Unconditional Love and God

Suppose I think that (1) is true and I think that independent of my judgment about the truth of the consequent. To make sure my judgment about the consequent doesn't play any role in my thinking, imagine that I don't accept the consequent -- either through being agnostic or denying it.

Call the antecedent of your conditional L (for love) and the consequent G (for God). Suppose I don't accept G. Should I accept "If L then G"? I'd say only if I think that L is false--only if I think the conditional as a whole is vacuously true.

For, consider: if I judge the antecedent to be true, then I shouldn't judge the conditional to be true, since I either think the consequent false or I am agnostic about it. If I think the consequent is false, the conditional is (obviously) false. If I am agnostic about the consequent, it seems like a poor judgment to judge the conditional true, since, given what I think (i.e., that the antecedent is true), the truth-value of the conditional varies directly with the truth-value of something I'm agnostic about--the consequent.

If I am agnostic about the antecedent L, then I should also refrain from accepting the conditional. For, again, either I deny the consequent or I'm agnostic about it. If I deny the consequent and am agnostic about the antecedent, then, again, I see that the truth-value of the conditional varies directly with the truth-value of something I'm agnostic about--the antecedent. If I am agnostic about both the antecedent and consequent of the conditional in 1, I definitely shouldn't accept it.

So, if I'm not sure about or reject G, I should accept the conditional as a whole only if I think L is false. But, I think L is true--it is rational and permissible to have unconditional love for a person! So, I don't think I have any good reason to accept the conditional in 1 independent of my acceptance of the consequent G.

I should be clear, though, that these comments should only be applied to the conditional in 1, since counterexamples to my above reasoning are legion. For instance, I may be agnostic about the antecedent and consequent of a conditional but accept that the conditional is true based on trustworthy testimony. Or, consider if the antecedent and consequent are the same - then I should accept the conditional regardless of my considerations of the truth-value of the antecedent and consequent.

Concerning the conditional in 1, however, I don't think I have non-question-begging trustworthy testimony that 1 is true. (but, maybe you do, and maybe that's why you have the intuition about 1 that you do). And, the antecedent and consequent aren't the same.

So, it looks to me that I don't have any reason for accepting 1 that is independent of my acceptance of 1's consequent, G.
Tim

Suppose I have twins, Castor and Pollux. The only difference between them is that one was created by God and one wasn't. If I said that if only I knew which one was created by God I'd know which one it made sense to love unconditionally, I think people would rightly say I was insane.

As for (2), I think that I'm inclined to accept (2) without first having to determine if any theological claims are true.

Dear Alexander, the challenge is to think up reasons for supporting (1) independent of belief in (3) or (4). Obviously, this requires elucidation of the concept of 'unconditional love'.

I suppose that if I love someone conditionally, that means that there are certain actions such that, if the person performed those actions, I would cease to love them. If I love the person unconditionally, then I would love them despite the evil they have done, because I believe in the possibility of their redeeming themselves.

I realize that this is an awkward summary of complex feelings, but I do feel there is some truth in it. When I say someone I love behaving in a way that I think is unworthy, it sets up a terrible cognitive dissonance; I find it hard to reconcile the reality of the deed with the worthiness of the person. I look for some indication in their future behaviour that they too recognize the error of their ways, and will in future live up to the expectations I have formed of them. The worst case scenario is when the loved one does something so terrible that I think 'You are not the person I thought you were.'

In that case, the existence of God is relevant because it provides the possibility of redemption: whatever someone does, there is the possibility that they will be restored to their lost status. I was taught, as a child, that the worst sin is despair - to suppose that what I have done is so terrible that I am beyond redemption. Without God, perhaps it would be rational to despair of some people, people I might once have loved. So the existence of God would make unconditional love rational.

Clayton, I have problems imagining identical twins, one created by God the other not created by God. I have no problem imagining that we are all created by God, and no problem imagining that none of us are created by God, but that some people are God's creation and others aren't is more difficult.

However, setting that aside, I think that what matters is whether, when they perform wicked actions, Castor and Pollux still have the chance of redemption. I cannot suppose that God would say 'Well, Castor is my creation, so while he lives I'll try to redeem him. But since someone else created Pollux, I'm not going to help him when he falls into sin.' Such a reaction just seems unworthy of God: if Pollux is not created by God, still I think that God would adopt him, and treat the adopted child the same as his created children. But this example does illustrate an important point: (1) gains credibility when we focus not simply on the fact that someone was created by God, but on God's relationship with people in general - God's love is what is of primary importance rather than his creativity.

Finally, I note that love is often not rational. A friend of mine contrasted his love for his wife with his love for his newly born son: he and his wife chose to enter a relationship, and, he said, there were things that she could do which would irreparably damage that relationship and destroy their mutual love. (Not that he was saying he expected her to do so, but he could specify the kind of behaviour that would have this effect). But with his son, he said, no matter how terribly he might behave, he would always be his son, and the love would always be there. I don't know that he would have described this love as rational; isn't sometimes a good thing to love beyond a degree that is rational?

So, if there is no God, unconditional love for another human being might be irrational but still a good thing. It would lead us to hope for things that are not possible. Whereas if God does exist, the hoped for things are possible and so the love is rational.

Here's an observation. If any contingent person other than oneself is such that it appropriate for one to love her unconditionally, then all contingent persons other than ourselves are such that it is appropriate to love them unconditionally.

Why? For suppose it is appropriate to love x unconditionally but not to love y unconditionally. Then there is some valuable property Q that x has and y lacks in virtue of which it is appropriate to love x but not y unconditionally.

