Why love is not just a disposition to feel empathy

In my last two postings I have argued the love of inanimate objects may not be same as the love of persons and that loving someone might simply be a disposition to feel empathy for beloved. However I will now present two examples which appear contradict my previous view. My first example is of a mother’s love of her baby and my second is self-love. I will firstly consider a mother’s love and attempt to show this love is incompatible with love being regarded as a disposition to feel empathy and I will then repeat the exercise with self-love.

Empathy is defined by the Cambridge Online Dictionary as follows; empathy is the ability to share someone else's feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in their situation. Let it be assumed that loving someone simply means having a disposition to feel empathy for her. It follows if a mother loves her baby she is able to share her baby’s feelings or experiences. I accept a mother may share her child’s feelings or experiences but it seems inconceivable to me that a mother could share her baby’s feelings or experiences. A baby’s experiences just aren’t available to others. Moreover it would seem to be impossible for a mother to share her baby’s feelings by imagining what it would be like to be a baby. She might of course be able to imagine what it would be like for her to be a baby but this is by no means the same thing as imagining what it is like to be a baby. It follows if we accept the premise that love is simply a disposition to feel empathy it follows that mothers are unable to love their babies. Mothers clearly do love their babies. It follows the above conclusion is false and we must reject the premise it is based on.

Are there any counter arguments which would enable us to accept the above premise and also accept that mothers love their babies? If empathy is defined as above it seems to me the answer is clearly no. However let us consider a real case in order to clarify our concept of empathy. In 2007 the Washington Post reported that a colonel in the US army called off a test using a land mine sweeping robot because it continued sweeping after losing several of its legs. The colonel declared the test was inhumane. What might be the reasons behind the colonel’s decision? His decision was clearly not based on pure rationality. It follows the colonel’s decision was at least in part emotionally based. People have a tendency to anthropomorphise in such situations. It seems likely this was happening in this case, the colonel was treating the robot as if it was something like a human being. It further seems to me the colonel was doing so because he attributed feelings or emotions to the robot. The colonel felt sympathy for the robot. I believe feeling sympathy is connected to some degree with feeling empathy. Sympathy is defined by the Cambridge Online Dictionary as; an expression of understanding and care for someone else's suffering. It seems to me one cannot possibly understand someone else’s suffering unless one has some ability to share that person’s feelings or experiences. Admittedly this sharing does not need to be very precise. For instance a child may share a sense of unease with his mother who has lost her partner. The mother feels uneasy but it would be more accurate to say she feels grief. I believe for sympathy to take place between persons there must be some basic sharing of feelings, or at the very least moods, between the persons involved. I believe understanding how someone feels must involve emotion. I cannot use pure logic to understand someone’s grief. Moreover the emotion involved must be an appropriate emotion. It makes no sense to say I understand someone’s grief if the only emotion I feel is happiness. Accepting the above means sympathy of necessity involves some basic form of empathy. Accepting the above also means the colonel felt some basic or primitive form of empathy for the robot. Clearly this scenario is nonsensical. However it might be suggested this difficultly might be overcome if a primitive form of empathy was defined as the ability to experience what you believe to be someone or something else's feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in their situation. It might then be argued that whilst a mother cannot feel full blown empathy for her baby she may nonetheless feel some primitive form of empathy based on what she believes her baby feels. And her disposition to feel this primitive empathy can form a basis of her love for her baby.

The question I now wish to address is whether the primitive form of empathy defined above really is a form of empathy? Does this primitive form of empathy even exist? It seems clear to me the concept of empathy can be stretched and that the feeling of empathy is to some extent a matter of degree. For instance I may have the ability to share some of someone else's feelings or experiences but not others. This is probably particularly true of the sharing of some feelings and experiences between men and women. However is describing, the ability to experience what you believe to be someone or something else's feelings or experiences as empathy, stretching the concept of empathy too far? Let it be accepted that the feeling of empathy depends on our ability to experience emotions as well as place ourselves in someone else’s situation. The connection between the emotion and the situation cannot be purely arbitrary. I believe empathy should not be regarded as the feeling of any emotion but the feeling of an appropriate emotion. The feeling of a shared emotion is an appropriate emotion. It follows the feeling of a believed shared emotion is not an appropriate emotion and for this reason, the ability to share what you believe to be someone or something else's feelings or experiences, is not a genuine form of empathy. Let us accept that mothers do love their babies. Let us also accept that mothers cannot feel or have a disposition to feel empathy for their babies. It follows that loving someone cannot simply be a disposition to feel empathy for the beloved.

