From: holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes)
Subject: Re: WHAT IS LOVE?
Organization: Boise State University Math Dept.
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 15:28:57 GMT

In article <1992Sep10.021318.4445@a.cs.okstate.edu> onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR) writes:
>From article <1992Sep4.154454.19349@guinness.idbsu.edu>, by holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes):
>> In article <1992Sep4.035939.17938@a.cs.okstate.edu> onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR) writes:
>>>From article <1992Sep2.125759.16731@mips2.ma30.bull.com>, by fjc@mips2.ma30.bull.com (Frank Casper):
>
>RH(Randall Holmes): 
>> I did not come up with "policy" because "God" makes me feel
>> uncomfortable and I needed a replacement.  I consider the
>> identification of "God" with "love" to be incoherent.
>> 
>> [theistic mode ON]
>> 
>> Certainly God "loves" the world (and notice that this "love" is
>> disinterested and not an emotion; God does not have emotions!); He
>> "takes care of it" (not necessarily for _our_ sake).  But God is not
>> the attribute of "loving"; God is the attribute of "being".  If God is
>> to be identified with a relation rather than a predicate, I would
>> think that the appropriate one is the universal relation (the one
>> which everything has to everything else); this is not love.
>> 
>> [theistic mode OFF]
>
>CO:
>
>  Then perhaps what Paul wrote in Corinthians is more a description of
>"Being"(in the timeless sense) than that of "love."
>
>  Also, in terms of God as love and relationship in a "love" situation
>consider this:  Some scholars, such as Heschel, argue that the idea of
>a "covenant" with God is evidence that "God needs people."
>
>RH:
> 
>> The notion of God introduced in the bracketed text should be
>> understood to be a philosophical notion.
>> 
>
>CO:
>>>Perhpaps what is most important is not the simple divorcing of emotions
>>>from love, but the accepting of other emotions as love as well.  For
>>>some reason, love as happiness and love as "being burned" are priveleged
>>>and this privilege is subject to revision.  It seems to me that whenever
>>>love is view upon this very dichotamy, of happiness and "being burned,"
>>>we are dealing more with the "healing" aspects of love from shame.  The
>>>problem being, of course, that love does not "heal" in and of itself.
>> 
>> If healing were involved, the lover is interested in healing the
>> beloved, not himself.  Actual attempts to benefit the beloved or
>> protect the beloved from harm are evidence of love, not tender
>> feelings (these could be merely sentimentality without love); this is
>> what I am driving at when I say that love is _not_ an emotion at all,
>> but a way of acting (a policy).  Emotional heat is not a necessary
>> condition for love (although it may be a cause of love or even an
>> effect of its operation), and may even interfere with its effective
>> action.
>
>  Be careful here.  If the healing that is going on is thought of in terms
>of shame, then the act of protection of the loved is an attempt to
>reverse the shame.  All goes well 'till the loved is not protected 
>any longer. 
>
>  Also, I am inclined to agree with you that love is a policy,
>but I am not sure that you can, phenomenologically anyway, divorce it
>from feelings.   Just because "feelings" are not necessarily required
>in the "loving mode" does not imply that the "loving mode" necessarily
>exists without feelings.

I don't think that love exists without feelings _in practice, for us_.
But I do not think that feelings are either a necessary or sufficient
condition for love.  This could become significant if we were talking
about nonhumans (alien intelligent beings, artifical intelligences, or
God).

>
>
>BCnya,
>  Charles O. Onstott, III
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Charles O. Onstott, III  Account at Oklahoma State University for summer.
>Graduate Student in Religious Studies           onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu
>University of Chicago
> 
>"N'y pensez pas, n'y pensez pas, n'y pensez pas trop"
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>


-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta