Saturday, June 30, 2012

Can an adulterous affair instantiate "love"?

With one plausible assumption about what (a sort of mutual respect variety of) "love" minimally involves, seemingly any adulterous affair will not instantiate love.
Given that "at time t, a loves b" involves something like "a respecting the whole person that b is at t", for any three people, x, y, and z, such that x and y are married at t*:
1. Part of the person that x is at t* is "the spouse of y."
2. If at t* z conducts an adulterous affair with x, then x does not respect x qua the spouse of y.
3. If at t* z does not respect x qua the spouse of y, then z does not respect part of the person that x is.
4. If z does not respect part of the person that x is, then z does not respect the whole person that x is at t*.
5. If z does not respect the whole person that x is at t*, then z does not love x.
6. Suppose that at t* z conducts an adulterous affair with x.
7. Therefore, x does not respect x qua the spouse of y.
8. Therefore, z does not respect the whole person that x is at t*.
9. Therefore, z does not love x.
10. Therefore, if at t* z conducts an adulterous affair with (a married) x, (ipso facto) z does not love x.

~ Matthew J. Bell

No comments:

Post a Comment