Philosophy Valentines
Your arguments strong, your conclusions sound.
Citations of my work, alas, have not been found.
– Reviewer #2
I know I’m proposing because I’m on bended knee.
Our first kiss was good for you, but was it for me?
-Behaviorist
Cherries might seem red. Sky could look blue.
If you don’t know better, you’re a zombie, too.
Philosophy Valentines, courtesy of Clayton Littlejohn (KCL).
Won’t you be my guest and add your own…
[Originally posted in 2017]
In a possible world, not too far from here, my counterpart thinks your counterpart should be calling her “dear”
-modal realist
I’d be the best lover, but I now realize,
That a maxim with ‘best’ can’t universalize.
– Kant
Roses are red, or at least so they seem
But what if the quale’s the same in a dream?
Disjunctive or secondary, neither sounds right
Let physicalism lead us through the night.
Kant in Love
O noumenon, phenomenal
The heavens in your eyes I see
My love is more than nominal
I’d miss my daily walk, and tea.
But what is this, the moral law?
It bids us passion to restrain.
Ha! Empty thought that nevermore
Blind intuition wild can tame.
My two best efforts, after spending far too much time thinking about this:
My thought does not proceed
In a manner utilitariany
I’d save you from the water
Without one thought too many.
Hume was right,
Wollaston was wrong
You should not let your
Neighbour’s wife near your dong
How many persons should I love? Just you, there’s no confusion.
The mere addition of one more would be a repugnant conclusion.
– Parfit
Between Being and Love
is Building.
But Dasein is Love.
I am dwelling on that…
From my trilogy Bauen Wohnen Denken
as if i could care less for Heidegger
You assume the original position and it makes me delirious,
Now I’m thinking the distinction between persons ain’t so serious.
– Rawls
Don’t think, just look!
Get an Ubersicht from above:
And you will see that you and I
Are playing the language-game of love.
— Wittgenstein
I’m not one to hoard love, but alas I can’t share
until clearly and distinctly I know that you’re there.
-Descartes
“Though my love for you is not based on argument or an inferential basis,
My love for you is still warranted, for it is properly basic.”
-Alvin Plantinga
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Mary can’t know them
But love sees for two
Roses are red
Violets are grue
I love you today
I only hope for t2
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
But S5 is true
So, let’s get it on, me and you
Roses are red
And their redness canonic
I’m longing to take you
To realms less platonic
(others at https://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/2017/02/14/philosophical-love-poetry/)
Two Epicurean Valentines
Epicureanism by Its Enemies (Plutarch to Colotes)
Lord of pleasure, be our master,
and lead us to your excess faster.
When soul from fleeting tract of flesh,
Fate deigns with outstretched hand to thresh,
Then will it too your Garden till,
That fiendish grist may feed your mill,
And make for us the bread of death,
Whose leavening is atoms’ breath.
On this each night our kin shall dine,
The glutton-brood, our master’s swine.
Epicureanism by Its Friends (Epicurus to Leontion)
From the atoms and void,
may this swerve of affection,
to you be alloyed,
in a moment’s reflection.
The gods have been banished,
Leaving dear friends to treasure,
Soon enough we’ll have vanished,
But for now we have pleasure.
This is just straight up great poetry!
“kant says beauty is a disinterested view.
So let me say baby, im not interested in you”
I love some simples arranged you-wise.
Roses are red
Lilies are pallid
Your love for me is not
Statistically valid
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
But first let me count half of the ways.
But before that let me count one-quarter of the ways.
But before that let me count one-eighth of the ways.
But. . . .
Zeno of I Love You
That was good for you, how was it for me?
– Behaviorist
These are genius.
This is one of very, very few times when I have wished my love interest were a philosopher.
If roses are red and violets are blue,
then if roses are not red I love you too
(unless LP is true)
Skinnerian* Valentine’s Poetry:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I have an increased tendency to aid, favor, be with, and caress and a lowered tendency to injure…
You
*_Science and Human Behavior_ (1953) p.162
Dopamine is red,
serotonin is blue.
The qualia of love
is neurochemical.
“Under ideal decision conditions, you would agree to kiss me, and indeed it would be unreasonable not to kiss me. Therefore, I may force you to kiss me.”
-Rawls
“I will kiss you only with your genuine consent.”
-Nozick
Jason, how about with some feeling? Or rhyme?
