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The folk metaphysics of love
Author(s) -
Carlsson Ulrika
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
european journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.42
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1468-0378
pISSN - 0966-8373
DOI - 10.1111/ejop.12398
Subject(s) - rationality , meaning (existential) , metaphysics , epistemology , quality (philosophy) , philosophy , interpretation (philosophy) , isolation (microbiology) , affect (linguistics) , psychology , linguistics , microbiology and biotechnology , biology
I argue against the intellectualist view of love according to which we (must) love for reasons so that love is rational. Engaging primarily with the quality appraisal view of love, I concede that qualities can cause love but insist that it is misguided to think of love as having reasons. A number of features of human psychology complicate the issue of how lover relates to beloved's qualities. (a) The lover may be attracted to a quality without appraising that quality reflectively. (b) Personal qualities are not perceived in isolation; rather, our assessment of one quality will affect how we perceive another. In fact, we tend to posit essences in persons, and these guide our interpretation of their other qualities. (c) We do not see persons as bundles of qualities but as unique wholes. This is due to our capacity to fetishize particulars, and it dispels the problem of fungibility. (d) We have a tendency to see meaning in things retrospectively—philosophers have mistaken this sense of meaning for rationality. The philosophical movement to incorporate love into rationality fails to recognize that there is a folk metaphysics built deep into our psyches that does not correspond to the worldview of contemporary philosophers.