Here is an itinerary for posts to come concerned with but not limited to the following topics:
- Love
- Truth
- Happiness
- Virtue
- Wisdom
- Theoretical Physics
- The existence of God
- Metaphysics as the science of first principles
- How and why magnets work
- Solutions to abstract mathematical paradoxes
Of course that's just the easy stuff ...
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But why not kick this blog off with a little argument I love to deliver in conversation to answer a question near and dear to my heart (reason) - what is love?
What is it? Love is sex and sex is love. Bottom line.
To put it a bit more clearly, but not nearly as absurdly, is that the act of sex is the actualization of love and that the desire for or progress towards the act of sex is the potentiality of love. In other words the moment of sex is the moment of love, and all the other times you aren't having sex you are desiring to have sex, and that is being in love.
Let's draw this out further to some logical conclusions:
1. Rape is love
2. Casual sex doesn't exist (instead it is casual love)
3. Pornography is an encyclopedia of love
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Now you ought to be completely unconvinced that the conclusion is true.
This in fact probably seems so wrong that you don't even know how to begin to attack it - but that is exactly what I would like you to do - prove me wrong.
I've posed this question many times to friends in conversation, and most simply find it so absurd a claim that they simply object with the following:
"That's just not the case because it's so apparently not true. Love isn't just sex - you're a terrible person."
This just isn't a satisfactory refutation. I want to know why it is not true. Here is one strategy I have seen used to refute the claim.
Demonstrate that love can exist apart from sex and/or that sex can exist apart from love.
Well that's easy. You decide to demonstrate a situation where a person has casual sex without love or that an individual loves someone incapable of performing the sex act. Alright! The problem here is that we haven't exactly agreed on our terms. So I simply respond:
"That person who has casual sex was in love in those moments and just doesn't know it or won't admit it. The person who loves the individual who cannot have sex is stuck in the potentiality of love and can never truly actualize his love."
The problem of course is that I am convinced and dedicated to my definition of love and this opponent is arguing from his own definition of love. Therein I suggest you prove me wrong on my own terms with my own definition. Or you can just tell me what love really is, argue for that instead, and I might be convinced on your own terms.
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It may in fact be easier to refute if I put it together for premise-premise-conclusion. Here's a helpful logical form to understand the process better:
1. Love and sex are both desires towards action
2. Sex is (in part) the desire for pleasure from the act of reproduction
3. Love ultimately desires sex.
4. Love desires what sex desires - nothing more or nothing less
Therefore love is sex and sex is love.
Not the best formulation of the argument, but it highlights some big assumptions to my claim.
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This is pretty much where every conversation about this argument has ended so I might as well post it here to see what people have to offer.
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All the best,
LORD RAVEN
LORD OF THE SKIES
By your logic, then, is this the most romantic song?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqXi8WmQ_WM
Awesome! Haha, aside from the woman-bashing I suppose it gets close to how undesirable the conclusion really is.
ReplyDeleteThanks Will!
This definition seems to broad, unless by love you mean romantic love. But your argument for it is also weak. You argue as if all I have to do to prove my position is true is simply to make my position consistent with itself. You can be satisfied in a romantic relationship regardless of whether a sex act takes place. If love is the desire for sex, then that should be impossible. Man wishes to penetrate much more than just genitalia: the mind is of the utmost importance. But then we might be conflating romantic love with the other sorts of love.
ReplyDeleteIt's good to point out that there seems to be different kinds of love - and yes, this argument is only concerned with romantic love.
ReplyDeleteAs for the argument I am convinced it isn't a very strong one. However consistency with itself, for any argument, is only one logical requirement for being true. It must also, as you say, be consistent with reality - our romantic relationships.
But the harder part of approaching the argument is that I already have a definition on my own terms, and you already have a definition on your own terms, and when we come to talk about the scenario we come to interpret it differently and disagree.
Because you see, when you say anyone "can be satisfied in a romantic relationship whether a sex act takes place" I disagree and say that he cannot truly be satisfied and is "stuck in the potentiality of love and can never truly actualize his love."
Drawing the conclusion out to its end ... then yes ultimately it seems that all romantic actions are driven by sex. Sex is the end of all romantic action.
It doesn't mean you can't buy her flowers, just that buying flowers is motivated by the potential for sex.
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But I think you are right here - there is something more to love, something concerning the mind and not merely the body, and this is certainly inconsistent with our argument. We are after all human beings and not just animals.