From: holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: WHAT IS LOVE?
Date: 4 Sep 92 15:28:15 GMT
Organization: Boise State University Math Dept.

In article <1992Sep3.201518.18181@mips2.ma30.bull.com> fjc@mips2.ma30.bull.com (Frank Casper) writes:
>Peter Cash writes:
>>I'm more than a little mystified by this. I'm not just confused about what
>>you're saying to clear things up; I'm confused about what is being cleared
>>up. When we talk about emotions, are we talking about feelings? Why or why
>>not? I don't know how to think about this. Am I supposed to be able to
>>think about it?
>
>As a follow up to my last post on this subject I'd like to venture the observation
>that these are curious questions given the debate in this group about the 
>epistemological status of "objective reality".

Of course, what we really need to worry about is the _metaphysical_
status of _reality_.  There is too much epistemology going around.
(Thus the proliferation of "subjectivity" and "objectivity").

 I don't mean to impune ideas
>and opinions to Peter. I don't know what his views are on these issues. But
>on the whole it seems that the majority view is at best agnostic about knowledge
>of the "external world".

Consider this part of the minority report.  But strike the word
"external" (without replacing it with anything else).

  Correlate that with one dominate tendency of this
>particular thread, that love,  like everything else, is wholly "subjective", but
>not something we seem to know much about, than one could get the idea that
>we know next to nothing about either our "subjective" or "objective" 
>experience. 

We should think about what we know (reliably or not so reliably)
before we worry too much about how we know it (epistemology should be
a critical activity, not the basic activity).  Otherwise we will never
get to the point where we know anything.  Exorcising the terms
"subjective" and "objective" is a good place to start.

That is why Peter's question as to whether we are supposed
>to be able to think about this stuck me so. 

He asked the question, so he was certainly thinking about it!

I mean,  as I read this thread and
>the debate about the "external world", I'm struck that as a culture, if I 
>can be that broad, we don't seem to allow that we know how to think about
>either our outer or inner "worlds".  

It would be nice to return to the common-sense view that there is
simply "the world".

If true,  and there is reason to think
>so, that kind of disconnect sounds like a fairly serious moral
crisis. 

It is exactly that.

That,
>it seems to me, is why we should be able to think about this.  It concerns
>the very simple but profound issue of what it is we share.  

Not all love is sharing.  I differ from most of the debaters in
regarding the love of parents for their children as the most
informative case (it is arguable whether the children _share_ with the
parents).  The case of love between current or prospective sex
partners is too complicated with other factors; it would be better to
start with less complex forms of friendship even when considering
mutual love.

I don't mind
>starting with what seems to be the dominate model for thinking about
>the world, ie, the model of quantum physics .  I don't pretend to understand
>the science of it, but it apparently  leaves many wondering whether we can 
>think about anything resembling mutuality.  

I reiterate one of my mottoes: quantum physics has nothing to say to
philosophy, except for the bare fact that it is not a strictly
deterministic theory.  I am open to the idea that the peculiar
statistical mechanisms of quantum mechanics may have some _technical_
logical interest (but not in the sense that they "refute" calssical
two-valued logic), but I have yet to be convinced of this (I am a
professional logician).  Certainly nothing about QM makes "mutuality"
a problematic notion -- if anything, the reverse, since QM is the
first physical theory to _explain_ interactions between particles.

But I take Whitehead to
>be the guide here,  that philosophy is explanatory of abstraction, and not
>of concreteness. In other words, it is the business of philosophy to explain 
>how the more abstract things emerge from the more concrete things. 

But what if they don't?  What if "abstract" is a deceptive term (it
presupposes the notion that what I prefer to call "formal" objects are
obtained by a process of "abstraction" from concrete objects)?  What
if the "abstract" objects come first?  What if all objects, "abstract"
and concrete, are coeval?  What if the influences run both ways?  All
of these are philosophical questions which need to be answered before
you can say that this is the business of philosophy.

>
>fjc
>
>


-- 
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