Schedule: Friday 8 Afternoon

14h00 Presentation of the Workshop

14h15 15h00 Keynote Talk: Aaron Ben-Ze'ev, University of Haifa, Israel, "Is there an optimal logic system for choosing a romantic partner?"

15h00-15h30 Youngbin Yoon, University of Pennsylvania, USA, "Alienation and the impossibility of reasons-based theories of ideal love"

15h30-16h00 Tatiana Denisova, University of the Aegean, Greece, "Loneliness as a prerequisite of love"

16h00-16h30 Coffee Break

16h30-17h15 Keynote Talk: Caroline Pires Ting, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Macau International Institute, Macau, "Love focused on reason and logic: the mohist way to attain universal love in society"

17h15-17h45 Constantinos Proimos, Hellenic Open University and School of Architecture, Metsovion National Technical University of Athens, Greece, "The Logic of Love According to Soren Kierkegaard"

17h45-18h15 Giulia Battilotti, University of Padua, Italy, Miloš Borozan, Imaging and Clinical Sciences and Center for Advanced Stud- ies and Technologies (C.A.S.T.), G. d’Annunzio, University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy, Rosapia Lauro Grotto, University of Florence and M.A.R.H.C. (Multi- disciplinary Analysis of Relationships in Health Care) Laboratory, Pistoia, Italy, "Logic in Love

ORGANIZERS

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

CONTRIBUTING SPEAKERS

Giulia Battilotti, Department of Mathematics, University of Padua, Italy

Miloš Borozan, Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences and Center for Advanced Stud- ies and Technologies (C.A.S.T.), G. d’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy

Rosapia Lauro Grotto, Department of Health Sciences, University of Florence and M.A.R.H.C. (Multi- disciplinary Analysis of Relationships in Health Care) Laboratory, Pistoia, Italy

"Logic in Love"

We aim to advance a formal description of the implicit logic at the basis of the psychoanalytic theory and ground the rational components of our reasoning on their unconscious origin. Considering the Bi-logic view of the Unconscious as a mainly symmetric setting, where only infinite objects exist and no singular objects are possible, we conceive this universal undifferentiated state in terms of particular sets termed infinite singletons. This view allows us to both preserve the unitarity of objects and show that infiniteness, not finiteness, is the primary mode of sets, and therefore, of thinking. The pivotal consequence of the model is the idea that the unconscious elements cannot be characterised in absence of the external reality, which brings a collapse of infinite sets and allows for the emergence of linguistic representations. These features correspond well to those universally attributed to strong emotions such as love: its symmetry, its infiniteness, its “blindness” with respect to reality and its “unspeakableness”, that only the words of poets can overcome:

Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona.

(Love, which permits no loved one not to love).

Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto V

Love and loneliness are traditionally viewed as opposite or contradictory and even mutually exclusive phenomena of human existence: Loneliness presupposes lack of love, whereas love is considered the best remedy for loneliness. This belief pervades the everyday discourse and is involved in the scientific (psychological) and philosophical conceptions.

However, the relations between these phenomena have an irreducible ambivalence, and they not only match up in tragic harmony but are also interdependent. Love not only does not overcome loneliness but, on the contrary, it is precisely love that allows one to realize the metaphysical depth of the loneliness of both the lover and the object of his love.

1. Why is love considered a means of overcoming loneliness?

Loneliness is the awareness of man’s separateness. Although separateness is objective, its awareness is painful, and therefore loneliness can be defined as the suffering from the awareness of non-participation. A man needs participation in the Whole (absolute or relative) and communion with the Other since he feels his separateness as incompleteness, not wholeness. According to Plato, love is a replenishment to integrity, and only in love, in participation to the Other, a man finds the completeness that he needs so much.

2. Why love does not overcome loneliness?

First, because the separateness of a subject can be overcome only simultaneously with his subjectivity, and therefore with his destruction. In addition, getting rid of separateness (abandoning man’s personality and dissolving into another) does not entail the reach of participation. Participation is the harmonious incorporation of internally integral actors, who keep the boundaries of their identity, into a new common whole that M. Buber called Mit-Ein-Ander-Denken. Such a whole would mean absolute knowledge of each other and absolute intellectual kinship. Nothing can be involved in anything unknown and strange. However, no love guarantees absolute knowledge or kinship but only means a confidential openness to the Other, who remains for the lover terra incognita in many respects. Love does not overcome loneliness but can only soften its experience, and in the case of unrequited love, the feeling of loneliness even intensifies.

