4 ms·
The issue of love's notorious inconsistency is especially damaging to using it as a foundation of an ethical system. If I acted when I loved something and then
by roenxi 1y ago
The issue of love's notorious inconsistency is especially damaging to using it as a foundation of an ethical system. If I acted when I loved something and then decided later on that I didn't love it and would make a different choice, which frame of mind do I use to evaluate the morality of the decision?
Philosophers have pretty much torn love apart as a basis for an ethical framework. It is true we're all very biased and love plays a role in how we perceive but morality has to be based on slightly more objective concepts like fairness, evidence and precedence that we have a chance of evaluating consistently when our feelings change.
- osullivj 1y agoYes. Love is mammal behaviour. I know my hind brain is telling me to love my kids. Do you know your own mind?
- JimmyBuckets 1y agoI think it is unfortunate that you should pick examples of poor behaviour in our species and use it to justify your opinions. Pure, selfless love does exist. The fact people fail to live up to it at all times is an existentialist question. But the failure does not support what you are saying. How we raise our children, the values we enshrine in our culture and the skills we prioritize are levers through which we can move substantially closer to a practical love-derived morality. Saying that we haven't achieved something cannot be used as evidence of its impossibility, as much as we would like to. I agree that in stressful moments people can fail to live up to an ideal. And in those cases it is useful to rely on rubrics. But the article in question is about the origin of morals. And thus I say again, the origin of morality, whether intuited, codified or otherwise, is love. The main point is that love isn't an emotion. When love is present it can be felt in the body, but it also modifies thought.