Now, if I love x unconditionally, I am inter alia committed to loving x even should it turn out that I was wrong to attribute Q to x. But this is odd. How can my belief that x has Q justify my commitment to love x even should x not have Q?

This suggests that x's possession of Q cannot be what justifies unconditional love.

This holds for any property, relational or not, about whose possession by someone one can be mistaken, even plausibly essential properties like "being human" (my beloved may turn out to be a Martian in disguise) or being my child.

Now, (2) is ambiguous as to whether the person it is appropriate to love unconditionally is distinct from oneself or could be oneself. On the former reading, if (2) holds, then every person x is such that it is appropriate and rational to love x unconditionally.

Now maybe there is an argument that it can only be the case that it is appropriate and rational to love everyone unconditionally, no matter how evil, if everyone is created by God.

Doesn't Ben Murphy's suggestion make 'unconditional' love conditional on the possibility of being redeemed--i.e., on the possibility of their becoming the sort of person who is worthy of being loved? ("When I say someone I love behaving in a way that I think is unworthy, it sets up a terrible cognitive dissonance; I find it hard to reconcile the reality of the deed with the worthiness of the person.")

Also, I share the doubts about the independent acceptability of (1) expressed above. But, in any case, if one were to accept (1) (without already believing that God exists), wouldn't it make a lot more sense to reject (2) rather than accept (3) and (4)?

Do you mean to say an argument that it is rational to love x unconditionally on the condition that they're created by God?

Alexander
The value that one person has to me that another does not is the relationship that the first person has to me. I take it that I should love my wife more then I should love my neighbor's wife. The reason for this is that I made promises to my wife that created the relationship she and I has, that I did not make to my neighbor's wife.

Also, Without argument, I see no reason to accept your 1st premise in the original argument so even if 2 is true it does not entail anything about God's existence. I can love my wife unconditionally (whatever that means in practice) without having to say anything about God.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether unconditional love can ever be rational. Alexander's posting about loving x because of Q points in this direction.

Suppose we say that it is rational to have unconditional love for your children. I love x unconditionally because I believe x is my daughter. I do not love y unconditionally, because y is not my daughter. Then, years later, I discover x is not my daughter. But because I love x unconditionally, I still love x.

(A more likely situation, incidentally, is learning that your parents are your adopted parents. I know that different people respond to this in different ways, but I think it is quite usual for people in such a situation to persist in their love: after all, it is still the same person.)

Now, what differentiates x, to whom I give unconditional love from y, to whom I do not give unconditional love? My love of x rather than y now appears to be arbitrary, and therefore irrational. But that does not make it rational to love y unconditionally. Rather, what has happened is that my unconditional love has ceased to be rational unconditional love, but since it is unconditional, it should continue even when it becomes irrational to continue it. If my love is unconditional, my rationality cannot be a condition of that love.

John's example is to the point: once I give my unconditional love, I cannot take it back, even if it was a mistake to give it. Some commitments bind in any circumstances.

There are other ways of dealing with this. Even if x is not my daughter, x is differentiated than y because I once had a false belief that x was my daughter whereas I didn't have such a belief about y. So perhaps Q could be some quality such as 'being a person who, at one time, one had reason to believe possessed a property such that possessing this property is a reason for unconditional love'. Still, that seems incredibly ad hoc, and hardly an example of rational behaviour.

I should add that of course my 'unconditional love' is conditional on some of my properties - e.g. my existence. If I say that I will love someone whatever happens, that doesn't rule out that I might cease to exist, or go insane. What I'm interested in is not a change when I cease to be rational, but a change when unconditional love ceases to be a rational choice for me (assuming it was conditional in the first place).

Finally, I also note, in fairness to myself, that in my previous post I specified that I understood unconditional love to mean loving someone despite any future actions they might perform. Up until that point, nobody had posted a definition of 'unconditional love', and I think my posting makes sense given the definition of 'unconditional love' that I adopted, which I thought was reasonably close to the way people actually use the phrase.

Alex, you ask,

How can my belief that x has Q justify my commitment to love x even should x not have Q?

Here's how. Let Q be an essential property of x. In that case, the hypothetical situation you envisage in which x is ~Q is an impossible world w. Everything is true at w, a fortiori it is true at w that you continue to love x. So, x's having Q justifies your unconditional commitment to x.

Ben, you say,

. . . once I give my unconditional love, I cannot take it back, even if it was a mistake to give it. Some commitments bind in any circumstances

But why believe that one's commitment to unconditional love is itself unconditional? Suppose you discover that you made a commitment to unconditionally love a clever alien? Yikes! I'm pretty sure your commitment is defeated. So, interestingly, when someone P commits to unconditionally love x, it does not mean that there are no conditions under which P may justifiably stop loving x.

Mike - excellent point. I think that when we talk about 'unconditional love' there is a real phenomenon that we encounter and are trying to describe. My friend who was describing what it meant to be a father was describing how he had experienced a new and different form of love. When we talk about unconditional love, we need to be true not so much to the kind of definition that people regularly adopt, as to the reality that they so describe.

My first post attempted to describe this phenomenon as love that doesn't changed based on future actions of the beloved. That doesn't mean it will not change based on the discovery that the beloved isn't who they appear to be, particularly if they turn out to be an alien bent on destroying humanity disguised as a human baby while they carry out the task of constructing a full-blooded theory of meaning.

Still, I think that unconditional love should remain firm given certain revelations about past actions and identity of the beloved - e.g. the revelation that my 'daughter' was never really my daughter all along.

