Soul, Body, and Worms
Recently I've been thinking about the Futurama episode where Fry gets a case of worms. (And no, I'm not sure why). What happens is, Fry eats an egg salad sandwich at a truck stop, and gets worms. These worms end up building him better, faster, smarter... and all around better, and he finally gets Leela to fall in love with him. What I've been thinking about is when Fry says that he wants to know who Leela loves, him or the worms. This sort of thing has never made sense to me -- where someone asks "Do you love my money, good looks, sense of humor, and intelligence, or do you love me?"
This seems to be the same sort of category mistake that philosophy students make sometimes when they've started learning about the difference between a thing and its properties, and they make too much of this distinction. Say you have a round red ball. You start to get questions like, "I know the ball has the properties of being round and red, but what is the ball itself like?" And that just doesn't make sense. A property just is what the thing itself is like -- the only way to say what the ball is like is to say that it's round and red (and maybe bouncy).
Similarly, there's nothing to a person to love other than their properties. No one falls in love with the bare thing, they fall in love with what that thing is like. So we can perhaps say that someone who loves you for your money doesn't really love you (since having money isn't really what you're like, it's just that money's something you have). But someone who loves you for you loves you for your sense of humor, or intelligence, or dashing good looks. It doesn't make sense to ask "Do you love my sense of humor, or do you love me?" Having a particular sense of humor is part of what makes you you. Similarly, someone who loves you for your good looks loves you for you -- your good looks, just as much as your intelligence or sense of humor, are part of what makes you you. To think otherwise is just to make a false distinction between a thing and its properties.
This seems to be the same sort of category mistake that philosophy students make sometimes when they've started learning about the difference between a thing and its properties, and they make too much of this distinction. Say you have a round red ball. You start to get questions like, "I know the ball has the properties of being round and red, but what is the ball itself like?" And that just doesn't make sense. A property just is what the thing itself is like -- the only way to say what the ball is like is to say that it's round and red (and maybe bouncy).
Similarly, there's nothing to a person to love other than their properties. No one falls in love with the bare thing, they fall in love with what that thing is like. So we can perhaps say that someone who loves you for your money doesn't really love you (since having money isn't really what you're like, it's just that money's something you have). But someone who loves you for you loves you for your sense of humor, or intelligence, or dashing good looks. It doesn't make sense to ask "Do you love my sense of humor, or do you love me?" Having a particular sense of humor is part of what makes you you. Similarly, someone who loves you for your good looks loves you for you -- your good looks, just as much as your intelligence or sense of humor, are part of what makes you you. To think otherwise is just to make a false distinction between a thing and its properties.
posted by Mad Jurist at 6:34 PM
2 Comments:
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