{"id":269,"date":"2008-02-22T06:10:11","date_gmt":"2008-02-22T06:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/269"},"modified":"2008-02-22T13:49:52","modified_gmt":"2008-02-22T13:49:52","slug":"on-interpersonal-love-and-stick-figures-dale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/on-interpersonal-love-and-stick-figures-dale\/","title":{"rendered":"on interpersonal love and stick figures (Dale)"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nFour vivid, moving, memorable depictions of Love.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

A post on some previous post commentary – no one can navel-gaze like a philosopher! \ud83d\ude42 Here’s a pictorial recap<\/strong>, and some additional thoughts on the comments here<\/a>, in response to Scott and JT. The point<\/strong> of all this: we’re exploring why people who call themselves “social trinitarians” don’t like what they call “Latin” theories, and specifically the claim that those “Latin” theories can’t do justice to the loving relationships between the persons of the Trinity.<\/strong>
\n
\nFigure A:<\/strong> I said (comment #2) that social trinitarians, when they refer to “love”<\/strong>, esp. between Father and Son, they have this complex event or state of affairs in mind: two persons mutually acting for the benefit of one another.<\/p>\n

Figure B:<\/strong> Scott points out (#3) that many social trinitarians doubt whether this “Latin” model<\/strong> adequately accounts for, or comes to the same thing as the fact in figure A. Here, the Father (composed of D, the divine essence, and P, the relation of paternity) loves the divine essence (D). (For more on this sort of chart, see this previous series<\/a>.) Just below, to clarify, I’ve separated the lover and the beloved – though on this theory they would of course be separable in thought only. As JT observes (#5,6,8,9) adherents of this model believe<\/em> that it includes personal relationship facts like those in Figure A. I say: sure, that’s what they think<\/em>, but it’s not clear to me it is so.<\/p>\n

Figure C:<\/strong> I said (#11) that by “love”, some mean an act<\/strong>, action, or attitude on an individual person – not the whole loving-relationship fact, as in figure A. Scott basically says (#2, 11) sure, but put two of those individual love-acts together, directed towards each other, and you’ve got the same fact as in Figure A.
\nI say, yes, that seems right. In fact, the model C may be better than A – instead of a “relationship” seeming to hover between the lovers, as if it is instantiated in no thing, but somehow between<\/em> things, in Figure C we have the loving relationship being reducible to two persons, each of which instances a love-act, with these directed at one another. A technical point, to be sure. The more important issue is whether B captures the fact in A or C.<\/p>\n

Figure D:<\/strong> I agree with Scott (#7, 12) that (barring mental illness) one can’t adopt the same kind of love<\/strong> towards a hot, steaming, pepperoni pizza<\/strong>, as towards another personal being.
\nBut look at Figure B – the object of love there is no more a person than a pizza is a person.<\/strong> Of course, this D thing is a component of<\/em> three persons, on that sort of Trinity theory. But we’ve no reason to think every component of a person is a person. Against these negative thoughts, JT urges (#15,16,17) that to love D (the divine essence) is to love any person which has D as a component. I say (#19), I don’t see why that should be so. Though I’m not a social trinitarian, I see the point of their resisting on this score.<\/p>\n

Finally, Scott points out that while part of the “social trinitarian” discomfort with Figure B has to do with the fact that the objects of love aren’t the persons, but rather D, another issue is the idea, embodied in Figure B, that a divine person is to be understood as a composite<\/strong> of a universal (D) and a property or relational property (e.g. paternity, in the Father’s case). He says (#18) that many “social” theorists want to take persons as basic entities, not analyzable as the combination of various components. I say (#19) yes, that’s right – they’re following the lead of various (anti-medieval) early modern philosophers there.<\/p>\n

Hey Scott – perhaps my coffee hasn’t kicked in – I’m not sure I follow your last two comments (#20,21). Could you elaborate in a post, complete with a pic or two? As you can see, I’ve effectively lowered the artistic standards<\/strong> around here, so go and get that pencil and scanner! You’ll have a hard time lowering them further! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four vivid, moving, memorable depictions of Love. A post on some previous post commentary – no one can navel-gaze like a philosopher! \ud83d\ude42 Here’s a pictorial recap, and some additional thoughts on the comments here, in response to Scott and JT. The point of all this: we’re exploring why people who call themselves “social trinitarians”… Read More »on interpersonal love and stick figures (Dale)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-philosophy","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}