“Beneath the veil of ignorance
You and I would agree to dance”
“Sorry but you are out of luck, sir–
That reasoning’s just for the basic structure”
– Rawls
I’ll kiss you only with your genuine consent,
‘Genuine’ though you have not a cent,
And have to clothe and feed your children.
Remind me, dear, what was the price again?
– Nozick
That would sting more if we didn’t live in the real world. After all, Rawls’s goal is to rationalize paying a shit ton of attention to the gap between the rich Swedish and the slightly less rich Swedish at the expense of the genuine poor. We know that open borders with no redistribution better helps the world’s poor than internal or external redistribution. (See, e.g., Glen Weyl’s work.) So Rawls is a right-wing anti-egalitarian whose fundamentally philosophy is, frankly, a bit rapey.
I still feel like your meter is a bit hard to parse.
Speaking of the real world, if every single border were thrown completely open tomorrow, there would still be some poor people not in a position to take advantage of that and emigrate. So external redistribution would still be required. (Unless, of course, one is opposed to external redistribution because it allegedly violates someone’s supposed right to buy his or her third car or fourth yacht or tenth vacation home.)
Jason, you’re killing the mood.
As a counterpoint, I offer two snippets from e.e. cummings:
not for philosophy does this rose give a damn
and
kisses are better fate
than wisdom
lady I swear by all flowers
From my trilogy Bauen Wohnen Denken, a work in progress: Those who win theracefearlesslyembracethedangers –rushingheadlongintothe bottomless abysslipsparted for a kisschestsdaring bulletshandsclutching the prizelaughterin their eyes.
Roses are gred
Violets are grue
But I don’t need to wait
’til time t to love you
–Nelson Goodman
My heart’s set aflutter
When you’re in my vicinity
My love know no bounds
An uncountable infinity
–Georg Cantor
A better lover than you
Can one find if one delves?
It’s the lover of all lovers
Who don’t love themselves
–Bertrand Russell
This thing I feel is not just brain-states passing like a breeze
My love for you goes far beyond physical properties
It doesn’t even weakly supervene on form or matter
Replace you with an indiscernible and I’d be sadder
Roses are red
Here’s a white shoe
Contrapositive evidence
Of my love for you
Of course love is indispensable, but not MUTUAL charity an its qualia red, white or whatever its.
But unqualified
Bittersweet Valentine:
Cupid’s arrows from above
Harmed both you and me.
Yet a family concept, that is “love”:
I bid goodbye to thee.
– a Wittgensteinian who doesn’t want kids
A Contractualist Valentine
If love were a contract, say no more,
I’d enter it directly, ’tis you I adore.
A Moorean Valentine:
If it is good for me,
It is good for you.
So why don’t you
Come kiss me?
(Somewhat) Robust Love:
If your eyes were red,
And your cheeks were blue
(With qualia inverted),
I’d still love you.
thinking how to love you—
unwise choices, inapt feelings,
between ideally incoherent eccentrics
i never planned for you to be the difference
to my future tuesday indifference,
if loving you is not the thing to do,
then to hell with meaning and normativity.
– Allan Gibbard
Roses are red;
Violets are blue;
Therefore, roses are red and violets are blue.
QED.
Roses are gray,
Violets are too,
I don’t get your joke
That they are both grue.
–Mary
Happy Valentine’s Day!
My dear, I love you.
If that statement’s false,
Then this one is, too.
Explanation: this sort of Valentine message would be very comforting to receive in any land wherein some people always tell the truth, some people always speak falsely, and some people speak truthfully some of the time and falsely some of the time, but every statement is either true or false. If you don’t know which type your loved one is and are worried that you can’t trust the declarations of love that you hear, this Valentine’s poem will clarify things.
Don’t think that I’m a loveless turd
Because I am a stoic.
Of indifferents you are most preferred
Though I serenely never show it.
Rose is red
My shoe is black
I am hungry now will you call me back!
Minte
Roses are red
My shoes are black
I am hungry now will you call me back!
Minte
Roses are red
White is the dove
God loves himself with an infinite intellectual love.
-Spinoza
Without ritual and tradition, where would you be?
Respect your elders and parents,
For you will enjoy narrative unity.
–Confucius
My Valentine gave me a book
My heart, it grew like clover!
Unwrapped, I saw ’twas Atlas Shrugged
Dear God! Get out! It’s over!