The worry that I was expressing at the end of my second post is that, using our philosophical training, we are jumping on any form of condition involved in love and saying 'see, that's conditional love after all', trying to construct a theory about love that meets the description 'unconditional' when that description is interpreted in the strictest terms, rather than trying to understand the actual phenomenon that meets that description closely enough for the purposes of everyday language. So my 'binding in any circumstances' was too extreme. I still wonder though whether the point of its being described as 'unconditional' is that it does bind in circumstances where it is not rational.

Tim and John both ask why an atheist should accept (1) and, if they accept (1) they should not reject (2) rather than accept (3). My first post was my best attempt to argue for (1). If an atheist accepted (1), I think the best response would be to reject (2) while pointing out that love need not be rational. So at best, I think this works not as an argument for the existence of God, but as a clarification of the difference between theism and atheism.

What I have in mind is that the atheist who accuses the theist of irrational faith in God might be willing to admit that their own unconditional love for certain human beings rests on an irrational faith in human nature. I think that is the strongest support that theism is likely to receive from this argument.

BTW, Alexander, since you claim that the argument you give is sound, what's your reason for thinking that it is permissible and makes rational sense to have unconditional love only for God or a person created by God? (I presume it's not for the trivial reason that all people who exist are either God or created by God.)

Also, would you abandon (2) if you were to stop believing that God exists?

Thanks Ben. There are some interesting papers on 'Love De Re', that are probably relevant to the analysis of unconditional love. These papers suggest that the attitude of loving takes as its object the person herself/himself,rather than some definite description under which the person does or does not fall.
Imagine the following Parfit style case: the person x that is the object of S's unconditional love is accidentally destroyed in a tele-transporter. The transporter thereafter makes an exact copy of the destroyed person, cell for cell. Upon learning this, I think S might conclude that he does not love x' (the copy of x), though x' is qualitatively indiscernable from x. That is, every quality that S loved about x is a quality possessed by x'. S might say that S's unconditional love was de re, for x herself, as long as x lived. But x no longer lives.

This is a really good discussion. I should post more sound but possibly question-begging arguments. :-)

First a comment about the initial formulation of the argument. That was in terms of "unconditional love". I think "unconditional love" should be understood as including an unconditional commitment to continue to love. Take that as read below.

Anyway, here's one thing that seems relevant It is inappropriate to commit myself to doing something inappropriate. If under circumstances C it is inappropriate to do A, I should not commit myself to do A in C. This has some implications. Suppose that there is some quality B such that it is inappropriate to love anyone who has B. Then it seems inappropriate to make an unconditional commitment to love x unless x's having B is in some very strong sense ruled out.

Suppose, more weakly, that there is a quality B such that it is non-appropriate to love anyone who has B. Consider now the choice between two commitments: (1) to love x no matter what except unless x has B, and (2) to love x no matter what. If it is not the case that it is appropriate love x if x has B, then it seems that it may be irrational to opt for (2) over (1).

If this is right, then unconditional love is rationally inappropriate unless all conditions under which love is not appropriate are ruled out in a strong sense.

So now we get one of the really hard questions here. What does it mean "are ruled out in a strong sense"? The suggestion implicit in Mike's second last comment is that if Q is an essential property of x, then x's not having Q is ruled out sufficiently strongly.

I don't think this is right. It seems that epistemic possibility and not just metaphysical possibility matters here. For instance, it may in fact be an essential property of me that I came into existence on an odd-numbered second of the day. But a love conditional on that property would surely be a conditional love.

One way to see this is from the side of the beloved. If y is committed to unconditionally loving me, I have the right to count on at least one of the following three claims being true at any future time: (a) y is no longer capable of loving me (e.g., because y is non-existent or because y believes I am non-existent); (b) y has gone back on an unconditional commitment of hers; or (c) y still loves me.

If the love is conditional on my having quality Q that y could doubt without going back on any unconditional commitment of hers, then that is a conditional love, since then y might come to believe that I lack Q and thus would cease to love me without (a) or (b) being true.

However, if the love is conditional on my having a quality Q such that y is unconditionally committed to my having Q if I exist, then this conditioning does not threaten my reliance on y's commitment. For instance, if I am unconditionally committed to believing in God's existing and being the creator of all contingent beings (as I am), then a committed love of y conditioned on y being God or being created by God is not problematically conditional. (An unconditional commitment to believe p is a commitment to believe p no matter what evidential or other inducements should turn up. Note that an commitment to do something no matter what does not entail a believe that one would do it no matter what. It only entails that if one didn't do it, then this would be a failure to follow through on one's commitment.)

Back to the case of the alien. If your committed love of me is conditional on my not being an alien, then this love is conditional (in the relevant sense) unless you have an unconditional commitment never to doubt my earthliness (or, more precisely, never to doubt that if Alexander Pruss exists, he is an earthling). You shouldn't have such an unconditional commitment however--the evidence is not sufficient to justify it, and there is no non-evidential justification for undertaking this particular commitment.

Tim:

"what's your reason for thinking that it is permissible and makes rational sense to have unconditional love only for God or a person created by God" -- I am not committed to the claim you attribute to me. I am committed to claim (1), because I am committed to the consequent of (1). ((1) is a material conditional!)

"Also, would you abandon (2) if you were to stop believing that God exists?" -- I have not much of an idea what I would do were I to stop believing that God exists. I might go literally insane. I might become a solipsist. I might stop believing I exist. I might become a meaner or a kindlier person. I have no idea, and I hope in God's grace that I never find out, since there is only one way I could find out...

