already, the distinctions between volition and existential phenomena. Meaning, when you use the term 'judgement', you infer or convey choice; making a choice to Love. (And maybe you're not meaning to, not sure there... .) And then one could say there is also that which doesn't require making a choice, enter; the Metaphysical Will. The example there would be the law of attraction (the collective unconscious experience).
Try walking through the park or at the beach or hardware store sporting an obvious smile on your face. Then see how many strangers approach you. Then experiment with having a melancholy look on your face. See which condition attracts a caring or loving spirit towards you.
Now one could argue that in the aforementioned collective unconscious experience, that there was still volition involved. But there was also a force (or metaphysical will) that caused that need (or will) to choose and act.
In that scenario I submit this is not an exclusive 'moral judgement'' driving force that one consciously chooses.
I agree with you. I was just saying something like that to my teenage son a few weeks back. He told me that he didn’t think Uncle Mark likes him. Kadin is often very sullen and angry at the world, but mostly he has low self-esteem. I asked him if he acted like he was happy to see Uncle Mark or if he looked like he was unhappy to see him. (I knew the answer.)
People judge by appearances.
Yes indeed. I tell young people, where possible, always have a positive spirit. In one's personal and professional life, it will reap dividends. Accordingly, people tend want you on their team, or at least want to be around those who are part of the solution rather than part of the problem.... .
I think your definition of "moral" is incorrect. Morality is concerned with what is good and bad. And since it extends into judging thinking in this way, and thinking is not properly "behaviour", but related to behaviour, morality has a greater extent than what you claim.
This casts doubt on your claim "I disagree wholeheartedly that we cannot value other than morally". Evaluating is an act of thinking, and acts of thinking may be judged as good or bad in relation to moral ethics. Morally "good" thinking will produce good value judgements, and bad thinking produces bad value judgements. If you think that there are value judgements which themselves can be judged as correct or incorrect, without reference to moral principles then the challenge is yours, to demonstrate these. Before you proceed, consider that correctness and incorrectness in value judgements is normative.
An HIV positive spirit?
...interesting...now in your case, I'm thinking more in terms of your 'pathological spirit'. LOL
I have actually grown to like that nic. It has a ring to it. His calling me that is not without compassionate, cuddly feelings.
This aint' philosophy. This is a personal belief, a personal opinion, a statement of personal values. Love, with all its acoutrements, based on Darwinian evolution, however, is believable, logical, and proven.
If something is believable, proven and logical, and stands to reason is NOT philosophical to you, then I don't know what is.
Yes, Christians LOVE to run around circular reasoning. "I believe the Bible. Why? Because the Bible is true How do I now that? Because it says that in the Bible. And why do I take it as true? Becasue I believe in the Bible."
Now, Wayfarer, you just applied the same beloved circular reasoning to the notion of love. "It has to be its own rationale".
God forbid that you think outside the box and go outside your circles.
Well, I believe what cognitive science says: you must first recognize that you even have a problem before you can fix it.
I'm happy for you! LOL
I attribute your happiness, from what I've seen in earlier long threads in which you participated, to your complete and utter resilience and incapacity to understanding reason, or even spotting it and recognizing it when you look at it.
Would you care to start a new thread? (Maybe call it ' happiness and logic' AKA the tree of knowledge, LOL)
Pure relation is not necessarily pure love - I’ll agree to that. Anyone who says their love is ‘pure’ is attempting to express a pure relation, but talk is cheap these days. I’m starting to see what you’ve been trying to say here. There’s no reason for you to believe what I’m saying about the love I have for my child - it manifests only in my words and behaviour - in how I actualise this relation to my child. Fair enough.
If I can offer a clearer example of what I’m trying to get at, it would be those things we do that have no recognisable value (or even have negative value) for ourselves, yet are meaningful to achieve simply because they actualise potential in (or have value for) the one we love. We tend to ‘rationalise’ or logically explain these actions any number of ways, because otherwise they suggest a negation of the value of self, which is viewed as ‘low self-esteem’ in our social reality. Explaining love as ‘moral judgment’ is one such explanation - one that reduces meaning to only what has moral value. Evolutionary psychology explanations of altruism and self-sacrifice are also feeble rationalisations of love that are ignorant of a six-dimensional level of pure relation or meaning.
Quoting jambaugh
I can relate to where your girlfriend was at, to some extent. At the time I certainly didn’t recognise it as self-loathing, but I was fully capable of subconsciously sabotaging almost any chance at love. Fortunately for me, I was loved by someone with courage and integrity in spades.
The way I see it, love is always possible, but its meaning comes from how we relate that possibility to reality. It isn’t only awareness of love, but the courage to connect and collaborate without limitations that enables us to act with love towards others. Love is a way of actualising potentiality that relates to the world without fears or boundaries. That’s the real challenge, I think.
