From: CBURMAN@finabo.abo.fi ()
Subject: Love
Organization: The Clam of Reason Ltd.
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 17:37:21 GMT
X-News-Reader: VMS NEWS 1.20

daniel@vtserf.cc.vt.edu (Daniel Kranowski) wrote:

>    There are two opinions saying that love is not just a feeling.
>Chris Burman wrote:

Yes, and I'm racked by remorse...

>        I think the point is that when we talk of emotions, we aren't merely 
>        talking of how we feel. (I don't think it is wrong to say that emotions
>        are feelings - I just don't see what we add to our understanding of 
>        'emotion' by saying it.)
>And later wrote:
>        I seem to have thought of feelings as some kind of a state of mind, 
>        or as some certain inner sensations, or whatever. (I do have a little
>        problem with the words 'feeling', 'experience', 'sensation', 'emotion'.
>        My ear doesn't always tell me which is the correct one, and my 
>        dictionaries are only entertaining.) Someone might ask, "What are your
>        feelings towards NN?", and we might answer, "I hate his guts!" or 
>        (admittedly less probable), "I love her". And there is absolutely 
>        nothing wrong in speaking of feelings and love/hate in the same breath.

>So did you say 'emotions are more than feelings' because you thought that
>feelings, being a synonym of emotions, was not definitive enough?  If Yes
>to that, then you say love is an emotion and a feeling?  If No, then what
>else lies in the realm of love beyond feelings?

If I did say 'emotions are more than feelings' (I hope I didn't. I thought I 
didn't.) then I'm sorry. I was, as I tried to explain, lost in some obscure 
ideas that we always use the word 'feelings' about some inner sensations. We 
don't of course.I was also 'accidentally' trying to make some kind of an 
artificial difference between 'emotions' and 'feelings', I think. Inexcusable.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'did you [think] that feelings, being a synonym 
of emotions, was not definitive enough?'. All I meant to say was that love 
isn't necessarily something you feel (the way you can sometimes feel afraid, 
or nervous). But as I said, I was thinking of feeling as a state, event, 
experience, sensation (I don't know what), and said more than I ought to 
have said.

In an entirely different context you write:
>Wittgenstein's
>Brown Book concludes by saying that anything we do or say may provide
>a reaction from another person, but we can never know the true effect
>on that person.  That is because we simply are not that person, and
>never can be.  Empathy is the attempt to project one's mind into
>another's, but this is just a trick of one's own mind.  The skull is
>still the impenetrable barrier between our minds.  We can never know
>exactly and truly how the other person reacts and what he thinks, so
>we are forever limited to our own satisfaction.

The Brown Book discussion is admittedly a little messy on this point (too), 
but it seems to me that you have taken the last sections of para. 25 out of 
their context. Take a look at Phil. Investigations II,xi, esp. the second 
half of the section.

>Daniel Kranowski
>email: daniel@vtserf.cc.vt.edu



Chris Burman, cburman@abo.fi