This is a minor logical point, but that fact that x creates something is not a guarantee that x still exists. X could create something and then go out of existence. This is my problem with premise 1. Simply from the ability to create we can not ascertain anything about that being other then it had the ability to bring about what it created. If we extend existence to the creator of y beyond the creation of y then we are asserting something that is not warranted. This needs an independant argument. Hence premise 1 is not known to be true without such an argument and therefore the argument is not sound, although it is valid.

Well, OK, fair enough Alexander. But if you're committed to (1) for only that reason, and you have no independent reasons to support the claim I (wrongly) attributed to you, then I don't see why we should suppose this argument has much chance of being successful. After all, if God exists, it's not that difficult to come up with sound arguments for His existence that aren't cogent.

Tim:

I ended my post with: "Question: Is there reason to accept (1) independent of accepting the consequent? My intuition is that there might be."

The post was meant to be a challenge for the reader to come up with such reasons.

Why do I think there could be such reasons? Well, I have theological reasons for thinking that there is a connection between love of God and love of neighbor. I am not clear on what the connection is, but it may be that working it out would yield independent grounds for (1).

I also have a vague intuition that unless we have a theistic view of things, we may not want to say that no matter what, a human being has deep value. Aristotle wouldn't say that--he thought that vicious people shouldn't even love themselves. So maybe there is some idea that only if everybody's existence is a participation in divine life can a really, really vicious person be lovable. But an unconditional commitment to love someone is a commitment to love a really, really vicious person, should our beloved become such.

Hi Ben.

I'm still a little worried about whether your defense of (1) might still not really be 'unconditional' love, even in the more relaxed sense that you're rightly pointing to in your later post.

You give a rough description of 'unconditional love' as "love that doesn't changed based on future actions of the beloved," and you say that this isn't the same as its being totally unretractable no matter what one discovers. OK, but still, the following two statements seem to me to express quite different attitudes towards the beloved:

(A) "I will love you, no matter what you do, because I am confident that one day you may be redeemed and become the sort of person who is worthy of being loved."

(B) "I will love you, no matter what you do, because I am confident that you are a human being and not a space alien bent on destroying the human race."

(A) may (technically) meet the criterion of loving a person no matter what he does, but it still ties my love to the possible future worthiness of the beloved. And that seems to cut against the spirit of the phenomenon of unconditional love as e.g., described by your friend talking about what it meant to be a father.

I apologize if (A) doesn't get your position right, but it's what I pick up from your description of finding it hard to reconcile the reality of the evil deeds with the worthiness of the person you love.

Alex:

I think the answer is yes. The antecedent says...

"If it is permissible and makes rational sense to have unconditional love for a person..."

This antecedent is false. So the conditional is true. The antecedent is false independent of whether God exists. Why?

1. Only acts are permissible, not mental states like having unconditional love, so it's ffalse that it's permissible to have unconditional love.

2. It's not rational to have unconditional love, since there are always trivial conditions on loves existence, for example, that one exist.

Alex, you write:

"I also have a vague intuition that unless we have a theistic view of things, we may not want to say that no matter what, a human being has deep value."

The following paper might be relevant:

http://www.louispojman.com/equalworth.pdf

It doesn't deal directly with issues of unconditional love, but I think that much of what Pojman says may help support your vague intuition.

Hi Christian,

I am curious how you would defend the truth of both (1) and (2) of your post. They are not obviously true so a defense of them would be helpful.

I think (1) is false because there are certain thoughts and desires (attitudes and feelings even) that seem impermissible. Should person x think and desire to rape person y? My hope is that you would see that the answer is no, and the should operating here is moral. (If this example does not work, think of a more horrific case.) Thus, it is morally impermissible, ceteris paribus, to think and desire to rape people. Of course, this is an appeal to intuition, but I think intuition favors me on this one. Are people just wrong when they say things like, "you shouldn't think that" or, "you shouldn't want that"?

About (2), I am unsure what to think. Do you think that only necessary beings can love unconditionally? This does not seem right. Why does a being need to have necessary existence in order to have unconditional love. It is the love for an x that is necessary (if that is one condition of the analysis of 'unconditional love'), not the existence of the lover or the beloved, right?

Thanks.

Hey Jeremy:

"I think (1) is false because there are certain thoughts and desires (attitudes and feelings even) that seem impermissible."

So you have the opposite intuition. I think, on the other hand, that we need to distinguish character appraisals from act appraisals. We should fault someone, say that they are defective, for desiring to rape someone, "maybe", but we should not say the desiring is impermissible, because (i) ought implies can, and we cannot control desires and (ii) the distinction between types of appraisals is important and intuitive. I think virtues and vices are important, calling someone an ass is an important appraisal, or a gentle soul, and the terminology of impermissibilitry leaves out important distinctions, I think.

"Do you think that only necessary beings can love unconditionally?"

No. My question was more rhetorical aiming to clarify the concept expressed by 'unconditional' in the antecedent. I don't happen to think unconditional love makes sense, directed at anything, God or not, but was hoping for somone to show me why I may be mistaken.

Alex, you note this,

I don't think this is right. It seems that epistemic possibility and not just metaphysical possibility matters here. For instance, it may in fact be an essential property of me that I came into existence on an odd-numbered second of the day. But a love conditional on that property would surely be a conditional love.

I'm certain that the time of one's birth is not an essential property of anyone. But your point is taken that having parents X and Y is an essential property and knowable a posteriori. P could discover that S fails to have the essential properties she thought S had. So one could make love conditional on the possession of certain essential properties. That's good. How about the following,

U. S unconditionally loves x based on property P iff.(i) S knows that P is an essential property of x, (ii) S loves x because x is P and (iii) in every possible world in which S knows that P is an essential property of x, S loves x because x is P.