I accept that most people are unaware of any distinction between what is meaningful and what has subjective value. If we’re lucky, we can get away with love at this level of awareness. But we can also be blindsided by a love that ‘vanishes’ when our potentiality or perceived moral value takes a hit: if one of us is suddenly incapacitated, we lose a child or make a poor choice that threatens our future, for instance. I think it helps to develop love to the point where we understand the difference between value and meaning - where we recognise that what has value for you may not have value for me, but is meaningful purely because of how I relate to you. I think that this kind of love can withstand anything.
Morality does not judge thinking, but is concerned with the actions that follow thinking; with what is good or bad behaviour. I have yet to come across a definition of ‘moral’ or ‘morality’ that does not mention behaviour, customs or actions, so I stand by my definition. Feel free to demonstrate otherwise. Judging thinking or people is a misuse of moral values - a way to define, control or oppress others, motivated by fear.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Apart from the fact that I haven’t asserted any claim but expressed a disagreement, you’re referring to value and value judgements as if they’re the same thing. They’re not. I’ve already addressed the various types of value that have nothing to do with moral principles:
Quoting Possibility
Quoting Possibility
Something doesn’t have to be judged morally ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to be considered important or beneficial, so I maintain my opinion that we can value other than morally. I can value money, which is morally nether ’good’ nor ‘bad’. I can also value knowledge, certain possessions, mealtimes and much more...
Coincidentally I came across an old note to myself tonight about this very topic, and I think the conclusion I've now come to upon reading my old thoughts is that love and fear are opposite corners of a two-dimensional spectrum of emotions, while hate and tolerance are on the other pair of opposite corners. I already use such a spectrum in my philosophy book (why I'm digging through old notes to myself) in this diagram here:
In the top corner I would put love (and joy), in the bottom fear (and despair), in the left corner hate (and rage), and in the right corner tolerance (and peacefulness).
There's an idea that love could be seen as an emergent property of the processes of unity. Therefore, love would be the essence (intent, need, desire, etc) of the pursuit for connectivity. For example, if we're looking to identify with something (and, consequently, develop a connection to that something), then love would be the embodiment of the efforts and conditioning involved in that pursuit.
So, "I love you," would translate to something like, "I appreciate our connectivity," or "I want to further our connectivity," or along those lines. And, I think it could work with anything, from people relations to sports, occupation, life at large, religious/spiritual dimensions, etc, etc.
Yes we do pass moral judgement on thinking. Take a look at the ten commandments for example, half of them are concerned with thinking; don't take the Lord's name in vain, honour, and don't covet. And if you read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, you'll see that he names "contemplation" as the highest virtue, this makes thinking itself an act.
Quoting Possibility
Sure behaviour is mentioned, but morality extends beyond behaviour to include thinking. So your definition is an attempt to force an unjustified restriction onto the classification of what types of values are moral and which are not. You try to force that restrictive definition to support an epistemological position, which is clearly not grounded in reality.
Quoting Possibility
This is all wrong. #1&2 are clearly moral issues, as related to "the end", what is desired. The thing desired, which is what is important in life, and also what makes something useful as being for that purpose, can be judged as morally good or bad. #3&5 are conventions, norms, which are supported by morality. So though it is not directly a moral value, it is supported by morality because without morality norms and conventions cannot exist. #4&6 do not make any sense because you are talking about a relation, something "relative" without naming what it is being related to. To judge a relative degree of light, or a relative duration of sound, requires some sort of standard, like a scale and this is a norm, or convention like 3&5, requiring morality for existence. Suppose you try to judge "brighter", or "longer duration" without such a standard or convention for comparison. A correct judgement requires that you have a correct disposition, or correct character, and such "correctness" in the person is a moral issue. Therefore the correctness of your judgement is a moral issue.
Quoting Possibility
Again, this is clearly wrong. What do you think "beneficial" means, other than having been judged as good for some purpose? And, that purpose can be judged as morally good or bad, rendering the "beneficial" thing as either morally good or bad depending on whether it's being used for a good or bad purpose.
Passing moral judgement doesn’t make it justified. The Ten Commandments are not moral judgements - they are precepts to avoid moral judgement, which can ONLY be conducted on the actual behaviour such thinking leads to. Its failures are well documented. Likewise, contemplation as the highest virtue is a principle upon which one morally judges the behaviour that follows thinking. Judging the thinking and not the actions leads us to condemn based on assumptions without evidence, which has been the most damaging abuse of the Ten Commandments.
So the statements "you ought to do...", and "you ought not do...", which are constitutive of ethical principles, are not expressions of moral judgements? Ethical principles are not expressions of moral judgements?
As I said, I think you are incorrect.
