Category Archives: meaning of love

Freewill of Love, Freewil of Duty & Freewill of Inclination Satisfaction

Freewill, meaning of love, Moral philosophy

In other posts I have written of the freewill of love. See: Agency, Ordinary Free Will, & Free Will of Love. Here I frequently call that level of freewill “freedom to love.” I hope to show that the freedom to love is no more mysterious than the fact that humans, and perhaps all animals, inject agent causation into the events which occur in nature. Of course, agent causation remains mysterious from an explicit, or even implicit, outlook that when reality is properly understood reality will be recognized as nothing more than matter in motion. But more importantly, I hope to show that the freewill of love is necessary for the freedom of morality. The freewill of love is the capability of choosing the good of the other for the sake of the other. The freewill of morality is the capability of choosing what is morally obligatory because it is morally obligatory. Hereafter, I will call the freewill of morality, the freewill of duty.

I conjecture that agent causation extends far down in the animal kingdom. Suppose I lift a rock and bugs scurry off in various directions To an external observer, this is a stochastic process. However, internally to the bugs the paths taken are selected by the individual bugs. The individual bugs are not mere conduits through which a stream of causal action and reaction, be it deterministic or pr0bablistic, flows. An agent caused event has no sufficient conditions prior to what an agent does and the agent’s selection provides the sufficient conditions. Most likely there are neural processes in the bugs which give them the power of selection to initiate new causal pathways. Still agent causes are self-accelerators.

If agent causation goes fairly far down in the animal kingdom, so-called libertarian or contra-causal freewill goes fairly far down in the animal kingdom. Once agent causation emerged in evolutionary history, the evolutionary process may have selected for organisms capable of agent causation as opposed to those whose reactions are always strictly determined or totally random. I do not think that the bugs do anything like conscious deliberation. But conscious deliberation is not necessary for libertarian or contracausal free will. I also conjecture that once organisms with libertartian free will have evolved, there is evolutionary selection for agent causation modified, but not totally determined, by sensations, inclinations and thoughts. There is always remains a need for the selection or act of will by the agent. This is the common core of freewill for bugs, humans and angels.

Put it this way. Basic agent causation is freedom from deterministic causation. Levels of this basic freedom from are freedoms to execute choices of various types. Perhaps the freedom from deterministic causation only gives my bugs the freedom to select a flight path at random. However, their possesion of photo sensors might be giving them the freedom to seek a darker spot after my lifting the rock exposed them to bright sunshine.

The first law of freedom is to restrict it. An organism develops freedom to do specifIc things by developing ways of restricting its freedom from non-agent causality.

In the remainder of this post, the concern is with the levels of freewill at which humans act. Humans frequently deliberate before making a selection. In delibertion the agent consciously considers alternative before making a selection. I must emphasize that the deliberation of an agent before making a selection is not the cause of the selection. The agent is the the cause of selecting action its deliberation proposed.

Consider three types of human feewill typically preceded by deliberation. . There is the freewill of inclination, the freewill of duty, and the freewill of love.

In freewill of inclination the agent chooses amongst ends toward which he recgonizes no end as that to which he has an overwhelming inclination. The goal is to satisfy inclinations. This frequently takes the form of trying to avoid leaving inclinations unsatisfied. Choosing a desert in a cafeteria provides a typical example. Should I choose apple pie, cherry pie or chocolate cake? I enjoy them separately but realize I would feel sick and waste money if I chose more than one. I think and think; but the other people in line cause me, perhaps deterministically to make up my mind. I select cherry pie, enjoy it while satisfying my desert inclinations for awhile. My inclination for cherry pie was not an efficient cause of my selecting it. I selected the cherry pie to satisfy my inclination.

If humans had only the freewill of inclination satisfaction, it might seem that freewill is restricted to selfish choices. However, people have inclinations for the health and well-being of others. Choosing to help others be happy is certainly not selfish.

With freewill of dutyy an agent deliberates between satisfying an inclination for a good in conflict with a basic human good and following the moral command not to act contrary to a basic human good.

For an example, imagine that I live in a community allowing medical assistance in dying, MAID. Suppose also that I have an extremely painful terminal illness. I can deliberate between satisfying my strong inclination for the good of being pain-free at the expense of destroying the basic human good of my life,which I am usually inclined to preserve. Basic human goods are obligatory goods. See: Basic Human Goods Convey Divine Commands Hence, basic human goods entail categorical imperatives that they never be directly destroyed. In this case, then, I am deliberating between a good, viz. no pain, towards which I am strongly inclined and obeying a moral law not to take my life. Suppose that I refuse the euthanasia option. I have then exercised my freedom of duty by selecting obedience to the moral law over satisfying an inclination involving its violation. I did not select obedience to the law because I had a stronger inclination to obey than to avoid pain. I selected to subordinate inclination satisfaction to doing what is right. I realize that at best a sense of righteousness is small comfort in great physical pain. In this case, I can choose not to have my life taken while hoping that I die immediately because all my inclinations oppose the path I select.

An agent who can use its freedom from determism to select obedience to a moral law over inclination satisfaction has the freedom to be moral.

However, the freedom to be moral requires recognition of moral laws. What capabilities does an agent need to recognize moral laws? Suppose that my adaptation of the New Natural Law theory gives a correct account of how moral laws are recognized. See: Basic Human Goods & Human Morality Under this supposition, humans must recognize certain human goods as basic human goods. This means that they are goods which are to be promoted and never intentionally frustrated. The general command never to frustrate the basic goods supports the various categorical imperatives – moral laws- such as Do not kill used in the euthanasia example above. However, to become convinced of the moral laws we need to come to appreciate that these basic goods are indeed goods in whomever they occur. This means learning to will these goods in whomever they occur. Willing what is good for the sake of the other is love. For love is to will the good of the other.

What we notice here is that the capability of loving – the capability to choose the good of the other is the foundation for the universaliization of what is often called “the moral point of view.”

It might seem that I have, at best, written of learning to love abstractions such as life, knowledge friendship etc., for basic human goods. However, humans do not learn which goods are basic human goods by thinking of abstractions. We reflex on real or imagined situations to learn good from evil. Our thoughts, which are always inseparable from affections, of good and evil are always thoughts of good or evil in particular real, or imagined, human beings. If we will the good for the humans in these scenarios our willing is an act of love – willing the good of the other.

Consider a case to show that my opposition an abortion is based on love. In so far as I oppose abortion because I hold that life is a basic human good, my opposition to abortion is only moral. However, an abortion for a particular woman because I choose for her to have the good of being a mother who preserves the life growing in her, my choice is a choice for the good of the other – a choice of love for that girl. That this choice is of love is clearest when both my inclinations and those of the woman are all in favor of solving current problems with abortion. It is the love which strenghtens my moral choice against abortion.

Unscientific speculations about agent causality:

I propose limiting agent causality to animals. Attribution of agency to angels poses problems which must be confronted elsewhere. Let’s not speculate about the crazy networks of roots sent out by plants as agent selected. Further I suggest restricting speculation about agency to organisms with at least a rudimentary central nervous system. An agent is an individual organism. Its agency – its capacity to spontaneously change- be an uncaused cause of – its state may depend upon the potential -DNA-for having a certain level of neuronal complexity. But an agent is not its conditions for it to exercise agent causality. Agency is an emergent feature of animals. Once a certain neuronal complexity evoved, or was created, agent causation came into being. But the agents are not identical with the complexity required for their existence. Two agents can have identical conditions for their agency and not be identical.

The Supernatural is for Love & Freewill

Divine Command Morality, meaning of love, Ontology

Thesis:The human capacity to love reveals the supernatural dimension of humanity.

The argument for the thesis of this post develops the thesis: Freewill Necesaary and Sufficient for Love .

The purpose of this thesis for my project of modeling Satan is to justify creation of the supernatural, although the supernatural requires the possibility all of the evil initiated by intelligent agents. However, creation of the supernatural creates the possibility of love. The possibility of love outweighs all of the actualized possibilities of evil initiated by intelligent agents, which amongst other things are capable of love.

A case for love’s supreme goodness is made at the end of this post.

This is the gist of the argument that love is supernatural.