In this case we have S's love conditional on a property P and nonetheless properly called 'unconditional love' since there is no world in which S knows that x is P and fails to love x. Of course there are worlds in which x exists and S doesn't, so S does not know in those worlds that x is P. There are worlds in which S suffers a severe stroke and no longer recognizes or loves x. But these are clearly not counterexamples to the claim that U rightly characterizes unconditional love.

Mike:

I think U is too strong and too weak. Too strong because it is never satisfied except when S is God or lacks significant free will, since every lover, no matter how faithful, will be unfaithful in some worlds. Moreover, there will be worlds where S never begins to love x.

Too weak because knowledge is not enough here. My mother knows I am her biological son. However, if her love were conditional on this knowledge, she might cease to love me without going back on any commitment, simply by ceasing to know that I am her biological son. It is causally possible for her to be presented with sufficiently strong apparent evidence that would justify her in abandoning her knowledge that I am her son. (Contrary to what Socrates seems to have thought, it is possible to know p and then to justifiably abandon belief in p.) But this means that her commitment really is conditional.

I think a good moral case can be made that parents should love their children not conditionally on these being biologically theirs. Otherwise, the children can never be sure of the committed continuation of the love.

Some disjointed thoughts.

1. The following is a plausible conceptual truth about commitment: If x is committed to Q in C, and x is in C and can Q but does not Q, then x has violated a commitment of his. (The violation may be non-culpable if x has amnesia, etc.)

2. A commitment to unconditional love of y is a commitment to love in all logically possible future circumstances that include y. Moreover, if C is any logically possible future circumstance that includes me, y and my capability of loving, I am committed to love y even in C.

3. An unconditional commitment to Q cannot be made any less conditional.

4. Suppose that my commitment to love y is conditional on a property P of y that I know to be an essential property of y, but that my love is nonetheless unconditional. Consider now the following logically possible circumstance, C1: I justifiably come to the belief that y lacks P. If I am committed to love y unconditionally, then I am committed to love y even in C1. But I do not think I really am committed to love y in C1 if my love is conditional on y's having P.

One might object that I can predict that if C1 were to take place, I would violate my commitment but this violation would be non-culpable (cf. point 1).

But consider point 3. We can actually imagine two kinds of person: one of whom committedly loves y only when he knows y has P, and the other of whom committedly loves y even when he has ceased to know that y has P. It seems that the latter's love is less conditional. But one cannot be less conditional than unconditional. Hence the love of the first is not unconditional.

Here's a thought to support my intuition. Suppose atheism is true. Take a really bad person (e.g., what I would have been like were it not for grace). What is lovable about such a person? Well, there is potential. But what if the person is irredeemably bad? This possibility cannot be ruled out given atheism (I am grateful to Ben for this insight).

And there is human nature. But can I really love someone just for her being a homo sapiens? If Christian or Jewish theism is true, I can, because by being human she bears the divine image. If other forms of theism are true, I can still love her for being an expression of God's creativity.

But if atheism is true, does it make sense to love someone just for being human when the person's behavior is inhuman? Even if we could, but I am not sure it would be a properly interpersonal love. It seems like it might be more like an abstract appreciation of the human species.

Here's an analogy. A friend is a sculptor and makes a statue that expresses things important to the sculptor. It is a beautiful statue. But over time, the statue gets damaged in various accidents: the arms break off, the nose gets smashed, etc. Eventually it is not very pretty any more--the features that made it beautiful are gone. Nonetheless, it can make sense to continue to value the statue because of its origins, because of the fact that it has a nature expressive of my friend's intentions. (Indeed, in museums we have artifacts like this.)

Suppose, on the other hand, I find a naturally formed rock that looks just like a beautiful statue, and suppose I don't believe in God. Thus, I take the rock to be just a natural artifact, but still very beautiful. I put the rock up at home. As time goes by, the arms get broken off, the nose smashed, and all that made the rock be beautiful is gone. My intuition is that in this scenario there is no reason to retain the rock.

Thus, that x was made by someone that we have reason to love can be a reason to value x even when x becomes very unimpressive in itself.

Now I don't know if this applies to persons. But maybe it does? Maybe all that the atheist has a rational right to commit to is unconditional respect, but not unconditional love, in the case of someone who is not a child of one's own? (In the case of a child, one can see the child's origination from oneself as providing a reason for love even if the child goes really bad.)

Alex, you say,

I think U is too strong and too weak. Too strong because it is never satisfied except when S is God or lacks significant free will, since every lover, no matter how faithful, will be unfaithful in some worlds.

But I was providing an analysis of unconditional love. You suggest that, for every person P, there is a possible circumstance in which P is unfaithful to a loved one. But this is just to concede that no one is capable of unconditional love. I never said that anyone was capable of it. Certainly, you do not want to say that the following assertions are consistent with unconditional love: (i) "Oh yes, I love S unconditionally" AND (ii) "by the way, there are possible circumstances in which I'd be (culpably)unfaithful to S".

Certainly unconditional love does not have to accommodate cases like that. Indeed that could not be a clearer instance of conditioned love.

But then you add,
Moreover, there will be worlds where S never begins to love x.

Of course there will be. But these do not constitute any counterexample to what I proposed. The fact that I would not love S had I never met S does not make my love less than unconditional. And (U) does not entail that it does.

You add that,
Too weak because knowledge is not enough here. My mother knows I am her biological son. However, if her love were conditional on this knowledge, she might cease to love me without going back on any commitment, simply by ceasing to know that I am her biological son.