I really like this and I feel you’re onto something, I too for a long time wondered whether the opposite of love was fear or hate. Love attracts while fear and hate repel. But then fear and hate can be seen as two sides of the same coin. The two can be mixed, it’s possible to both hate someone and fear what they may do to you. Hate is directed outwards (you want to push something away from you) while fear is directed inwards (you want to avoid what you fear).
I would say that’s the fundamental difference rather than a distinction between more powerful and less powerful. You may fear someone who is less powerful, for instance if you know they will hurt you not because they are more powerful than you, but because you don’t want to hurt them. Fear moves yourself away from others while hate pushes others away from you. Both move towards separation.
There is that which moves towards unity and happiness (love, understanding, compassion), and that which moves towards separation and suffering (fear/hate, ignorance, indifference).
Quoting Pfhorrest
Loving someone attracts you towards them, moves you towards them. But that doesn’t necessarily move them towards you, in order for them to move towards you they need to love you too.
To be clear on what we’re looking for:
Love: leads to move towards someone (opposite of Fear)
Fear: leads to move away from someone (opposite of Love)
Hate: leads to push someone away from us (opposite of ?)
? : leads to unite someone with us (opposite of Hate)
What is the opposite of hate? You mentioned tolerance, but tolerance is the opposite of intolerance which isn’t the same thing as hate. When we’re tolerant we aren’t actively looking to unite people. It’s possible to hate someone and still tolerate what they do, it’s simply that we force them to do it far away from us.
So what is the feeling which works towards bringing people together, towards uniting them? Don’t we call it love too? The love of the people. This isn’t the same love as the love that attracts us towards someone, but we call it the same. Is there another word that exists for it?
There are emotions that in English are labeled “love” which are selflessness-yearning or aspiring and there are emotions also termed “love” in English that are egotistic. The second is the easier type to demarcate: It is a strictly egocentric affinity wherein that which one loves is loved solely for its instrumental value, particularly, to oneself. Love of money is an example. When and if it is no longer useful to one’s literally selfish interests, it then loses all value relative to oneself. People can love other people in this same way; it is often enough associated with a sense of possessing an objectified other as one’s property. Much like a trophy, one here feels one can do as one pleases with the other, whose value is, again, solely instrumental to oneself. In contrast, selflessness-aspiring love is where, for example, one will willingly self-sacrifice for the other even without anybody else finding out about it - it’s not done for the egotistic reason of being praised as being a good boy/girl by others. Love of children tends to be, or at least is supposed to be, of this second generalized emotive form. At any rate, this second type of love wherein, for example, two hearts can be said to grow into one over an extended span of time (gaining common affinities, understanding of the world, etc.) is the more difficult to philosophically demarcate. This is in part because while it can be qualified as selflessness-aspiring, it yet consists of two or more (as can be exemplified by loving families) egos, each with its own egocentric needs and wants.
Despite the difficulties in finding accurate demarcation, the distinction between these two forms of emotion, both often termed “love”, seems to me rather evident. Covetousness to possess, be it money or some other person, is a bogus form of love; despite it being common enough to say that many people love money, I don’t know of any that would self-sacrifice for the well-being of the money they love. Whereas one would self-sacrifice for the well-being of kids, parents, friends, lovers, etc. if one happened to love them in non-bogus manners. As another example, when someone kills their partner upon finding that their partner no longer want to stay in the relationship, we sometimes term this “a crime of passion” but never “a crime of love”—I take it because it’s generally understood by non-psychopaths that if the first genuinely loved the second they would not have murdered the latter.
So, while I can’t speak for Wayfarer or for others that believe they get Wayfarer’s general comment of:
Quoting Wayfarer
... I do find that any emotion which could be termed “love” whose rationale is that of satisfying egocentric interests will be a false form of love, will be a perversion rather than the real thing. Love—be it for cats stuck in trees, for someone whom one also happens to have the hots for, or for humanity at large—will always open up one’s ego so that it in some way incorporates the egos of other, i.e. will make one more selfless than otherwise such that the other’s states of being become in some way incorporated into one’s own. Else expressed in terms others have mentioned, love unifies. One as a psyche does not unify with the money (nor with the ice-cream, etc.) one loves.
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This as background to the following:
My own general take is that the rational to (genuine) love is to bring egos into a closer proximity to a selfless state of being relative to each other. The smaller the egos - which divide by rationing the world into self and others - the greater the unity of psyches that can be gained via their closer proximity to selflessness.
If this is disagreed with, I’d like to hear why.
If not disagreed with, then this relevant question ensues: What rationale can the earnest human inclination to approach a state of selfless being hold other than the state of selfless being itself?
