It was my intention to contribute an article in reply to various points in last week's Politics Special, but this week's edition is "all about Love".
Well I think I shall still make a contribution, since of course love and -isms are related. What I was going to say, in my political article,was that -isms are all about modal and deontic logic – respectively about what is necessary or possible, and what is obligatory or permissible - and to say that you don't have an -ism really means that you do not use strong modal or deontic operators (necessary and obligatory respectively) in the characterisation of your belief. More about that on some other occasion.
Strong modal and deontic operators are of course central to Love, such that we can say:
It is necessary that everything is possible.
in other words, nothing is necessary. But this contradicts the above principle, which does of course assert that something is necessary.
Therefore love is fundamentally inconsistent, which is of course what we would expect, and would explain the concept of a 'love-hate' relationship.
"Maybe we should leave the matter to the meta-physicists... "
by Martin Prior
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontic_logic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_logic ("needs additional citations for verification")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_logic ("needs additional citations for verification")
G. H. von Wright, 1951. "Deontic logic," Mind 60: 1-15. ( a very respectable source!)
