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Thoughts on Thought

Love & Metaphysics

Peter Graarup Westergaard explains why love is never just physical, with the aid of Donald Davidson’s anomalous monism.

Most people have felt the gap between the consciousness of love and the physical aspects of love. Science, even if it could describe all the hormonal changes, the chemistry of smells, and the social conditions of love, would still not able to accurately predict who will fall in love with whom.

Metaphysical dualism, which distinguishes the mind from the brain, might explain the difference between physical love and the consciousness of love. Indeed, I want to argue here that being in love as a mental state is a challenge to all materialist theories of mind, including behaviourism, type-identity theory, and physicalism. I’ll argue that you need to be a dualist at least about mental and physical properties, otherwise you will meet overwhelming challenges trying to understand the consciousness of love.

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