3. Why does love to contribute to the awareness of insurmountable loneliness?

To get closer, i.e., to break through to another being, to overcome the barrier that separates the lover from his object of love, a particular acuteness of the experience of the very fact of one’s existence and singularity arises. In love, a man stands before himself as “I,” able to say about himself “I”. He is aware of the love by uttering “I love.” Even if love is mutual, it is not a shared event for the lovers. The experience of love cannot be shared with anybody else: even if we love each other, I love you, and you love me. Love presupposes the indestructible subjectivity of the lover and the beloved one.

At the same time, while preserving his subjectivity, the lover reveals the subjectivity of the one he loves. He turns out to be able to cognize the other in the subjectivity inherent in him, to see in the other being an equivalent to him, although a different being. I love the Other not because he is such as I am, or such as I wished to know him, but because he is as he is, and I love in him not my alter ego, but I love him in all his Otherness, and thereby I accept his personality and uniqueness.

Only the awareness of the specialness and separateness of man’s “I,” i.e., of his loneliness, allows seeing and loving another I in all the beauty and tragedy of his loneliness.

“Love” is a polysemantic word. One may give it a meaning (eg. to make love) governed by classical logic, where true and false are opposite values in a parallel way love and hate are mutually opposite. For ex., “I love those who hate those who hate me”, whose meaning is the affirmation: “I love those who love me”; One more meaning is solidarity for the good: “I do not wish evil to those I love”; and a further more meaning is solidarity for the evil, as that shared by a group of brigands who all together act against a common enemy. Again in these cases a double negation gives an equivalent affirmative meaning - mutual love – governed by classical logic.

A different meaning is given by the Christian teachings: “Do not react to evil [by means of evil]”; “Love [the person who seems but is not] your enemy”. The above doubly negated propositions cannot be translated into the corresponding affirmative ones (e.g. benevolence, goodwill, etc.) since the latter ones lack of objective evidence; it is for this reason that the double negation law fails and these propositions belong to intuitionist logic.

More in general, during a conflict one may make attention to the objective dynamics of the two actors’ moves. In such a case the mechanistic actio-reactio law holds true. But the reactio may be aimed at either destroying the other actor, as the impact of a hard body (an ideal model for Wallis and Newton) does on a fragile body, or at cooperating as elastic bodies (Huygens and Leibniz). do for conserving common quantities, eg., kinetic energy. An even more suggestive physical theory is thermodynamics, because it leads to consider the conflict in a global way and in addition reasons in manifest logical terms, being it based on an ad absurdum theorem (S. Carnot’s). Indeed, its theoretical development suggests for the resolution of all conflicts a dynamics of four logical steps belonging to intuitionist logic.

In conclusion, during a conflict classical logic may suggest a confrontation through single actions which are the mirror negative ones of opponent’s actions – i.e. it suggests to follow justice irrespectively of the effects -, whereas intuitionist logic suggests a global view capable to overcome the conflict through a cooperative behavior – i.e. it suggests an inventive love for cooperating with opponents.

What love is like is an indisputable part of love, and yet the phenomenology of love has received surprisingly little attention in the field. Instead, we philosophers of love have focussed on puzzles like love’s potential rationality, its particularity, and how it functions within the context of a loving relationship. Love and its phenomenology shouldn’t be thought of as separable, however; rather, any successful theory of love ought to be able to explain why love feels the way it does. To this end, I propose we start using the phenomenology of love as a test of the explanatory power of our current best views on love: as they are, can they account for this forgotten feature? As the first application of this procedure, I’d like us to consider a spectrum of views on love I’ll be calling relationship-directed attitude views. Briefly, relationalists about love-attitudes claim that loving someone in particular necessarily involves having a specific attitude toward my relationship with them (e.g. valuing the relationship, desiring that it should continue, etc.). However, I’ll argue that the phenomenology of love can’t be successfully explained in terms of any relationship-directed attitude. This is a significant problem, for if no relationship-directed attitude can explain why love feels the way it does, we have serious reason to doubt that these attitudes are the right mental states to identify with love. The procedure shall run as follows:

To help avoid confounding variables, we’ll restrict our focus to romantic love. I’ll then begin in §1 with a brief word about how I’ll be characterizing romantic love’s phenomenology.

In §2, I’ll talk about relationship-directed attitude views in general, particularly the necessary and sufficiency claims involved, drawing a distinction between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ versions of the view.

