The duplication of love's reasons

Abstract

If X loves Y does it follow that X has reasons to love a physiologically exact replacement for Y? Can love's reasons be duplicated? One response to the problem is to suggest that X lacks reasons for loving such a duplicate because the reason-conferring properties of Y cannot be fully duplicated. But a concern, played upon by Derek Parfit, is that this response may result from a failure to take account of the psychological pressures of an actual duplication scenario. In the face of the actual loss of a loved one and the subsequent appearance of a duplicate, how could we resist the inclination to love? Drawing upon duplication scenarios from Parfit and from Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, this paper will argue that there could be reasons for X to come to love a duplicate of Y but that these would not be identical with the reasons that X had (and may still have) to love Y. Nor (in the case of an agent with a normal causal history) could they be reasons for a love that violates the requirement that love is a response to a relationship and therefore takes time to emerge.

Keywords:

• love
• reasons
• replaceability
• Parfit
• Lem
• Solaris

Acknowledgements

This paper was originally delivered at the Reasons of Love Conference held at the University of Leuven in the summer of 2011. Thanks go to members of the audience and to the anonymous reviewers of Philosophical Explorations for a number of useful and improving comments. Thanks also go to Chris Grau and to colleagues in the European Philosophy of Love Group for a recent insightful discussion of Grau (forthcoming) which has, no doubt, fed its way into the final revision of the text.