tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post8990625632936327930..comments2024-03-28T13:23:50.623-05:00Comments on Alexander Pruss's Blog: Is love blind?Alexander R Prusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-86972177495404532782008-06-18T10:40:00.000-05:002008-06-18T10:40:00.000-05:00Chauncey:A component of love is appreciation (supp...Chauncey:<BR/><BR/>A component of love is appreciation (suppressed premise). Moreover, to fail to appreciate the beloved as the beloved is is to at least fall short in appreciation (suppressed premise). "Fail" may be too strong.<BR/><BR/>On reflection, though, I think the argument still has some flaws. First of all, it does not apply in the case of blindness to features that are irrelevant to love. Thus, I am blind to whether my wife has an even or odd number of hairs on her head, and this blindness is irrelevant to my appreciation of her, since I do not appreciate her for the parity of the number of hairs on her head. (If I did, then this blindness would be problematic.) <BR/><BR/>Second, one might be blind to a bad feature of one's beloved, and still do fine in love, because although one is blind to the bad feature, one might as a matter of fact not be appreciating the beloved for lack of that bad feature. However, I think this kind of case is relatively rare. If one is blind to a bad feature, in the sense in which people say that love is blind, then it presumably is an appreciatively relevant feature (why else would one have a psychic block against recognizing it), and so it seems likely one is appreciating the beloved for failing to have that feature.<BR/><BR/>Time to revise the portion of the book this post was taken from. :-)Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-32725744595834857102008-06-18T08:40:00.000-05:002008-06-18T08:40:00.000-05:00Interesting issue.Isn't the first point a circular...Interesting issue.<BR/><BR/>Isn't the first point a circular argument? You write, "First, insofar as they are blind, they fail to appreciate the beloved as the beloved is, and hence they are failing in love, so love forbids blindness." But doesn't the argument require the premise that love forbids blindness?<BR/><BR/>I agree that sometimes people who are "in love" are blind to things in the beloved. But to show that that's not a counter-example to your claim that, I would think you'd need to assume that there is a norm for loving (e.g. know as much as you can about the beloved). Or, in different terms, you'd want to clarify that your claim is normative, not descriptive. Then it could be the case that two people are apparently in love and blind, and thus doing a bad job of it.Chaunceyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05068164401747520791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-151496787112784802008-06-18T01:49:00.000-05:002008-06-18T01:49:00.000-05:00Alex,Dietrich von Hildebrand has similar insights ...Alex,<BR/><BR/>Dietrich von Hildebrand has similar insights in his brief book Marriage which influenced the 2nd Vaticanum.Vlastimil Vohánkahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12544439495032316597noreply@blogger.com