What is obligatory is supernatural. Love is obligatory. So, love is supernatural

Terminological clarifications will be needed as we procede. For “nature” and “natural” are used equivocally. Consider. In the phrase “human nature,” the term “nature” signifies what a human being is. Within the term “supernatural” the second part “natural” is an adjective which goes with “nature” where “nature” signifies the features of human beings which are studied by physics, chemistry, biology, psychology and sociology, viz. natural sciences. So, “supernatural” signifies features of human beings which cannot be studied by the natural sciences. However, in another sense of “nature,” clarified in: The Supernatural is not a Super Nature,, the term “supernatural” does not signify a type of nature different from that studied by the natural sciences.

I use “humanity” to signify what a human being is. Hence, I write of natural and supernatural dimensions of humanity. In light of Where is the Supernatural?, it would be better to write “The supernatural and natural dimensions of reality intersect in humanity.

Our subjection to moral imperatives points to the supernatural dimension of humanity. The scientific study of human nature explains why people naturally pursue what is good: Basic goods or lesser goods when not thinking clearly. We naturally seek what is good because we have inclinations for what is good. More generally, the natural goal for humans is happiness because an inclination for happiness is in the natural dimension of humanity. However, no facts about our pursuing what is good show that we ought to pursue what is good. David Hume’s observation that “ought” does not follow logically from “is” is not a philosopher noting a logical distinctions. It calls our attention to a profound reality about humanity. We have a supernatural dimension.

Am I proposing that good can be defined as that for which we have an inclination?

We must persuade ourselves and others that a condition is a basic human good.

For one, we can intelligibly say something is good for which I, at least temporarily, have no inclination. The point of bringing out that we have inclinations for what is good is to bring out that conditions for which few, if any is inclined for, are not candidates for being good. Being suitable objects of choice for humans is a limiting condition for what can be called good.

Also, the fact that basic goods, such as commuity can be commanded regardless of any inclination of to choose otherwise shows that good and that for which I have an inclination are not synonymous.

Why say that humans have a supernatural dimension, instead of saying that humans have a dimension which cannot be understood by natural sciences?

Hume’s logical point supports a metaphysical conclusion, which Hume himself would have considered “sophistry and illusion.” The metaphysical conclusion is that there is a type of reality different from nature wherein obligations are the fundamental realities. Hume assumed that there is no reality other than the reality of nature. Hence, obligations had to be explained as dependent upon nature. Roughly, obligations would be explained as what people construct to insure they get that for which they have natural inclinations. So, there would not be obligations to act regardless of any inclinations to do otherwise. There would be no categorical imperatives.

There are categorical imperatives. (The Satan modeling project assumes moral realism. Moral realist should accept that there is a moral reality.)

Being subject to categorical moral imperatives shows that humans have access to a reality different from that acessible by the thought processes needed for natural science. It’s a reality whose basic laws states: Do good, avoid evil. Such a reality warrants the title “super.” Moral realism entails supernatural agency. Why?Imperatives specify what ought to be done. What ought to be can be. If there were no agents obligations could not be carries out. So, the assumption of moral realism carries with it an assumtion that there are moral agents. These are agents with the Free Will of Love. The thesis that love requires us to be supernatural agents is, in effect, a corollary of the thesis that obligations entail that we are supernatural agents. For we cannot love if we are not moral agents. The two greatest commandments are commands to love. See Mt 22:36-40 If love is commanded, love is the sort of activity for moral agents. If such love came totally through nature, it would not make sense to speak of it as commanded.

For those who do not want to use scripture as the source of the command to love, can consider the first natural moral law: Do good! This law tells us to will the good for the sake of good itself. Willing good for the sake of good itself is certainly willing the good for another since no creature is good itself. So, in effect, the first moral law states: Love! In creation, love is necessary for good to be pursued as it ought to be pursued. Thus, love is only behind the good in terms of being valuable.