Of course, this is exactly what I claim is true of unconditional love. Recall, I said that failing to love someone because, for instance, you have had a stroke and no longer recognize them is not a violation of unconditional love. Similarly, failing to love someone because you "cease to know them" for other reasons does not constitute a violation of unconditional love according to (U). This is all consistent with saying that deliberately acting in ways that would cause you not to know the loved one is a violation of unconditional love.

Dear Tim, on further consideration, you are right that the kind of love I'm putting forward does have conditions: a useful thought experiment, based on C.S.Lewis' The Great Divorce, is whether people in heaven love people in hell.

If I love someone and they behave badly, that causes me pain. But if they are in hell, they will engage in continual bad behaviour, let's hypothesize, if only by thinking bad thoughts. Should I be pained by their continued evil? Lewis seems to suggest that there's a cut-off point - people who choose to be bad cannot be allowed to cause people in Heaven continual pain. In The Great Divorce, people in Heaven cease to care about those they once loved who are in Hell.

Now my position is committed to the possibility of something like this, because I was trying to think of a difference between a theist and an atheist concerning the rationality of unconditional love. The idea was that God's existence means every human being has hope of redemption while alive, but his non-existence means there is no ground for this hope. Perhaps one could call this a commitment to love 'until death us do part': a kind of love that endures as long as life lasts (let's say as long as either lover or beloved is alive, since even if you die, I can always hope you repented at the last-minute).

Of course, I'm not saying that the theist must be committed to the existence of hell, but if life-long love of some kind is more rational for the theist than the atheist, it must be because of some condition, such as permanent possibility of redemption, that the theist has reason to believe in and the atheist does not, and the absence of that condition must at least be thinkable for the theist and perhaps actualizable after death. After all, Hell is often characterized as the absence of God, and the absence of God would have to mean the absence of whatever factor it was that made unconditional love rational in the first place.

I suspect that my friend would not accept that if he were in Heaven and his son in Hell, he would be right to cease loving his son. One might admit that if you are in Heaven and your beloved in Hell, your love ceases to be rational.

(On a side-note, Therese of Liseux said that she would not be happy in Heaven as long as there were souls in Hell, and she would want to go preach to them. I considered writing a story about this in which the souls in Hell complain that their worst torture that, even in Hell, they have to listen to the preaching of a saint.)

Alexander, I must say that the more you explain your position, the less credible I find it. At least I find the epistemological considerations you invoke make things harder. I simply cannot imagine the following dialogue:
Jack: (to his new-born baby): I love you unconditionally.

Jill: Jack, that was unwise. You just committed yourself to unconditional love for a being you picked out using an indexical. You lack an unconditional guarantee that this being is not a malevolent alien in disguise.

Jack: One of us is being irrational, but I'm not sure it's I.

Jill: You are being irrational to be so unconditional about your love. Unless of course you believe in God.

I realize that we often use absurd philosophical examples about aliens and so on, but what really concerns me is Jill's final response. If unconditional love is irrational because the object of love may not be what it appears to be, how will God's existence make a difference? God's existence does not make it less likely that the baby is a malevolent alien. Or is the point that if God exists, it is rational to love malevolent aliens? Even if that is the point, I have to say that you would need a huge faith in theism and an extraordinarily low belief in sense-perception to be more certain of God's existence than of your belief that what is, apparently, a newly born baby is not a malevolent alien in disguise. What you seem to be saying is that my lack of certainty about the identity of the beloved should make me reluctant to commit myself unconditionally. But the identity of the beloved is likely to be much more certain than belief that God exists anyway: a believer in God who commits to unconditional love surely has more reason to worry that they are wrong about God's existence than an atheist has to worry that their beloved is a malevolent alien in disguise.

Ben,

I am actually not talking of certainty as much as commitment. The Christian should be committed to the existence of God unconditionally, i.e., should be committed to believing in God no matter what should come up. That is primarily a normative status and does not actually imply being more "certain" (whatever that actually means--maybe it means some kind of feeling of certainty, or the actual strength of a disposition as measurable in experiments about belief change) about the existence of God than about sense perception. Thus it may well be that the atheist is more certain that the baby is not an alien than the Christian is certain that God exists. But the atheist probably should not be committed unconditionally to believing that the baby is not an alien.

I think your dialog highlights the implication I suggested in an earlier post, viz., that if it makes sense to have unconditional love for one person other than ourselves, then it makes sense to have unconditional love for each person other than ourselves.

God's existence may make a difference, because it may be that the following conditional is true:
(*) L(everybody is lovable) iff L(God exists).

I think this is clearly true with "if" in place of "iff", and that's all I need here, because if I accept this, and I am committed to believing that God exists, then I am also committed to believing that everybody is lovable. And, in particular, the malevolent alien is lovable.

Again, think of this from the point of view of the child. Suppose the child at some point has some bad dreams and is starting to wonder: "Maybe I am a malevolent alien whose memory has been erased for a while in order to spring into action later." I think it is a part of the unconditionality of parental love that the child has the right to think that her parents are committed to love her even if the feared situation were actual. It doesn't matter.

Certainly this is true of our divine Father. But while the actuality of our love does not match the actuality of our heavenly father's unconditional love, nonetheless we can be committed to loving with full unconditionality. We are called to be perfect even as He is perfect.

(Oh, yes, of course we need to love the souls in hell as well as the devils. But I think it is good for the souls and devils in hell to be in hell, for it is good to exist and good to get what one deserves. May God save us all from that fate, though.)

Hi Christian,

Thanks for the clarification with respect to (2) in your previous post. I did not initially read it as making a rhetorical point, but fair enough.

