Fidicen said:
I'd say that loving someone it's hard to differentiate between being glad of someone's existence and the fact that we're doing something together
OK, so the first thing that jumps out immediately at me is the term "doing" seems to be playing a large role in your claiming your view actually differs from mine. If you counted talking daily, sharing your life sorrows joys, exchanging love ... that all can be done long distance and frequently has to be when e.g. mom and son live in different parts of the world. Then the difference in our views would shrink or disappear, perhaps.
If you don't count that, I'd have to ask if you're somehow requiring people to be "active" despite people valuing that to different degrees. I mean, I for one in person just like low key stuff, like hanging out in coffee shops in talking, so it's very similar with what I'd do if we did a video-call together long distance and just hung out. I have spent time in person with people dear to me, and yes we're sentimental about that time because it's different, but the rest (even if we're talking just e-mailing about our days) is deeply emotionally invested/equally so to in person, and the only thing that changes is what we get to do together, not how invested it is.
functionality as you call it, there's nothing else left except a very generic type of love that is bound to ignore some individuality.
I strive for the highest understanding of people I know (and people in my circle tend to agree I understand their quirks quite in depth), so I don't think this is part of it. I'm not sure my caring of them is
conditioned on their specific properties, though. After all, two people of very different properties can receive a very similar place in my life in terms of how intensely I care for them (much as a mother and a spouse could in a given person's life, despite having very different properties).
Also, to bring the love of a child back as an example, you love the child more or less not conditioned on the specific properties -- it's like you love first, and as PART of it you get to know them, and sure, as part of that you of course get to know the individual attributes.
Compare this to loving someone
for the specific properties. That's what I think runs more into the objection of being replaceable e.g. by a superior AI. Compare loving a child BECAUSE they are intelligent. This, I can conceive of as replaced by a superior AI robot. However, this differs from loving the child universally, no matter what, but encouraging them when they do well in school.
I actually feel like you share my thoughts here somewhat at least, because you seem to concur about not just throwing someone away once you find something with more of certain properties.
Anyway, no matter what, I think the way I mean it, there is an element of the whole universality business involved in true love. Universality doesn't make it generic, because you do get to know the individual, but the nonpragmatic aspect to it is parallel to the point about not loving someone
because of their properties but cherishing their individual properties
as part of the more universal, unconditional sort of love....the love that is conditioned on and more or less one to one with certain properties is the part that can be replaced by the robot and/or another person, but the part about just loving as you would a child, independent of specific properties, is the part that you can't replace. Also, just to clarify, I think what I object to (in general, not saying this is your view) is calling online relationships not real love. I don't object that there are special things one can savor in an in person relationship, however. I just think when it comes down to it, you love the person, not a set of activities you can do with them, so you're going to enjoy spending time with them, and the details of how are not necessarily unimportant, but certainly secondary to just getting to be/exist side by side with them. That's the sense in which I emphasize it's different from looking for an activity partner to play tennis with (or a future superintelligent machine to play with).
Perhaps a comment to add is when you express that a big part of love for you is the temporal aspect, I see this as getting incredibly close to the idea of loving someone for existing at least as I mean it -- after all, a lot of what makes experiencing something different from the abstract idea is that the idea becomes temporal when we experience it, an event in our consciousness so-to-speak.
The more you love not just sharing life experiences with someone, vs more because of their possession of specific properties, well the more you can replace those properties with something even greater. To some extent you have to cherish just living life together, just *being* together. Else the replacement argument becomes very strong.
That is, the more you say that I love you BECAUSE I could share the experience of composing great poetry with you (ie it wouldn't work if you didn't have that property), the more you must look the same person in the eye and say look, if we could manufacture someone with superior poetic talents to you, as long as I can share the temporal experience of composing with them, I'd just love them more.
Personally I never understood how this is even love, so much as just wanting to experience cool poetry in a collaborative setting -- it seems the person is quite secondary and replaceable.
The more you make the person fundamental, and not replaceable, the more I think you approach my "just for existing" interpretation, whereby no cherishing of individuality is lost but where the individual attributes aren't the primary justification for loving. It retains your emphasis on temporality, though, so maybe this is still close to what you mean.
Notice what this does and doesn't imply: it does not imply that two identical streams of consciousness lead to my only needing to love one of them, as their properties are identical. Rather, because
each bothers to exist, my view would say to love each fully. Again, your emphasis on temporality seems at least addressed in my view, even if not exactly as you would.
By basking in their individual properties, I am more fully fulfilling the description of loving just for existence -- after all, by doing so, I drink in their existence more fully, as those are part of what make them who they are.
But I wouldn't say that online relationships can be closer to the spirit of love just because there's less doing things together. From your text it's actually hard to say whether you think love without the pragmatic aspect is more pure, but that at least seems to be the implication.
Online is not deeper, nor is it less deep is basically my position. I am usually very skeptical of claims that say online just isn't real/associate them with a sort of warped understanding of love (BTW, about such topics I can agree there are multiple good ways to love, but it doesn't mean all ways are good.. some are warped/suffer from weird philosophical inconsistencies that I can't endorse.... I do tend to be more cerebral than many about this stuff).
What I CAN sympathize with is that some people may miss the in person aspect dearly, and that I can respect.
Hope that makes things clear!