Agency, Ordinary Free Will, & Free Will of Love

Freewill, meaning of love

This post elaborates on Example of Agency At Work. One main contention of that post is that we as agents, as agent causes, are a crucial factor in both making a decision about how to act and then initiating the action. For all that we know, agents are basic entities in reality. Even if agency emerged after living systems reached a certain level of complexity, the point of recognizing them as emergent is to recognize a new type of entity in reality. What emerges is not reducible to that from which it emerged. The basic property of agents is to form intentions, i.e., to will, to seek goals. At a first level the agent is not conscious of it’s agency. Conscious agency emerges from at a greater degree of complexity than elementary forms of agency. The type of agency capable of love as spelled out in Freewill Necessary and Sufficient for Love emerges at some high level of complexity.

A second crucial contention of Example of Agency At Work is that consciousness of choosing is not always the operation of agency. Rather it is the consciousness of the working of agency after the working of agency. At the end of this post, it is brought out that consciousness of the choosing in the highest type of choosing, the choosing in love or choosing the good of the other for the other, is inseparable from choosing to satisfy an inclination for the good of the other. It is only by an inference that we can make a probable judgement that we chose the good of the other for the sake of the good of the other.

As a Catholic philosopher untrained in physics, chemistry, biology, psychology or sociology , I have no objection to accepting so-called emergent features as directly created by God when the appropriate level of complexity has evolved. I think that direct creation of types of goal seeking is preferable to saying the new feature emerged from complexity. “Emergence” suggests that the new feature was already present potentially and, if so, something genuinely new did not come into existence. In any event, I will continue to use “emergence.”

Very importantly for my task of modeling Satan, direct creation of agency by God does not require agency to be based on physical complexity. For natural organisms God chooses to link agency with physical complexity. However, God need not choose to link all agency with something physical. Hence, the concept of agency is logically consistent with the concept of disembodied agents, viz. angels.

I appreciate, though, that people working in a scientific field, should be very reluctant to accept any phenomena as emergent. I believe that if I were a scientist, apparent emergence would be a challenge to” explain away.” Bertrand Russell once quipped about postulating least upper bounds when trying to construct the real number system from a rational number system “it has the advantages of theft over honest toil” People working in a science might well say the same of accepting emergence. I acknowledge that my discussion of agency and freewill assume the scientifically controversial reality of emergence1.

If we grant genuine agent causality, we cannot hold that prior to any decision of an agent factors determined the intentions the agents would produce. That is tantamount to denying that there is agency or setting agency aside as an irrelevant epiphenomena. Now any case of agent causation is a type of freedom of action. It would be inaccurate to say “freedom of will” when there is no consciousness on the part of the agent. For instance, the various bugs which go scurrying for shelter when I pick up a flat rock in my garden are freely seeking their various goals to restablish the security they had under the rock. It is not inaccurate, though, to say that the bugs intend to get wherever they are going

The disturbed bugs just select one of several choices open to them. The selection of one of the options is the new contribution of the agent. It is unpredictable from the state of the agent and inputs into the agent. The essence of agency is selecting an option. Agent causation fills in the gap between state of the agent, its inputs and its action outputs. To accept agency is to accept these gaps and that selecting of the agent is the causal factor, the efficient cause, in filling the gap. Acceptance of agent causation is acceptance of some very significant factors in any philosopher’s metaphysics. It may not require accepting that nature as a whole has goals. But it does require accepting that some systems within nature have goals: final causes.

Individuals in a type of organism which exercises agent causality are agents. Agents are agents from their beginning: when the DNA, genes and epigenetic factors which sets their level of complexity is formed. Thus, a human is an agent from the moment of its conception. It is far simpler to assume that there is direct creation of a type of agent once a level of complexity evolves than assuming a direct creation for each organism as it grows to a level of complexity. Thus, I assume that agency is inherited.

This is not the forum to investigate all types of of agency. This is a form for characterizing two types of human agency: Ordinary human choices and the choices in love. Ordinary human choices are the vast majority of our choices. They are choices we make to satisfy our inclinations. “Inclination” should not be construed as indicating what satisfies our sensual desires. Humans are frequently inclined to choose what even the most prudish would consider noble. Most of the time, people are conscious of their choices and they are free to carry them out. So, a type of freewill is very common in human affairs. Our choices a free in a twofold sense. As simply being agent choices they are free and as not being compelled by any physical or mental force. The reality of ordinary freewill is not problematic. It is almost the type of freewill that so-called soft determinists accept. However, soft determinist do not accept the elementary freewill of simply being an agent because they are determinists who reject emergence of agency. So, the problem of freewill is not a verbal problem. There is a disagreement about what can be in reality. It is an ontological disagreement about the possibility of agent causality.

