From: cash@convex.com (Peter Cash)
Subject: Re: WHAT IS LOVE?
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 04:00:46 GMT
Organization: The Instrumentality
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In article <1992Sep11.224758.34203@Cookie.secapl.com> frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:
>I think a lot of the confusion on this topic comes from the assumption
>"feelings are transient".  I think this assumption is wrong.

>Some feelings are indeed transient.  Others are very deeply ingrained and
>last a lifetime.  And yet others fill in the spectrum in between.
...

So you're saying that the impulse to reject the proposition that "love is a
feeling" comes from a misguided notion about feelings: we're mistakenly
thinking about feelings as something necessarily transitory (and therefore
trivial).

I think you have something there. As I said last time, I'm not all too sure
of what "feelings" are anymore, and you're reinforcing that conviction. I
think that at least some of the things I've said about love in this thread
may be due to this mistaken notion about feelings that I've been operating
with. I have no business denying that love is a feeling (though I'm not
affirming it either.)

What are the occasions on which we talk about feelings?

>Examples of feelings which are in between: I will fairly often have a desire
>to eat some particular food.  This desire can last up to a week or so (or
>until fulfilled), but will not generally last much longer.  (Of course, it
>changes character when I'm not hungry; but the essential desire to eat that
>particular food is "I'd like to have that soon", not "I'd like to have that
>right now".  In fact, I can have a desire for a food, be hungry, and yet not
>want that food now -- for example, if it is a dessert and I'm having
>breakfast.)

Is this a feeling? Can you imagine yourself saying, "Hm, I have a feeling
for baklava"? Doesn't sound right, does it? "I have the feeling that I want
some baklava?--No. You want baklava, you have a hankering for it; you crave
that honey-dripping thousand-layered baklava...But I can't focus on this
example in such a way as to see it as an example of "feeling". 

>A desire for some more complex experience, like "visit Europe", may last
>many years.  

Again, "I have a feeling to see Europe" doesn't do it for me. But I do
think I can imagine a case in which the desire to see a certain place could
be tantamount to a feeling--or bound up with feelings. Perhaps it's the
place of your birth, or the place where you first fell in love. (Oops,
looks like we're in danger of reverting to our first question!)

Yes, I could imagine myself saying, "Sometimes I'm overcome by this feeling
of terrible nostalgia for Munich. So many of my childhood memories are
bound up with the place. The sunny parks where I used to read in the shade
of the trees; and when I got tired of that, I would lie for hours, looking
up at the sun through the leaves, daydreaming. And then (when I was a bit
older), there were the beer gardens...ah yes! And the beer! And the
sausages! And then I think about Eva, the buxom blonde beer-waitress at the
Hirschgarten, and my eyes grow damp."

That does seem to be a bona fide case of "feeling," doesn't it? And this
feeling could last--or at least frequently recur for many years (thus
supporting Frank's point). Note that this "feeling" is a pretty complicated
thing--it's not just a twinge in the gut, or a momentary impulse. It's also
interesting that some other elements, some of which we've talked about
before, occur together with this feeling--such as gustatory delights, lust
under the chestnut trees, and pleasant childhood memories. But the feeling
is much more than any of these elements.

>Or I may have a fondness for my car for a few years, but not
>care about after I get rid of it.  (Sometimes people do continue to care,
>but the point is that they may not.)

Yes, I can buy that--it's pretty easy to see how some people have feelings
about their cars, or how riding in a certain car can make you feel a
certain way--and how these feelings could last for years. 

>I think all of these things, as well as the various types of love, hate,
>fear, etc., are all feelings; it is the idea that "feelings are
>[necessarily] transitory" that is wrong.

Yes, I do think you're right. While I still can't talk with any confidence
about the nature of love--or of feelings--I do think that I'm less confused
about this than I was before. And in philosophy, that's progress.


-- 
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             |      Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist.     |
Peter Cash   |       (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein)      |cash@convex.com
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