To say that the state of selfless being is instrumentally beneficial—hence, that it is not its own (inherent) rationale—is to make its benefit egocentric in some manner; this then thereby nullifies the reality of it being a selfless state of being whose proximity one as ego intends to approach or to maintain.
I believe I understand your point. However, every ego is ego. In other words, everyone has one. It is inescapable in so far as we only have access to our own experience/consciousness and have to infer what others experience through analogy to our own. This will ultimately fail at least some of the time. To me, love is understanding and acceptance of another for their faults and virtues and striving not to control them. This is difficult when it comes to raising children, but children always grow into adults, and the adults they become happens regardless of parenting style or technique (largely).
Parents, teach your children well. Children, teach your parents well.
I in no way disagree with this. We often use absolutes in qualifying people, as in “that person is selfish” and “that person is selfless”. If a person, for one example, speaks at least one language, they then can’t be purely selfish—for they then hold some aptitude for integrating what goes on in the minds of other egos with their own (hope this shorthand argument is sufficient to make the point of there not being such a thing as absolute selfishness). Conversely, regardless of how selfless a person might be by comparison to others, by mere virtue of being a self separate from at least some other selves, they will hold some ego-centric interests that, for example, will conflict with those of some others—as you say, they thereby will yet hold some egocentricity due to being egos and, hence, will not be perfectly selfless.
I, though, am a non-physicalist and, as a pivotal part of what makes me so, I hold the belief in there being such a metaphysical given as an absolute state of selfless being. Not quite a Platonist notion of “the Good”, but to me close enough to warrant mention.
Didn’t, and don’t, intend for the discussion to get too metaphysical. I in part gave the post because I am genuinely curious to discover if there are meaningful disagreements with this:
Quoting javra
Still, the question I posed to me seems to stand as a logical enigma, if nothing else. Selflessness cannot (it seems to me) have any other rationale than itself—otherwise it would be selfish interests rather than selfless interests. (BTW, this to me does not in any way contradict the Darwinian evolution of love as sentiment among more intelligent and social animals, with its culminating pinnacle being so far found in (some) humans.)
I seriously doubt it is possible for a self to be truly selfless. Unless, of course, you believe in Jesus Christ... but even his opponents find fault with him.
Even Mother Theresa was an attention seeker.
Your statement is your assertion that your moral judgement (specifically as to what is and is not justified) supersedes the subject of your statement.
Now you are not incorrect in that as long as you understand that you're talking about justification to you according to your moral sense. Indeed your moral judgement is the only one you have available and you should use it by the very definition of "should".
But be aware also that other agents out there are likewise judging and justifying their (and my) actions according to their own moral sense and adjudicating what is and is not justified thereby.
This is our state from the start. We become civilized as we integrate into our individual ethos the realization of our social selves. That striving directly toward our goals and judgement of what is good will lead us into conflict. We come to understand that through compromise and cooperation we can ... well you can fill in the rest.
BTW It also sounds like you are conflating moral judgement with moral condemnation. That judgement can likewise be praise. But your point is well taken IMNSHO with regard to the precepts not themselves being judgements but rather statements of values which must be interpreted and applied to specific actions and choices. And they too must be judged as to their worth to those who consider whether to adopt or reject them.
Again adopting the position of moral agnosticism or rather moral anarchy, wherein each individual has his own moral sense. Take a simplistic example that, for the most part, the majority of living individuals are likely to each have a moral sense that their own individual annihilation would be a bad thing. From an evolutionary perspective this seems a good bet.
As such we should each according to that ethic cooperate to disincentivize killing for personal gain. As a purely pragmatic cooperative agreement we would establish customs to deal with occurrences of homicide. We may even adopt a public assertion of absolute moral judgement even though at its root it there is no external source of this value beyond the beliefs and judgements of the individuals in that society (according to my premise).
So this is, to my thinking, how we generate public statements of formally objective moral values.
But I bring up this example mainly for context. For the less universally held values we can distinguish others we run into along our winding road of existence who more or less share our common values and are more or less capable to cooperate with us to achieve said values. That recognition of kinship of values beyond any arbitrary but objective circumstances leads us to value them in and of themselves. That to me is the root of love in the form of agape.
But I would also argue that the strongest common ethic among us is that moral value of life and procreation. It is bred into us. Or rather it is the fundamental evolutionary function of our moral consciousness. As such our strongest love is directed toward the mate with whom we can promote our own shared values and our prosperity through shared risk and shared labor. Ultimately it is our means to generate new life and new moral actors in the world through procreation and nurturing of our progeny. This gives a form of immortality to our moral will. We instill in our children those values we would see actualized beyond our lifespan.
No. Ethical principles are an attempt to guide morality, to ensure one’s behaviour will be judged ‘morally good’. It’s a common misunderstanding of ethical principles that they provide a reason to judge and condemn other people by how we perceive their thinking as well as their actions.
I can see now why you include thinking as subject to moral judgement - when thinking is perceived as a conscious and deliberate act, then it too is guided by ethical principles. When we are aware of how we think and how we can adjust our thinking, then we can apply these principles to our thoughts as well as our actions to ensure our words and our behaviour will be judged as ‘morally good’.
But the aim of ethical principles is preceptive - they instruct us to predict, evaluate and alter the motives or internal causal conditions of our thoughts BEFORE we think or act. When we don’t believe we have this capacity, when we consider certain thoughts to be indicative of a predetermined or ‘fixed will’, then there is no distinction made between an action, a thought and the person who thinks. So these principles are used to judge and condemn (or praise) people by their thoughts and actions.
For “honour your mother and father”, for instance, to be a moral judgement in itself, not only does it assert that they OUGHT to honour them, but it also assumes that to honour them is GOOD and to fail at it is BAD, regardless of intention. So if we observe or predict behaviour or thinking that doesn’t demonstrate honour for one’s mother and father, then do we judge the behaviour, the lack of honour or thinking in the person, or do we judge the person who would fail to honour? It’s not so clear, is it?
If, however, the precept “honour your mother and father” is an expression of ethical principle and NOT a moral judgement, then it is the specific behaviour that fails to honour when judged against this principle, and the person is empowered to change or correct the failed behaviour without being defined or condemned by judgement.
The ridiculousness of the Ten Commandments as ‘moral judgement’ is even demonstrated by Jesus, who says that ‘if your eye causes you to sin’ then you should ‘cut it out’ rather than be condemned for ‘adultery’. He upholds them as ethical principles, but challenges the interpretation of them by the Pharisees as judgements in themselves.
The Ten Commandments as stated are expressions of ethical principles. Moral judgements (eg. that a particular behaviour is ‘good’ or ‘bad’) are evaluations of behaviour according to ethical principles.
I wouldn’t worry too much about it. They got sick of me a long time ago. Lol
This is still a limited view of love, and a limited view of our capacity as humans. It can be equally applied, without much adjustment, to pretty much any social animal. Humans, however, have a capacity to love in such a way that we would freely give up this life that we value out of fear, or the chance at procreation, to relate to a much broader sense of existence than the next generation. This is the foundation of religious thought, philosophy and science: to relate to the infinite universe as an integral participant.
Evolutionary function is far from fundamental. We are inspired by something more inherent than ‘survival value’ to increase awareness, connection and collaboration with the world around us. If not for fear, we would realise our capacity to love without limitations.
When would suicide (self-murder) be anything other than a selfish act? One seeks to escape pain, conceives of death as a perfect liberation from all pain via the actualization of non-being, and then kills oneself without any consideration for the repercussions this will hold for others. Sometimes suicide can be understandable; even then, it still remains a selfish act.
Of course a person jumping onto a grenade which others are standing near to is open to interpretation. But if the person jumps on the grenade out of concern, hence love, for others’ wellbeing, this it is then commonly deemed to be a selfless act and, hence, not a suicide. If, however, the person jumps on the grenade to ensure he/she will quickly die, this out of a want to die that is indifferent to the wellbeing of others, then his/her intentions would be at once both selfish and suicidal.
Self-sacrifice that is by default done out of love does not equate to suicide—but is in many ways the converse.
An expression of an ethical principle is an expression of a moral judgement. So, if "honour your mother and father" is an expression of an ethical principle, it is also an expression of that very same moral judgement. You are only trying to create an unnecessary separation between a moral judgement and an ethical principle. If someone claims, or believes that such and such type of activity is good and desirable, and therefore ought to be established as an ethical principle, this is a moral judgement, plain and simple. A moral judgement is a judgement as to what is good or bad in human character. It is not necessarily a judgement of particular action, but mat also be a judgement of a general principle. If not, then what type of judgement is this, when we judge a general principle concerning goodness or badness of human acts??
Quoting Possibility
This actually exemplifies my point. A person, like Jesus or anyone else, might pass judgement on an established ethical principle, as to whether the principle is acceptable or not. This judgement would be a moral judgement. And since ethical principles are upheld by convention, agreement concerning such moral judgements, (the ethical principles) are simply an expression of consensus on moral judgements.
The definition of a ‘principle’: a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behaviour or for a chain of reasoning.
There are two different value structures interrelating here. One is linguistic: that grammar, syntax and semantics (as values) correlate to signify meaning. There is no judgement in the statement: “honour your mother and father” - nothing at all to say what is good or bad, per se. Any implication of judgement is assumed by an interpretation of the statement that derives meaning from its relation to a moral value system.