In §3 I’ll then describe the kind of case the relationalist takes to be standard: that of two lovers in a mutually valued relationship. I’ll also put some other cases on the table that, though perhaps non-standard by the relationalist’s lights, are familiar enough to demand explanation. If the relationship-directed attitude view is correct, then whatever phenomenology is associated with these cases should be explained by the relationship-directed attitude. However, we’ll see that this isn’t so: in each of these cases, the phenomenology and the attitude come apart.

In §4, I’ll test whether a ‘strong’ relationship-directed attitude view (which claims that a relationship-directed attitude is both necessary and sufficient for love) can satisfactorily explain the various cases, arguing in §5 that it cannot.

What’s more, I’ll argue that even a ‘weak’ version of the view (which claims that a relationship-directed attitude is necessary but not sufficient) fails—alongside a version which makes no necessity claim at all. I’ll conclude with some remarks about the implications of this finding: namely, that there is a crucial aspect of romantic love that can’t be accounted for purely in terms of this kind of attitude. This should prompt philosophers of love to think not only about the plausibility of describing love in relational terms, but also about the theoretical promise of love’s phenomenology and the modeled procedure.

Higher level conjuncts like Logic & Love are not amenable to first order reductionist models because the Logic is not Boolean. The emotions are a prime example. They exist in the physical world and therefore non-separable from the rest of physics but how may they be represented formally? That ontological question of intention has first to be addressed then the second question relates to its epistemological extensions.

A single word of vocabulary in one language may have several equivalents in other languages. An often cited example in language studies is the single word ‘love’ in English language that has several possibilities in Classical Greek. How many such examples is somewhat arbitrary, three, perhaps six or more depending on the writer. Judéo- Christian sources focus on the two main examples of sexual love Eros and selfless love Agape although the latter is very rare in classical texts other than in the Bible.

However what is the logical distinction between these two types of love?

By contrast Plato has quite a different cosmological take on Eros which might be translated more accurately as ‘loveliness’. It is the fundamental emotive condition of the human soul in life and death.

In 1927, the American dancer Isadora Duncan finished her biographical book My life. In this text, she developed a chronological and fictional memory of her main international performances, the public relevant figures that she met and influenced her artistic work, and she explained the main aspects of her theory and pedagogy of dance. If we analyse the book from a choreological perspective, that means, by taking into account the role of truth and lie in the creation, execution and teaching of dance, we may conclude that love played a basic and multidimensional role in her aesthetics and epistemology of dance. The aim of this conference is to present an analytical reading of Duncan’s book from the perspective of her choreological proposal of love. Duncan’s love semiotics and analytics of dance can be considered as ground-breaking, because her dance theory contains relevant nietzschean and platonic influences, which allow a previously unthinkable synthesis between sensual nihilism and abstract incorporeal elevation.

References:

Duncan, I.: Mi vida. Editorial Colón, México (1946).

Nietzsche, F.: Así habló Zaratustra. Un libro para todos y para nadie. Alianza, Madrid (1981).

Eros is an ancient Greek term used to describe the sexual/erotic love or desire and its translation in English as love is sometimes confusing. Despite the various studies that have been carried out in the area of classical studies regarding the ancient Greek and Latin culture and the notion of love in general, little is known about Eros in the light of philosophy. This is due to the fact that erotic topics were considered most of the times as inappropriate or even unbecoming in the area of philosophy until recently. Having been said that, the main purpose of this study is to examine the ‘phenomenon’ of Eros as it is presented in philosophy and in particular throughout the corpus of the most prominent philosopher of ancient Greek thought, that is Aristotle. Some people may assert that Aristotle as a rationalist philosopher wasn’t really interested in thinking over Eros. They can also state that love in Aristotle’s diatribes is contracted to logic and thus it is inconceivable that such a rationalist philosopher could have examined erotic love. In fact, as it will be seen in this paper, Aristotle was concerned about erotic issues, likewise various philosophers before and after him.

The method, I used, was based on multiple readings of the extant texts, but also on readings of the not surviving Aristotelian passages where Eros is cited. Thus, starting with the treatise known as Metaphysics this paper subsequently focused on passages from both the logical works of Aristotle and his ethical and technical treatises. Scarce allusions to Eros can also be found in Politics. By analyzing and examining these passages I initially deduced that Aristotle recognizes that Eros has two different aspects, that is, on the one hand the desire that aims exclusively at intercourse and on the other hand the desire that is directed to receiving affection and leads to the creation of friendships. Moreover, the project clarified that friendship or philia, as Aristotle says, is deemed as of paramount importance throughout the whole Aristotelian corpus, whereas Eros is characterized as a kind of excess of friendship (huperbolē philias).