About the distinction between character and act appraisals, I think this is a fine conceptual distinction to make. However, I do not see how it provides a defense of your initial assertion in (1) or how it adequately responds to my argument from intuition against your assertion of (1). That is, if you are willing to say that one's character is subject (or can be subject) to appraisal, what kind of appraisal is it? Why not think it is moral? It sure seems that the appraisal (the evaluation) can be moral--at least in cases like the one I presented.

Finally, I can accept what you write about ought implies can. This is why I inserted a 'ceteris paribus' clause in my argument. All things equal, if a person can avoid thinking and desiring bad things, she ought do so. Of course, there may be cases where one cannot avoid such thoughts or desires. Even in such cases though it might be right to say that it is morally impermissible to think or desire such things. But it might be right to say that the person is not morally responsible for the action. I have not worked this out, but prima facie it seems right.

Ok, thanks again.

Hi Jeremy:

Yes I think character appraisals are moral. I also think act appraisals are moral. My point is that act appraisals are different from character appraisals because a character is not an act, each appraisal appraises different kinds of things, though both are moral...and so (a) we can account for your intuition that "we should not think bad thoughts" by saying if someone thinks bad thoughts, then they deserve moral criticism, i.e. a bad character appraisal. We can say this without saying they did a bad thing, thinking a bad thought, which would be an act appraisal. And this is good since thinking a thought is not performing an act. So the distinction perserves an intuitive distinction between kinds of appraisals and it can also explain intuitions to the contrary.

Anyway, it isn't at all obvious that people ought not think bad things, other things being equal. If our cognitive life is detached from action, which it could be, then I see nothing wrong with taking pleasure in imagining something that would otherwise be wrong to do. I think this is what we often do while entertaining artwork.

But Mike has given an account of unconditional love that should be looked at. My gut reaction is that unconditional love, as we standardly use the phrase, expresses an irrational attitude. If so, then this is yet another reason to think the antecedent of premise 1 is false and this will surely be a reason independent of whether God exists, which is the conclusion of Alex's argument.

Anyway, here is another worry. Suppose one is a pantheist and believes there are many duplicate morally perfect beings, one of which satisfies the standard Christian conception of God. If one is deserving of unconditional love, then many of them would be. And so one could deny premise one and deny it independently of denying the conclusion. I take it this is just as interesting as having a reason to accept premise one independently of accepting the conclusion.

Thanks Alex, I think I'm now becoming clearer about your position. Also, I appreciate your suggestion about Hell.

I don't think though that theists need be committed to believing in God in any circumstances. One interpretation of the Lord's Prayer, after all, is that we ask God to save us from circumstances that would test our belief beyond the limits of endurance.

As a lifelong practising Christian, I don't recall ever making a commitment to believe in God even in the case that He does not really exist; his not having existed all along would, I think anull the commitment just as a marriage vow can be anulled if one party was deceived.

Returning to the alien-disguised-as-child. Suppose that the malevolent alien killed the child, adopted the disguise, and engaged in conscious imitation of the human baby. The loving father who held the 'baby' and said 'I will always love you' can claim that the alien is not the being he committed himself to loving. Perhaps he believes that the being he committed himself to loving no longer exists. If he avenges the baby's death by killing the alien, I don't think that he is reneging on a commitment made when he said 'I will always love you'. I suppose that, in theory, if he is a Christian, we can say that he should love the alien as he adminsters an act of retributive justice, but even if he does so, I don't see that as a continuation of the love that he expressed previously.

Part of the difficulty is that statements of love are not simply performatives, as promises are. I can make binding and sincere promises at will, but I cannot make honest declarations of love at will. Koko can marry Katisha to save his life, but he cannot love her at will, only pretend to love her while all along he loves himself with passion tenderer still.

It seems to me that 'I will always love you' or 'I will love you whatever happens' are predictions rather than performatives, predictions based upon a self-knowledge. Such predictions might also be based on a justified belief that certain things will never happen - the baby won't turn out to have been a disguised alien all along.

If the baby is a disguised malevolent scheming alien and I still love it, I think that I would have to learn to love it. So if I love my sinning human daughter, the feeling I felt when she was born and said 'I love you unconditionally' is responsible for the existence of the feeling that leads me at a later stage to say 'I still love you.' If I do love the malevolent alien, is this really connected in the same way to the feelings I had of 'my lovely daughter'?

I'm not trying to deny that statements of love involve commitments, but I don't think that the commitments are constitutive of love in the way that commitments constitute a promise. Of course, your account of unconditional love and commitments to love without conditions make perfect sense, I think the trouble is that they are much more sensible than the realities that we actually try to describe with the word 'love'. The danger is that you will end up proving that it is irrational to make certain commitments that nobody ever makes or intends to make.

In Alex's 11:50A post from yesterday, he writes:

"If Christian or Jewish theism is true, I can, _because_ by being human she bears the divine image. If other forms of theism are true, I can still love her _for being_ an expression of God's creativity."

Are these not conditions on loving someone...that the person "bears the divine imagine" or that the person is "an expression of God's creativity"? But, if so, then in what sense is this love unconditional?

Alex writes "But if atheism is true, does it make sense to love someone just for being human when the person's behavior is inhuman? Even if we could, but I am not sure it would be a properly interpersonal love. It seems like it might be more like an abstract appreciation of the human species."

A person's behavior seems to me to be a rational criterion to use in determining who we should love. I see no reason to love Hitler simply because he is human. It is enough for me that his behavior creates reasons for not loving him. It seems to me that the whole notion of 'unconditional' love is meaningless in the sense that there appears to be cirteria being presented in this thread that would allow us to love Hitler-like people if they have certain characterisitics.