As an ethical principle, the statement “honour your mother and father” serves as a foundation for a moral system of evaluating behaviour. Judgement is implied or has meaning only by relation to a moral value system - without this relation, there is no judgement in the statement as such.
This is what I’m getting at. “Honour your mother and father” has meaning regardless of any moral value, as well as the capacity to guide behaviour to what is judged as ‘moral’ without the implication of moral judgement.
Moral judgement has nothing to do with character - it has to do with how we relate to a demonstration of character. Any judgement is a process of reducing the broad range of interrelated ‘value’ information available in human experience down to a single, subjective binary relation to an event.
What I’m saying is that there is so much more to the principle “honour your mother and father”, to human relations and to ‘love’ than a subjective binary relation to an event. By exploring the different ways we each reduce this interrelated value information, we get an idea of the irreducibility of human experience that renders ‘moral judgement’ an inaccurate and dangerously limited perspective of reality.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I’m not sure that it does. Jesus deliberately didn’t pass judgement on these ethical principles at all. He simply pointed out that these moral judgements by the Pharisees were incongruous with our own human experience.
I think love is beyond good and evil. To say love is a moral judgment is to exclude, in my opinion, some individuals from love, based on them lacking/possessing moral qualities that either extinguish/evoke love. I don't think love is like that for love, in its most exalted form, the form that is true, is both infinite and unconditional. Being innfinite, it loves all; being unconditional it is beyond all judgment, moral or otherwise.
You cannot see that this is an "ought" statement, and is therefore the expression of a judgement? Any time I say "you ought to do..." I am expressing a judgement. The statement is saying that honouring your mother and father has been judged as good, therefore you ought to do it.
Perhaps you are interpreting it as a command instead of a statement of what one ought to do. Nevertheless, it is still the expression of a judgement. If I command you to do this, or not to do that, the statement is a representation of my will, what I want from you. This implies that to get what I want, you must act in such a way. So there is necessarily a judgement inherent within the expression, I want such and such, and to get that, you must act accordingly. Therefore I am telling you to fulfill my command. I have judged that this is necessary in order for me to get what I want., as explained above
Quoting Possibility
You are missing a crucial part of the picture.. A "moral value system", what I would call a "code of ethics" receives its meaning from moral judgements. Evaluating behaviour may be done relative to such a system, but we must account for the creation of the system as well. The system, or code of ethics, is created by moral judgements as well. So we have two types of moral judgements, those which create the value structure (general principles), and those judgements of individual human actions (particulars) as good or bad. Since the general principles are created from judgements of what is good and bad in human actions, character, or disposition, we cannot deny that these are moral judgements, as well as the judgements of particular human actions in relation to the code of ethics.
Quoting Possibility
Well, this is clearly false. "Meaning" implies what was meant by the author of the statement. "Honour your mother and father" has meaning either as what one ought to do, or as a command of what one must do. As such, the meaning exists relative to the end, what is desired by the author of the statement. Therefore there is necessarily a judgement on the part of the author, as to what is wanted from the audience, and this is a moral judgement. Without this judgement "honour your mother and father" would have some other meaning, as neither a statement of "ought" nor a command of what is requested, so the statement would loose the meaning which it has.
Quoting Possibility
This is clearly false as well. And I really shouldn't have to point this out to you. It makes me wonder about your education. First definition in my OED, moral: "concerned with goodness or badness of human character or behaviour, or with the distinction between right and wrong". I really don't know where you have derived such false ideas from.
Quoting Possibility
The opposite to this is what is really the case. You have proposed a very dangerously limiting perspective of morality, which renders human experience as unintelligible.
Quoting Possibility
That an ethical principle is incongruous with our experience, is a judgement. Check out what Jesus said about washing hands for instance. If you do not think that this is a passing of judgement on that ethical principle, then I think you are extremely confused.
Quoting TheMadFool
You are speaking here of Love as an ideal. I am thinking of love as it is practiced by mortal individuals. The narcissist loves those who focus on them because their ethic is whatever promotes their self importance. That might be both friends and enemies. But it isn't infinite and it isn't beyond good and evil.
Let me add also that your description of love is love as you seek to practice it guided by your own ethic. If your description is honest then it would seem you are saying you exalt (figuratively) "Satan and all his works" since you withhold your moral judgement. More likely, I suppose, you see love applied only to the ideals of those individual to which they may be redeemed. But still that is a moral ideal. Or am I mischaracterizing your position?
I agree with your first sentence here and in fact exclaim that it is a critical point. However I wouldn't classify it into types in this way. It is here that I see morality as transcendent (in the technical sense rather than mystical metaphysical sense), in that it is reflexive and able to build upon itself more than was there before.
