Comments on: Buss on True Love

By: Jennie C.

Jennie C. — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 20:51:12 +0000

I think someone’s capacity to experience true love depends on the depth of their imagination, how sensitive and open they are, and whether or not they want it. That’s what makes it rare because it takes a rare kind of person to have it. It takes a rare kind of person to be able to conceive of it, recognize the possibility, and allow themselves to have it.

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 14:51:53 +0000

Anna, I certainly hope we can get women to write about the biases they see.

By: ChrisA

ChrisA — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 09:22:27 +0000

I have always wondered about whether emotions (including love) could survive an uploading of the human mind into electronic form. Any emotions of an electronic mind would be voluntarily chosen by the mind, since once electronic a mind can edit the emotion causing machinary to produce whatever emotion it chooses. If emotions did survive, would they be then “true” emotions by Buss’s definition?

By: Paul Gowder

Paul Gowder — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:25:33 +0000

I’d ask for a distinction between “love” and “true love.” How much work is “true” doing? Also, how much of his “true love” is phenemonological rather than, say, some actual (“actual!” speaking of vagueness…) property of the relationship (“relationship!”) between the parties. And how much of it is reducible to physical states of the brain? Without those parts of the claim, we can’t even start to evaluate it.

By: Anna

Anna — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 18:45:50 +0000

Robin:
So is part of the problem that women are less interested in looking at trends over a set of cases?

You asked why women are not responding. I responded that if you want women to become interested you would need to change the topics or cases.

I think the cases and the topics are great. I don’t see why any change needs to occur. If women feel that they are being neglected then they should write about what they believe are biases.

The way I interpreted was that you jumped into the topic of “true love” initiating a bias that all women are interested in such topics that are solely emotional.

Anna

By: Anna

Anna — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 18:07:42 +0000

I guess you didn’t interpret the song sung by Bette Middler very well.
I thought it made sense.
It’s about the planting of a seed.

Anna:)

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 18:07:28 +0000

Yan and Anna, if we were to discuss a particular relationship between two real people, we could have a concrete, practice, embodied … relational discussion, but it would be very hard to draw conclusions about bias. It is easier to identify bias if we look at a set of cases, instead of one particular case. So is part of the problem that women are less interested in looking at trends over a set of cases? Even if so, we could still try harder to find more concrete etc. sets of cases.

By: josh

josh — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 17:59:36 +0000

I heard somewhere that love is a river that drowns a tender reed, but then, that doesn’t even make the faintest semblance of sense.

By: Anna

Anna — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 17:52:35 +0000

Yan:
Touché.(French expression for right on point)

Anna

By: Yan Li

Yan Li — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 17:39:26 +0000

“The feminine cognitive style is concrete, practical, embodied, emotionally engaged, synthetic, intuitive, qualitative, relational, and oriented toward values of care. …” (quoted from your previous post)

I sadly report an abstract discussion of “true love” is neither concrete, nor practical, nor embodied, nor emotionally engaged, nor synthetic, nor intuitive, nor qualitative, nor relational, nor oriented toward values of care …