Subject: Re: 'Their level of perfection'
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 21:19:14 +1100
From: Richard Kerr <>
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian,aus.religion,nz.soc.religion

Andy Bearsley wrote:
>
> Richard Kerr <> wrote in message
> news:38A3A50
> > Tigger wrote:
> > >
> > > Patrick Dunford <> wrote in message
> > > >
> > > > Love is an action. You don't love someone without doing something that
> > > > proves
> > > > it.
> > >
> > > I deeply love my husband. Right now he's in another room vaccuuming the
> > > floor. I'm in the computer room on usenet. I'm not doing a single thing
> to
> > > prove to him that I love him, yet I still do.
> > >
> > > Okay, I'm typing this, but I'll love him just as much after I've
> finished,
> > > like I did before I started, and still I won't be acting on it.
> > >
> > > Love isn't about actions, it's about feelings.
> >
> > Don't you believe it.
> >
> > If you refused to help them when they needed it all the gooey feelings
> > in the world would not mean you loved them.
>
> How about we settle for:
> Love is expressed through action.

Sorry, that won't do either. There are days when my emotional attachment
to my wife is as strong as it was on the day we were married, but there
are days when my emotions are unconsidered and much more ambivalent.

What stays the same is my commitment to absolutely always act for her
highest good as appropriate in the relationship of marriage.

In long term relationships love becomes more of a commitment to act than
a passion (although, as I say, the passion does not die forever).

[snip]
> The wheel has turned, we're all a bit older, no-one has defined the perfect
> basis for a moral code,  but some of us spent those days in a loving
> relationship making the world a better place...

I notice you added "making the world a better place" there. "Love as
action" usually creeps into most discussions on the topic when you're
not looking.

Nevertheless we have come a bit further than you have suggested. From my
perspective we at least demonstrated that moral codes cannot be deduced
from the world in which we find ourselves, but must be constructed from
various subjective opinions, and this causes a problem in worldviews
which claim some sort of positivist(*) moral position.

We may not have agreed on a definition for the "perfect basis for a
moral code" but we have at least agreed that the meaning of the word
"perfect" cannot be the same as in the phrase "a perfect
superconductor".

(*) Logical Positivism is a philosophical school (founded by Russel and
Whitehead?) that suggested that all knowledge about the world must be
constructed by deduction from axioms we know to be true. While this is
true for the physical sciences it has pretty much been bulldozed by
postmodernism in every other field, including moral philosophy.

--
Regards,

Richard Kerr