The freewill of love, freedom to love, is different from ordinary freewill because it assumes a different input into human agents. The novel input is the good of the other. The goodness of the Basic Human Goods is an input available to for ordinary choices. For instance, the goodness of life is readily recognized. People naturally desire these basic goods. In most cases, the final cause, the goal, of a choice of basic human goods is to satisfy our inclination for those basic goods. For instance, a father who chooses to promote the education and health of his children has an inclination toward having those goods in his children. With ordinary freewill he seeks satisfaction of those paternal inclinations which pursuits have the side effects of those goods existing in his children. We can imagine some ungrateful adult children dismissing the efforts of their father by saying “He didn’t really love us. Given his traditions and inclinations, he was just doing what he wanted.” We have to concede that those ingrates have a point.

The freewill of love requires a higher level of agency than that needed for ordinary freewill. For ultimately, all choices of ordinary freewill are to satisfy inclinations. A capacity to select a goal regardless of any inclination for it is required.2 We need a capacity to choose the good of an other regardless of any inclination for the good of the other. This capacity for love is a condition of these higher level agents. There is also a need for inputs for this higher level of agency. What is good for the other needs to be presented to agents as good regardless of any inclination for it. For a man to love a woman, he needs to perceive what is good for her regardless of any inclination for her having that good, the capacity to choose that good in her regardless of any inclination to do so and then to carry out a course of action with the intention bring about that good in her. This freewill of love usually occurs in a context in which he acts lovingly with ordinary freewill. He has an inclination for her to have the good and he acts with the intention of satisfying his inclination for her happiness, i.e., rejoicing in the good he provides for her.

Love’s imperceptibilty now confronts us. We cannot be conscious of any difference between willing the good of the other regardless of any inclination for it and willing to satisfy an inclination for the good of the other. The free choices of love, if any, are free choices of which we are not conscious. when we make them. It is in retrospection of fairly long periods of our past about which the best explanation is that the choice we made for the good of another would have been made regardless of any inclination. I don’t like philosophical aphorisms. But: Love is inferred; not perceived.

A subsequent post brings out that an inference to a judgment that humans can love carries with it an inference to the supernatural dimension of human nature.

  1. From reviews I have read, viz. “The Fate of Free Will,” by James Gleick in Jan. 18, 2024 New York Review of Books, the metaphysics I sketch may have resemblance to that of Kevin J. Mitchell in his book Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will, Princeton U, Press 2023. But Mitchell’s rigorous work is not to be blamed for my speculations.
  2. I will not digress into any Kantian interpretation. But Kantian moral freedom is analogous to what I am calling freewill of love. Kantian moral freedom requires a capacity, sense of duty, to choose what is right regardless of any inclination to so choose.

Ad Feminism

Character Morality, meaning of love, Secularization

On Saturday, August 26, 2023, I attended a Catholic Men’s Conference at St. Paul’s church in Westerville, Ohio. The first small group discussion question read “What are some of the ways that men’s identity as sons of God or as Christians are being threatened today?” The question provoked disturbing memories from an August 13, 2023 Public Affairs article Elon Musk and The Reproductive Revolution

In various ways Mr. Musk has fathered ten children. The variety of ways locates his masculinity along the toxic spectrum.: Studs, killers, jerk-offs. Most likely not many women would explicitly endorse elimination of women. Although qualms about using “women” to introduce phrases such as “chest feeders,” “pregnant person” and “biological woman” suggest deep ambivalence about recognizing woman as a single category. However, a theme of many types of feminism is that the essential and vital place of women in society can be properly recognized if and only if that for which women are uniquely qualified is divided into specific services whose compensation could be recognized in a nation’s GDP. No one gets paid for being a women.

Explicit, or even implict, endorsement of this economic fragmentation of the category of women is suicidal feminism. Instead we have ovum donors, womb donnors, child care givers and less we forget sexual satisfiers – sex-workers and porn actresses. No single person need, or really should fill these feminine jobs. Indeed it might be better for the economy if most women held jobs in the economy unrelated to reproductive and sexual services. If on occasion a woman in the non-reproductive sector became pregnant, another reproductive service would provide pregnancy termination services.

