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). — Pfhorrest
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? — Pfhorrest
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. — Wayfarer
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. — javra
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. — Noah Te Stroete
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. — javra
is your assertion that your moral judgement (specifically as to what is and is not justified) supersedes the subject of your statement.Passing moral judgement doesn't make it justified.
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? — Metaphysician Undercover
but I've been a bit hyperactive on that front and will wait a bit lest the forum members get sick of me. — jambaugh
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. — jambaugh
The self annihilating suicide could be considered as such [selfless, I mean]. — jambaugh
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. — Possibility
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. — Possibility
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?? — Metaphysician Undercover
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. — Metaphysician Undercover
I asserted that "Love is a moral judgement" which drew some responses. Let's hear some agreement/disagreement and alternative definitions if you would. — jambaugh
There is no judgement in the statement: “honour your mother and father” - nothing at all to say what is good or bad, per se. — Possibility
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. — Possibility
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. — Possibility
Moral judgement has nothing to do with character - it has to do with how we relate to a demonstration of character. — Possibility
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. — Possibility
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. — Possibility
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 infinite, it loves all; being unconditional it is beyond all judgment, moral or otherwise. — TheMadFool
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. — Metaphysician Undercover
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. — javra
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. — jambaugh
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. — jambaugh
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. — jambaugh
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. — jambaugh
Well, it's true that there's a gap between theory and practice - my description of what love is far removed from reality. — TheMadFool
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. — jambaugh
Selfish: 1) Holding one's own self-interest as the standard for decision making. 2) Having regard for oneself above others’ well-being. — https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/selfish
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. — jambaugh
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