“I enjoy your company and want you to be happy as well, so I guess I love you too!”
That doesn’t seem creepy to me. In fact, I’ve had this discussion with myself before (about what it means to love someone) and (1) liking them and (2) wishing them happiness, are about what I got.
As for people existing, I think the first 2 levels are clearly true regardless of axiology. As for 3, I think a hedonist could say something like “Person X gives me great pleasure, a good thing” and “Person X is happy, another good thing”. All 4 of those statements (1, 2, and my revised versions of 3) seem totally fair and non-weird to me, but perhaps I’m misunderstanding you.
I don’t think your dialogue seems creepy, but I would put it in the childish/childlike category. The more mature way to love is to value someone in who they are (so you are loving them, a unique personal being, the wholeness of who they are rather than the fact that they offer you something else) and to be willing to pay a real cost for them.
I use the terms “mature” and “childish/childlike” because (while children are sometimes more genuinely loving than adults), I think there is a natural tendency to lose some of your taste for the flavors, sounds, feelings of excitement, and so on, you tend to like as a child, and to be forced to pay for people, and to come to love them more deeply (more genuinely) because of it, as you grow older.
“Person X gives me great pleasure, a good thing” and “Person X is happy, another good thing”—Is Person X substitutable for an even greater pleasure? Like, would you vaporize Person X (even without causing them pain), so that you could get high/experience tranquility if that gave you greater pleasure? Or from a more altruistic or all-things-considered perspective, if that would cause there to be more pleasure in the world as a whole? If you wouldn’t, then I think there’s something other than extreme hedonism going on.
I do think that you can love people in the very act of enjoying them (something I hadn’t realized when I wrote the comment you replied to). I am not sure if that is always the case when someone enjoys someone else, though. The case I would now make for loving someone just because you enjoy them would be something like this:
“love” of a person is “valuing a person in a personal way, as what they are, a person”;
you can value consciously and by a choice of will;
or, you can value unconsciously/involuntarily by being receptive to enhancement from them. Your body (or something like your body) is in an attitude of receiving good from them. (“Receptivity to enhancement” is Joseph Godfrey’s definition of trust from Trust of People, Words, and God.)
being receptive to enhancement (trusting) is (or could be) your body saying “I ask you to benefit me with real benefit, there is value in you with which to bring me value, you help me with a real need I have, a real need that I have is when there’s something I really lack (when there’s a lack of value in my eyes), you are valuable in bringing me value, you are valuable”.
if the receptivity that is a valuing is receptive to a “you” that to it is a person (unique, personal, unsubstitutable), then you value that person in who they are, and you love them
It’s possible that creepy people enjoy other people in a way that denies that they are persons and the other persons’ unique personhood. Or, they only enjoy without trusting (or only trusting in a minimal way). Fungibility implies a control over your situation and a certain level of indifference about how to dispose of things. (Vulnerability (deeper trust) inhibits fungibility.) The person who is enjoyed has become a fungible “hedonic unit” to the creepy person.
(Creepy hedonic love: a spider with a fly wrapped in silk, a fly which is now a meal. Non-creepy hedonic love: a calf nursing from a cow, a mutuality.)
A person could be consciously or officially a thorough-going hedonist, but subconsciously enjoy people in a non-creepy way.
I think maturity is like a medicine that helps protect against the tendency of the childish/childlike to sometimes become creepy.
“I really love you!”
“You mean you enjoy my company a lot?”
“Well of course, and I want you to be happy.”
“I enjoy your company and want you to be happy as well, so I guess I love you too!”
That doesn’t seem creepy to me. In fact, I’ve had this discussion with myself before (about what it means to love someone) and (1) liking them and (2) wishing them happiness, are about what I got.
As for people existing, I think the first 2 levels are clearly true regardless of axiology. As for 3, I think a hedonist could say something like “Person X gives me great pleasure, a good thing” and “Person X is happy, another good thing”. All 4 of those statements (1, 2, and my revised versions of 3) seem totally fair and non-weird to me, but perhaps I’m misunderstanding you.
I don’t think your dialogue seems creepy, but I would put it in the childish/childlike category. The more mature way to love is to value someone in who they are (so you are loving them, a unique personal being, the wholeness of who they are rather than the fact that they offer you something else) and to be willing to pay a real cost for them.
I use the terms “mature” and “childish/childlike” because (while children are sometimes more genuinely loving than adults), I think there is a natural tendency to lose some of your taste for the flavors, sounds, feelings of excitement, and so on, you tend to like as a child, and to be forced to pay for people, and to come to love them more deeply (more genuinely) because of it, as you grow older.
“Person X gives me great pleasure, a good thing” and “Person X is happy, another good thing”—Is Person X substitutable for an even greater pleasure? Like, would you vaporize Person X (even without causing them pain), so that you could get high/experience tranquility if that gave you greater pleasure? Or from a more altruistic or all-things-considered perspective, if that would cause there to be more pleasure in the world as a whole? If you wouldn’t, then I think there’s something other than extreme hedonism going on.
I do think that you can love people in the very act of enjoying them (something I hadn’t realized when I wrote the comment you replied to). I am not sure if that is always the case when someone enjoys someone else, though. The case I would now make for loving someone just because you enjoy them would be something like this:
“love” of a person is “valuing a person in a personal way, as what they are, a person”;
you can value consciously and by a choice of will;
or, you can value unconsciously/involuntarily by being receptive to enhancement from them. Your body (or something like your body) is in an attitude of receiving good from them. (“Receptivity to enhancement” is Joseph Godfrey’s definition of trust from Trust of People, Words, and God.)
being receptive to enhancement (trusting) is (or could be) your body saying “I ask you to benefit me with real benefit, there is value in you with which to bring me value, you help me with a real need I have, a real need that I have is when there’s something I really lack (when there’s a lack of value in my eyes), you are valuable in bringing me value, you are valuable”.
if the receptivity that is a valuing is receptive to a “you” that to it is a person (unique, personal, unsubstitutable), then you value that person in who they are, and you love them
It’s possible that creepy people enjoy other people in a way that denies that they are persons and the other persons’ unique personhood. Or, they only enjoy without trusting (or only trusting in a minimal way). Fungibility implies a control over your situation and a certain level of indifference about how to dispose of things. (Vulnerability (deeper trust) inhibits fungibility.) The person who is enjoyed has become a fungible “hedonic unit” to the creepy person.
(Creepy hedonic love: a spider with a fly wrapped in silk, a fly which is now a meal. Non-creepy hedonic love: a calf nursing from a cow, a mutuality.)
A person could be consciously or officially a thorough-going hedonist, but subconsciously enjoy people in a non-creepy way.
I think maturity is like a medicine that helps protect against the tendency of the childish/childlike to sometimes become creepy.