In such an economy, there is no place for husbands and fathers. For there are no women to be mothers and no women to help them become husbands and fathers. There will always be wars. Sperm is needed and male sexual desires will not go away. What’s left for a man to be? Killers are needed for war and studs for sperm donors. Why live with a women when there is no serious future. Porn and prostitutes are there to satisfy sexual inclinations. The economic elimination of women leaves only toxic masculinity for men.

Who would have thought that the slogan “equal pay for equal work” could lead this way? However, no one is paid for being a wife or mother; nor is any one paid for being a husband or father. Perhaps, a presupposition of the slogan is that the worth of what one does is measured by how much one is paid. So,”no pay, no worth.”

Bonding Necessary for Love

bonding, meaning of love

In Love is More than Willing the Good of The Other , I point out that we cannot say all  we intend to say with “love” by talking only of willing and thinking of the good of the one loved. There is a need for a complex of affections, thoughts and actions forming a relationship of bonding. There is a variety of bonding relations which could be called “love-forming.” The varieties of bonding leads to a variety of ways of loving. There are personal bonds which relate two people to one another which are not love-forming., viz., hatred. I focus mainly on on what might be recognized as love-forming bonding.

 Typically bonding is a relation of one person to another. What are some basic semantic features of almost all types of bonding relations?

The relationship is not always symmetric.  For instance, consider a case of a man and a woman who mutually respect one another and will the good for each other.  However, the man, as the saying goes, falls in love with her.  For, good or ill, he had bound himself in love with her.  However, she does not have, and cannot by any act of will create that love forming bond with him. He loves her while she does not love him. Obviously, bonding relations are not transitive. A friend of your friend may not be your friend. Some might think that love-forming bonding is obviously, and maybe necessarily, reflexive. I challenge an assumption that a love-forming bonding is reflexive.Suicide suggests that some people hate themselves. Anecdotal evidence indicates that many people find their happiest times of life when they have forgotten themselves.

I write that bonding is typically a personal relationship for I want to set aside discussion of bonding with non-human animals, such as our pets. Also I do not want to get distracted on whether or not there can be bonding with non personal entities such as organizations or locations. I could easily become distracted by tryng to distinguish bonding from loyality and a sense of who one is. I do not intend to define “bonding.” I discuss bonding only by making semantical observations about how we talk of bonding. I present these semantical observations as bringing out what we mean by “bonding.” Story tellers perhaps give us a better understanding than could be given by any definition. Stories can reveal bonding from the perspective of the characters and from the omniscient author perspective. Unfortunately, I am not a creative writer.

Is bonding a thought or a feeling?

Frequently, bonding is talked about as a some type of feeling or complex of feelings. As a saying goes one might admit to starting to love by admitting “having feelings for so-and-so.” However, it is not a thoughtless raw feeling. It is a feeling for someone with certain,perhaps indefinable, features. I doubt that there is a way of identifying the feeling, as opposed to the thoughts in loving. Suppose Tom fell in love with Sue 2016 and after a break-up in 2018 falls in love with Jane in 2022. Would there be a way of deciding the truth of “The feeling of Tom for Sue is the same as the feeling of Tom for Jane” apart from any thoughts of Tom? Even the binding of an infant with his or her mother is a mixture of inexpressible thoughts and feelings. Facial recognition is cognitive. Facial recognition devices – a type of robot- provide evidence that facial recognition is cognitive. The program for a facial recognition robot mimic the thoughts of facial recognition.

More generally, bonding is to something or someone under a description.

All things considered, bonding is best classifed as the affective dimension of love. I suspect that if there were a way of investigating a brain of a bonding person, brain regions associated with feelings would be more active than regions associated with cognitive processing.

Proper control of bonding is essential in sexual morality. In my book Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilihism Tulsa 2012, I specify courting, bonding, mating as the main areas of sexual morality. In the book I focus on mating, eg. coitus. A free copy of this book is available by emailing Kielkopf.1@osu.edu .