Alex, you also write, "Suppose atheism is true. Take a really bad person (e.g., what I would have been like were it not for grace). What is lovable about such a person?" I take offense at this because who are suggesting that those who do not have grace are 'really bad people." Also, it seems wrongheaded to forecast what a person would be like if they lacked a certain characteristic (grace). Now, if you were a "really bad person" before you received God's grace and are now a better person for having God's grace that is different then what you stated.

Mr. Alexander:

'Are these not conditions on loving someone...that the person "bears the divine imagine" or that the person is "an expression of God's creativity"? But, if so, then in what sense is this love unconditional?' -- In the sense that the lover is committed to loving the beloved no matter what might happen.

John:

Yes, we should love Hitler, pray for his salvation, etc.

I did not say or imply that people who lack grace are really bad. I said that I would have been really bad without grace. While my judgment there is only probabilistic, it seems fairly probable given some of my past behavior.

I see no reason, also, to take offense at the claim--which I am neither making nor implying--that people who lack grace are really bad. For the claim carries no implications about any particular person, since there is no specific human person of whom we know that she is lacking divine grace. (In fact, we do not even know that there is currently alive anybody who lacks divine grace.)

Ben:

Thanks for these enlightening remarks.

It is perfectly fine to acknowledge that there are logically possible circumstances I could find myself in which I in fact would cease believing in God. And, yes, I need to pray that I not find myself in such circumstances. But, nonetheless, I am committed to loving God, and hence believing in him, under those circumstances. Commitment is not prediction. Likewise, there probably are circumstances in which I would commit genocide. (E.g., if I were in a regime like Nazi Germany, and acquired various racist beliefs, and God withheld his grace from me, say as punishment for past rejections of grace.) But I am nonetheless committed (by what? well, at least by my baptismal vows) to not engaging in genocide even under those circumstances.

I think a part of loving God with our whole self is not reserving any contingencies, but being committed to loving God no matter what. It is correct that if, per impossibile, God doesn't exist, one's apparent commitment to love him is null. But that is in practice irrelevant. The practically relevant question is whether one is committed to love God even if presented with strong apparent evidence against his existence. And there, I think, the answer is positive.

I am not sure we should say: "I will love you whatever happens". Instead, we should say: "I shall love you whatever happens", or "I promise to love you whatever happens". I think one can promise love, because love is generally within our power. One reason it is generally within our power is theological: we are commanded to love, and God's grace suffices to fulfill the commandments. The second reason is because of what love is. Love is a recognition of the value of someone combined with a willing of their good and a pursuit of union with the person. There is always a value there in a person to be recognized if we choose to recognize it--just the fact that she is a person is enough. And to will the other's good and pursue union is also always within our power, at least when we are in good psychological shape. (Sometimes love comes along with feelings. These are beyond our power, but they are not very important. Love for God does not come along with loving feelings when one is going through the spiritual dark night of the soul, for instance.) Love is primarily found in loving actions, which is perhaps why the aorist is used a number of times in the New Testament with forms agapao.

Clearly a commitment of love that one implicitly makes to the baby does not include a commitment to love the alien that replaces it. (One has a duty to love the alien, but for other reasons.)

In the case of a baby replaced by an alien, there is a reference issue, which your remarks highlight. Commitments depend on speaker intentions. It is a difficult question, I guess, what to make of the reference of "you" in such a case. A minute after the swap, it probably refers to the baby. But what about ten years later, after growing close? There, I think it's the alien. When did it switch? I have no idea what to say.

Christian:

Here's a quick Kantian argument for the idea that some thoughts are wrong. Thinking some thoughts is an instance of using people as mere means (e.g., deliberately fantasizing about torturing someone for fun). It is always wrong to use people as mere means.

Alex,

"Here's a quick Kantian argument for the idea that some thoughts are wrong. Thinking some thoughts is an instance of using people as mere means (e.g., deliberately fantasizing about torturing someone for fun). It is always wrong to use people as mere means."

No way! By the same reasoning it would follow that--deliberately fantasizing about developing a cure for cancer to save someone's life for fun is wrong--but that's not wrong.

Alex,

I think that we might be missing one another here. I don't see how your analogy answers my question. In your previous post you stated (what I took to be) conditions on loving another human being (namely, that the human being bears the divine image or is an expression of God's creativity). My question is, after having laid out _conditions_ on loving another human being, in what sense is that love _unconditional_?

Now, of course, I might be mistaken in taking you to have identified one's bearing the divine image or one's being an expression of God's creativity as conditions. If I am not mistaken, and you did mean to identify them as conditions, then the problem is relatively straightforward for an account of _unconditonal_ love. If I am mistaken, then I am not clear what claim is being made in the passage I quoted in my previous post.

Josh

Josh:

Response 1: Well, in committing oneself unconditionally to love someone, one is committing oneself to love that individual no matter what. This is compatible with having a reason for that commitment, a reason grounded, say, in the individual's being in the image of God. As long as one is unconditionally committing to believing the reason to apply, this is compatible with being committed to love no matter what.

Response 2: I do not think a love need be conditional in the relevant sense if the condition is something is a necessary truth that one is committed to accepting come what may. For instance, suppose that my love of someone is conditional on the law of non-contradiction, or on the claim that love is a good thing. A love conditioned on a claim like this is an unconditional love in the relevant sense: it is not conditional on things that, as far as one's commitments might go, could go differently.

Christian:

In fantasizing about saving someone from cancer one should be treating that person as an end--one is fantasizing, after all, about a particular way of promoting most of that person's ends by promoting the presupposition of most of that person's ends, viz., her life.