It might be pointed out in response to the above that loving friends, partners and children differs from loving babies. It might then be suggested that loving someone other than babies means loving persons. Young babies might be regarded as human beings and potential persons rather than actual persons. It might then be further suggested that loving a person simply means having a disposition to feel empathy for her. Accepting these suggestions would not mean we don’t love babies, for clearly we do, but rather that we love babies in a different way to the way we love persons. I would be reluctant to accept to this suggestion. For they imply either we love babies in the same way as we love cities, landscapes or a particular piece of music. Or that we love babies in a completely different way to the way we love both inanimate things and the way we love persons.

My second example of why it is hard to accept that loving, someone is simply a disposition to feel empathy, is connected to self-love. Let it be accepted that I cannot feel empathy for myself. It follows if loving someone simply means having a disposition to feel empathy for that person that self-love is impossible. Intuitively we can love ourselves. If our intuitions are correct we must reject the premise that loving someone simply means having a disposition to feel empathy for her.

Let it be accepted the two examples I have used show that I was wrong to argue that loving someone might simply be a disposition to feel empathy for the beloved in a previous posting. However the idea of self-love is interesting and I now wish to examine self-love further in order to try and better understand the nature of love. Some people believe that the self-love is not at all bad even if it runs counter to accepted morality. They might use Nietzsche to justify this belief. However I would argue such a belief is based on a false view about the nature of love. This false view seems to connect loving purely with satisfying our desires. Nietzsche would have approved of the strong satisfying their desires. However let us consider a mother who desires chips, cocaine, cigarettes and large quantities of alcohol. Let it be assumed she neglects her child and indulges in all of the above. If loving one-self is purely a matter of satisfying one’s desires then clearly this mother loves herself. It might be objected my example only shows that self-love based on the rather basic desires, I introduced in my example, is not genuine self-love. My objector might then be suggest that the satisfaction of noble desires is a form of self-love. Once again Nietzsche might well have approved of this objection seeing the desire for power rather than gluttony as a form of self-love. My reply to this objection is simple. I do not deny love can be connected to our desires. Indeed I believe love must be connected to our desires. I do however believe love cannot be only connected to our desires. If love can be based on noble but not base desires then there must be some way, of differentiating between noble and base desires. Furthermore any way of differentiating between noble and base desires cannot itself be a desire. Returning to my example I would suggest that the mother in question not only neglects her child but that she also neglects herself. I would further argue anyone who neglects herself does not genuinely love herself. My reason being I believe loving is linked to caring about and it follows loving oneself involves caring about oneself.

I accept Harry Frankfurt is correct when he states that love is a form of ‘caring about’ and that love concerns the will rather than being a simple emotion. Love has persistence and desires and emotions however noble need not. This persistence was the main reason for my suggestion that love might be defined as a disposition to feel an emotion. It in order to better understand the nature of love we must understand the nature of caring about. What then does caring about consist of? Frankfurt argues a lover is benefited when her beloved flourishes and this means accepting the interests of her beloved as her own (1). Let it be accepted ‘caring about’ ourselves is the same as ‘caring about’ others. It follows if we ‘care about’ ourselves we must be concerned with our flourishing and our interests.

Let us accept that if I love someone that I must be concerned with my beloved’s flourishing and furthering her interests. It seems to me this concern must contain two important elements. Firstly this concern cannot be a passive concern but must involve action. If my beloved needs help and I fail to help for no good reason then it must be questioned whether my love is genuine. Secondly this concern must involve some reflection. If I am genuinely concerned with someone’s flourishing and interests I must concerned with how my actions will promote this flourishing and these interests. It follows loving defined as ‘caring about’ someone must involve our cognitive powers. Accepting that love involves cognition does not of course imply that love does not also involve the emotions. Personally I would argue love must involve the emotions. I pointed out in my posting ‘love revisited’ some philosophers would argue emotions are intentional and as a result must have a cognitive element. If this is correct then love might be regarded as an emotion which includes a cognitive element. However I myself am doubtful as to whether emotions contain a cognitive element. Emotions might of course act as alarms calling for reflection by our cognitive elements, see Brady (2). Our emotions might alert us to consider the needs of our beloved. It seems to me that any meaningful actions, including loving ones, must depend on both a cognitive and affective element for without any affective element we have no reason to act.