I believe where love comes into play is when along the process of evolution our ancestors developed sufficient neuro-chemical complexity to experience anticipatory emotions such as hope and fear which anticipate, respectively, sensations of pleasure and pain. The sensations are a more direct "ethic" wired into our structure, the emotions provide a built in system of abstraction applying to what we anticipate as good or bad in this immediate sense. Then as we evolved more abstract learning and memory and time sense and we are able to recognize and empathize others of our kind (in the broad sense of other goal seeking agents) we learn to love those agents we identify as kith and kin.
With regard to types:
I would assert that our structure of moral principles are no different (in type) from our structure of causal principles and our world model. Once we act upon a value system we are already in a hypothetical mode. We are extrapolating the effects of our potential actions utilizing an object model of our environment and understanding of behavior utilizing rules of interaction. It is "principles" all the way down insofar as we treat it cognitively.
In other words our value structure is just like, and in fact a part of our reality structure, a dynamic growing system which we continuously update as we experience our environment and categorize into people and things.
Even what we think of as "(particulars)" are abstracted to a sufficient degree that we can't easily categorize them as distinct from generalizations although we can probably order the degree of abstraction. I think you see this in its deficit in autistic children. They are less able to generalize across the changes in their environment. We do this even with what we consider concrete objects like the chair I'm sitting in. I still recognize it as the same chair from day to day even as the scuffs and stains increase and as it changes position and orientation from day today.
Doesnt that imply that you can love and hate something simultaneously? If so, you want at the same time to get closer and move away from it? Does that makes sense?
Thinking about it, i came to the impression that, instead of "hate" and "tolerance", maybe "activity" and "passivity" would better describe the horizontal corners of the diagram, since you can like something but not adopt any attittude towards it or like it and adopt attittudes about it. Same goes for fear, wich maybe could give the following perspective about a new definition of hate: hate is fear combined with activity.
As you later qualified, we should consider cases, but here I would questions some of the nuances of the term "selfish". I agree it is selfish=not thinking of others but that is not the same as selfish=seeking one's own interest above others. I also don't think most suicides are directly escapes from pain per se. Rather they are acts of despair (which may well be induced by sustained pain).
But there is no denying that the suicide, the intentional premeditated suicide who has no belief that he is not actually going to die but rather "cross over into another existence" has placed the value of a future in which he exists below the value of a future where he is absent. Pure selflessness in the second sense. Indeed one often sees in last communications either assertions like "you'll be better off without me" or in the other extreme "life is evil and I'm going to take as many with me as possible when I go".
Well, it's true that there's a gap between theory and practice - my description of what love is far removed from reality. Yet, aren't we all, all as in every single one of us, engaged in fierce battle against unforgiving nature?
Why do I say this?
Simply because, in spite of being part of nature, we humans have the ability not only, through reason, to know the facts of reality as in what is but also, through imagination, to realize what ought to be. Our imagination opens a window to another world - a world as it ought to be; like a poor man who gazes out of his window and envies the wealth of his rich neighbor, we imagine perfect worlds different to the one we actually live in. In these perfect worlds, all that exist in the actual world are themselves perfected: perfect husbands, perfect cars, perfect governments, and, relevant to this discussion, perfect love. My definition of love was an attempt to comprehend what love in a perfect world, the world we all imagine, would look like.
Contrast this imagined perfection to the world we actually live in; the actual world, at best is different, at worst is less (than ideal). The way the actual world is is presented to us as facts, truths, reality. Thus we find ourselves in a struggle: a struggle between imagined ideals and brute facts, between what ought to be and what is, between perfect selfless love and real narcissitic love.
What is apparent to me is that we seem to consider the actual world as a sculptor looks at a block of stone, material to work on with the imagined perfect world as the sculpture, the ultimate goal. We're not satisfied with what is and want to rework things so they may become what they ought to be. The same applies to love I guess: yes, love, actual love is narcissistic but we're dissatisfied with it and want to perfect it into what love ought to be, if that's possible.
If I understand correctly, you are distinguishing here between the anticipation of sensations, and the sensations themselves. Where I have difficulty is that the sensations themselves are provided to us by our capacity to sense. The capacity to sense exists in an anticipatory relation to actually sensing. So the anticipation of sensation is prior to sensation in a more absolute way than you describe, and cannot develop from sensation. In this way we can see that sensation itself is formed and modified (evolves) through the influence of the anticipation of sensation rather than trying to understand such anticipation as having emerged from sensation. Our capacity to sense, and therefore also the sensations which we do have, have been shaped through evolution by our anticipation of good and bad. From this perspective, the direct ethic which is wired into our structure is the judgement of good and bad, and our systems for sensation have evolved under influence of this.