The issues that remains to be examined after that in this paper are the ensuing one: Which is Aristotle’s point of view concerning specific forms of Eros that are not regarded as traditional erotic relationships, like incest, homosexuality and inequality of partners, that is pederasty? Does he conform to the classical popular morality or does he diverge from conventional norms of his time being in this way ahead of his time? Another question that directly arises is the following one: Is it feasible that Eros as an ‘irrational’ emotion fall into the Aristotelian golden mean theory? Inferentially, it became clear that the comprehension of Aristotle’s viewpoint on Eros may contribute to better understand the Aristotelian theory on emotions and passions in general.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Calame, C. (1999). The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece. Princeton, New Jersey.

Goldhill, S. (2004). Love, Sex & Tragedy: How the Ancient World Shapes Our Lives. Chicago.

Konstan, D. (2008). “Aristotle on Love and Friendship”, Journal of the Centre for Ancient Philosophy and the Classical Tradition, 2.2. University of Novosibirsk.

Λεοντσίνη, Γ.Ε. (2009). “Έρως και ερωτική αγάπη κατά τον Αριστοτέλη”, Celestia, 2. Ολυμπιακό Κέντρο Φιλοσοφίας και Παιδείας.

Price, W.A. (1989). Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle. Oxford.

Matthew’s second commandment is “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (22:39) and this commandment serves as Soren Kierkegaard’s point of departure on a detailed reflection on love which despite its original composition in 1849 retains a great pertinence even today. This commandment presupposes that all people love themselves which is not to be taken for granted. To be able to love the neighbor one must first be able to love oneself. At first, Kierkegaard does not distinguish between erotic love and friendship. Both types of love are marked by preference and choice. However the Christian doctrine dictates that love is beyond preference for you do not choose who your neighbor is and loving your neighbor may eventually mean to love all people, even your enemies and not make any exceptions. The commandment is phrased as a duty, says Kierkegaard and this duty means eternal love which is the only one “secured against despair,” hatred, jealousy, habit and possessiveness. The logic of love in Kierkegaard does not mean a linear and progressive way of thinking and inference about the solution to a moral problem but involves leaps which are not concomitant with traditional and classic logic.

When we think about our negative qualities, it is common to think things like, “No one sees how ugly, stupid, damaged, and flawed I really am. If they truly knew me, they’d see I’m not good enough.” In such moments, we might feel alienated from the people who love us as we worry that they don’t fully appreciate our shortcomings. How should those who love us respond in these cases so that we no longer feel alienated?

One recently proposed answer from Vida Yao (2020) is that they should extend an affectionate love that is disproportional to the goodness of our qualities. This is her theory of gracious love.

In this paper, I first argue that alienation can persist through gracious love because the disproportion of the love itself can alienate. Whether or not gracious love reduces alienation hinges on whether it resolves a mismatch between the love we receive and the love we think we deserve. This mismatch can remain unresolved even when we’re graciously loved, so Yao’s theory fails to get at the heart of the problem.

I then extend the point to all philosophical theories of love that take love to be rationally justifiable by reasons: alienation can persist through love under these reasons-based theories of love because the same mismatch can arise and stay unresolved. To see how this works, I group different reasons-based theories of love by what they take to do the rationalizing work and then use example theories to show how each group is susceptible to the mismatch and alienation. Example theories include those by Troy Jollimore (2011), Simon May (2019), J. David Velleman (1999), and Niko Kolodny (2003).

I lastly argue that, because the problem of alienation extends to all reasons-based theories of love, none of these theories could plausibly be good views of ideal love. By appeal to cross-cultural literature on love, ranging from the works of Plato to the poetry of Kuan Tao-Sheng, I argue that ideal love cannot alienate. Since all reasons-based theories of love allow for alienation, I conclude that reasons-based theories of love cannot describe ideal love, i.e., a purely reasons-based theory of ideal love is impossible.

TOPIC

Love and Logic can be seen as opposed or intertwined. If human beings are characterized as rational animals and if love is considered as a typical feature of those animals, there must be some connections between the two.

The aim of this workshop is to investigate these connections.

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