I have argued loving someone must include a reflective element. This conclusion seems at odds with some parts of Frankfurt’s concept of love. Frankfurt argues a lover,

“is not free. On the contrary, he is in the very nature of the case captivated by his beloved and his love. The will of the lover is rigorously constrained. Love is not a matter of choice. (3)

Clearly reflection serves no useful purpose if someone’s will is rigorously constrained. Am I wrong to argue love involves reflection or is it possible to reconcile these two views? Frankfurt’s defines loving in terms of what a lover cares about. He also defines autonomous decisions as decisions the agent cares about. Cuypers believes Frankfurt’s concept of autonomy and hence his concept of love is a hybrid concept. He believes this hybrid as a combination of voluntaristic and non-voluntaristic components. He argues that the harmonious agreement between a person’s second-order volitions and his first order desires defines the voluntaristic component. He then further argues that the non-voluntaristic component consists of what the agent cares about (2). I have some sympathy for Cuypers view. However I believe these two views might be better reconciled by differentiating between the way someone loves a beloved and comes to love a beloved.

I believe the way we love someone involves reflection. We must consider the interests of our beloved. The way we come to love someone might not. The way we come to love someone is constrained. It seems ridiculous to me to say I choose to love Jennifer, Newcastle United or philosophy. Do the emotions play any part in the way I come to love someone? Frankfurt would argue not. According to him the emotions have no persistence whilst love does. Indeed it might argued that he believes what defines coming to love someone is a lack of emotion. A lover might be defined as a satisfied person, perhaps willing to change her beloved, but also one who has no active interest in bringing about such a change. Intuitively however coming to love someone does involve emotion. If I come to some love someone I identify with her and as a result I become vulnerable to any harm that befalls her and become distressed as a result. It might be suggested coming to love someone means coming to have a disposition to feel empathy for her. However my example of the love between a mother and her baby seems to make this concept of coming to love difficult to accept. For this reason it might be suggested that coming to love someone simply means coming to be pleased when she is pleased and distressed when she is distressed. It might be objected that accepting this suggestion seems to conflate coming to love and actual loving. In response I would argue that someone cannot come to love someone without actually loving her. Loving someone of necessity must involve some emotion, if I love someone and she becomes distressed I must also become distressed. It follows coming to love does involve the emotions.

However I can feel distress for a lot of people I hardly know. For instance I may feel distress at seeing the distress of famine victims on TV, victims I don’t really know. It follows if my suggestion is accepted that I love these famine victims. It might then be pointed out this love seems counter to our intuitions of love. I am however prepared to argue that I do in fact love these victims to some degree. The degree to which I love my wife, children, friends and neighbours varies greatly. I see no reason why I should not feel at least some slight degree love for these famine victims. Indeed it might be a natural default position for most people to feel some degree of love for others. Optimistically considering the last century one of the defining characteristics of persons might be a natural tendency to love. People lacking this tendency such as sociopaths might be seen as damaged persons.

There is one final question I wish to address in this posting; does coming to love come to involve our rational faculties in any way? Clearly we may choose who we wish to marry but not who we love. Prima facie if it is accepted that our love is constrained it might be concluded our rational faculties play no part in our coming to love. I will argue such a prima facie conclusion is unjustified. What is meant by our will being constrained when we come to love? It certainly doesn’t mean our will is constrained by others. It means we cannot choose whom we come to love, our will is constrained by forces which are part of us, we like Luther can do no other. However these constraining forces are our constraining forces and hence our will seem likely to shaped by our perceptions of the world. These perceptions include our beliefs. Our rational faculties shape these beliefs. My perceptions of a situation surely partly determine the emotions I feel as I pointed in my posting love revisited. In this posting I pointed out if I am fearful, because I perceive a tiger approaching me, my perception is the cause of my fear. Moreover part of my perception must include the concept that tigers are dangerous. It might now be argued our perception of someone, which includes cognitive elements, frames our coming to love that person and reason indirectly affects our choice of a beloved.

1.  Harry Frankfurt, 2006,Taking Ourselves Seriously, Stanford University Press, page 41.
2. Michael Brady, 2013, Emotional Insight; The Epistemic Role of Emotional Experience, Oxford University Press.
3. Frankfurt, 1999, Necessity Volition and Love, Cambridge University Press, page 135.
4. Stefaan Cuypers, 2000, In Defence of Hierarchy, , Canadian Journal of Philosophy 30(2).