Quoting jambaugh
I agree with this completely, and that's why I was arguing against Possible's position which was an attempt to create a separation within the value structure. If you understand what I wrote above, you'll see that it is a perspective well suited to what you describe here. We might find that the "hypothetical mode" extends right to the most simple life forms. The actions of simple life forms are often represented as reactions to their environment. However, we might see that even simple life forms are presented with choices, and what appears like a reaction to the environment is actually a very basic form of choice, as to what is good.
So the capacity to "model our environment", and have "potential actions", requires that we have an underlying capacity to distinguish good. What appears to us as a "reaction" by a simple life form is really a judgement of good, a movement of choice by that living being. And so there are "principles all the way down" as even the simple life form acts on principle.
Quoting jambaugh
I believe that understanding of "the particular" is what emerges, and develops through evolution. To see something as a particular requires that we individuate that thing, distinguish it from its environment. This probably develops from self-recognition, recognizing that oneself is a distinct individual. So we apprehend the individual being as an individual self, through understanding the principles described above, that one makes one's own choices of activity, and this separates one being from another, as a particular, individual self.
The being is as you say, in hypothetical mode, acting on principles all the way down to its very basic level of existence, but then this being comes to recognize that it is nothing other than an individual, a particular, which is carrying out those activities. So the assumption of a "particular" comes about as a sort of logical necessity. And, since it is demonstrability the case that existence of the particular, individual being, is a necessary requirement, as the specific creature which is operating through the use of the general principles, the particular is understood as more fundamental than the universal. With this recognition, and realization that the particular individual is the base, we develop a completely different approach to the nature of "love" and its importance. No longer can we assume love as basic, underlying our existences as beings, a thing or principle, which unites us all fundamentally, such that we might take love for granted. There is no such fundamental principle, only individuals, fundamentally, each developing one's own principles of action, from the bottom. Therefore we must see love as something which must be cultured and nurtured, developed, if we want such a unity amongst us.
Quoting TheMadFool
This is a manifestation of the difference between the illusion that general principles, principles of ethics or whatever theoretical principles one wishes to follow (even mathematics), are fundamental features of reality, and the true reality, that individuals, particulars are the fundamental features of reality. Once we recognize that actions within the world are the true reality of the world, and there is a gap between practise (our actions in the world), and theory, which cannot be adequately closed, we can realize that the claimed reality of general principles is an illusion.
I didn't mean to suggest that you could love and hate at the same time, as on this account love is "active-positive" and hate is "active-negative" (while tolerance is "passive-positive" and fear is "passive-negative"). Though now that you bring up that possibility, that does seem to be a thing that happens in real life, as in for example anxious-ambivalent attachment. I don't really know how to account for that yet on this model.
Someone else upthread suggested that "tolerance" is not really the right word for the opposite of "hate", and your use of "passivity" for one end of the second dimension of the spectrum makes me reflect on that. I'm still not sure what the best word would be, but I'm thinking something in the direction of "acceptance" or "welcoming", but more positive than that: the feeling of passively waiting and hoping that something good comes to you, as opposed to actively going after it yourself, which I've labelled "love".
Your statement is ambiguous, so I'll ask: How does this compare to the semantics of the term selfish as, for example, listed on Wiktionary?:
Quoting https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/selfish
My basic claim is that (genuine, human) love is an un-selfish activity (this in degrees). But I don’t know how to go about things if we happen to disagree on the semantics of selfish. For instance:
Quoting jambaugh
Your presenting this to be "pure selflessness" is to me a nonsensical conclusion. For one issue, selflessness pertains to being, rather than to nonexistence and nonexistent givens - desiring to not be cannot of itself be a selfless desire, for selfless desires value the preservation and thriving of beings. As one example, a mass-murderer putting scores of people "out of their misery" by murdering them is not engaged in selfless love for these people, for their friends and family, nor for humanity at large (despite maybe being self-deluded into so believing). But I can see how this can quickly get bogged down in semantics and presumptions.
More philosophically asked, are you equating an idealized pure selfless being to nonexistence and, hence, to non-being? If so, how would this not be a logical contradiction: i.e., some given both is and is not at the same time and* in the same respect.
[* edit: this if the two underlined givens can in any way be deemed to be bound by time and, hence, temporal - here recognizing that at at least one level of contemplation, neither given can be deemed to be temporal]
There is often an implicit assumption in comparing egoistic vs altruistic orientations. That is that value is a zero sum game. This is partly because one adopts an objective model of value.
So the distinction I was trying to make was between the attitudes:
"I'll act towards my own prosperity, and it's no skin off my nose if others prosper, even if they have it better than me."
vs
"I'll take what I can get and pull down anyone else since where they prosper I lose something and where they are impoverished there's more available for me!"
As to the suicide (deluded into thinking there's a better afterlife) the motivation is selfish. The result is self destructive. The error is due to ignorance and leads the actor away from his goal.