We Forge the
Conditions of Love
This research is not about what love is.
It is about what people think love is. And the effects of those thoughts.
... Those effects matter.
Essays
We Forge the Conditions of Love (link)
Cheat Sheet for Essay (link). This is a handout for the essay.
This is my main essay on the project. It lays out the ideas. Below, I break down each section of the essay. See also the cheat sheet.
in Linguistic Luck: Essays in Anti-Luck Semantics, (2023) eds. Carlos Montemayor & Abrol Fairweather, OUP
Short accessible article.
Discusses how one's vocabulary affects self-ascriptions of love, which in turn effect one's emotions, values, and relationships.
First appears in The Conversation. Re-printed in various magazines.
Translated into Portuguese for The Conversation, German for Krautreporter, and Brazilian Portuguese.
Selected Media
My media page has the full list of media for this essay.
Podcasts
'Love and Limerence' on Brain in a Vat podcast.
Time stamps for podcast topics
'Constructing Love — How Society Shapes Our Romantic Preferences' with Reloscope: The Relationships Science Insights Podcast, Life Management Science Labs (LMSL):
Topics: friendship, love, sexuality, divorce, limerence, tarot, social scripts, how media and language affects desire.
Emphasis: Self-empowerment and other practical applications.
Empowered Relationships Podcast
Discusses how words shape our feelings and relationships
50 minutes, for a popular audience
Other Media
Quirky; 10 minutes
Featured at New Work in Philosophy
Co-created with my undergraduate student Brynn Brickell
Talk on Love and Limerence (Link)
Sketches "We Forge the Conditions of Love" in an informal way
60 minutes, for popular and academic audiences
Workshop on the Love Lexicon
That's not my Sexual History, That's my Oeuvre!
Borrowing Words from Art, Music, & Geology to Enhance the Lexicon of Love
This participatory workshop adapts words from geology and the art world to describe love, sex, and relationships.
Depending on the context, it can focus on countercultural, college-aged, or late-in-life relationships.
The lexicon for describing romantic and sexual relationships can feel impoverished and many words, such as "situationship", have unduly negative connotations.
Philosophy can help. This event aims to expand the romantic lexicon by borrowing evocative terms from other fields.
This can help create a more positive, welcoming, useful, or inclusive vocabulary for thinking and talking about romance, love, and sex.
See the Projects page for a full explanation of the workshop.
Summary of the Main Essay
Topics of Particular Interest.
a.) For non-philosophers:
The “people should be queer” stuff is section 6.
The other LGBT content is sections 4 and 7.
For a miscellanea of love-like ideas, see section 9.
For limerence (i.e., obsessive infatuation with a person), see sections 10-12.
b.) For philosophers:
LGBT philosophy (§§ 4, 6, & 7).
Limerence (§§ 10-12).
On conceptions, see section 5.
This essay takes three mainstream philosophy ideas and makes them weird.
Love (and/or the permissive flexibility arising from some concepts) complicates how we should theorise these three things:
i.) Maker’s knowledge (§ 3).
ii.) Epistemic luck (§ 8).
iii.) Transformative experience (§ 12).
Key Terms:
Love • limerence • infatuation • romantic attraction
Concepts • transformative conceptual shifts • linguistic luck • conceptual engineering
Maker’s knowledge • attention • self-interpretation
Polyamory • the gay agenda • the social construction of sexuality
“I will think of men as graceful,
so my son can think of them as beautiful,
so his son can fall in love with them.”
Teaching Note
Consider assigning sections 1-7 for one lesson, and sections 8-13 for the following lesson.
The essay uses the same foundations to first explore queer sexuality and then limerence.
Core Ideas
A. The Power of Self-Ascriptions of Love
Self-ascriptions are powerful
Self-ascribing love can change emotions, attitudes, and values.
o They can even be self-fulfilling.
Self-ascriptions of love depend on what the person thinks love is.
B. Permissive Flexibility
People can disagree about what love is, and yet both be right.
o Example: In love with a celebrity.
Language shapes our conceptions.
o This suggests potential for conceptually engineering emotions, using language.
C. The Constraints of Thinking Straight
Sometimes emotions occupy a borderline between platonic and non-platonic.
In some cases, thinking of yourself as straight or queer affects whether you see your own emotions as platonic or non-platonic.
Those judgements can be self-fulfilling.
In some cases, these forces steer one’s sexuality.
o In some cases, person can make herself straight or queer, owing to her belief that she is.
D. Conceptual Tourism
Conceptual tourism is trying on different interpretations and categorisation schemas.
This can be empowering.
o Example: Protect against pick up artist's negging.
The Gay Agenda
Sections 6&7
Sections 6&7
E. It is Better if More People are Queer
Summary of reasons:
o What matters about a person? We should be attracted to character, not physical shape.
o Being attracted to character leads to more sustainable relationships and is more inclusionary.
o It is biased to exclude people from consideration based on gender. (Compare to only having friends of one gender.)
o If more people are queer, it is easier to satisfy preferences and find sympatico lovers.
o Diversity of experience and opportunities to learn.
o Epistemic benefits of diversity for society.
o Improves society's signalling conventions for romantic interest.
F. Cunning Linguistics
Conceptions can encourage (or tamp down) queerness in individuals
It is better if linguistic practices (gradually, over the course of generations) increase the prevalence of queer sexual orientations.
Openness to being queer can help people become queer, through the self-fulfilling power of self-interpretation.
G. Curious or Queer?
The terms “bi-curious” and “queer” illustrate how language might help to gradually increase the prevalence of queerness in a population.
o “Bi-curious” associations: A temporary phase, behaviour-based, public kissing, not “full sex”, default of heterosexuality; seen as a way of being straight.
o “Queer” associations: Emotional investment, relationship-building intimacy, stable orientation, not a set of mere actions.
A person who sees herself as “bi-curious” might thus become straight. A person who sees herself as “queer” might thus become queer.
Other terms: alterous attraction, quoiromanticism, greysexuality, abrosexuality, sexual fluidity…
Limerence
Sections 10, 11, & 12
Sections 10, 11, & 12
Limerence
Limerence is obsessive infatuation.
I analyse it as an attentional addiction: Addiction to thinking about the person.
I describe differences between love and limerence (section 10).
How does learning about limerence change your conception of love?
A “transformative conceptual shift” transforms how you interpret the world, including how you interpret your own thoughts and feelings.
Three Examples:
(Note that I don’t endorse these claims; they are merely illustrations.)
i. Polyamory about Love
Perhaps limerence is monogamic. We can only be limerent for one person at once.
And (so the person thinks) love is not: We can be in love with more than one person at once.
Learning about limerence makes space for polyamory about love
ii. Is Love Good?
Limerence is unhealthy and is characterised by false beliefs about the person.
And (so the person thinks) love is healthy and involves knowing the person truly.
In the subsequent schema, limerence is blind; love is not.
iii. Addiction, Rumination, and the Unmet Need
Limerence is an addiction to thought patterns.
It is similar to non-romantic cognitive or attentional addictions.
Perhaps, at core, limerence is a platonic tool for deep emotional processing.
Tripartite Clustering of Limerence Kinds.
o Romantic limerence, stemming from romantic unmet needs.
o Limerence for authority figures (bosses, teachers, virtuosos), from unmet needs for approval.
o Alterous limerence, from the unmet need for emotional processing.
Also in the Neighbourhood
Holiday romance, puppy love, being in love with a celebrity, squish, alterous attraction, “holibae”, “zucchinis” in “queerplatonic relationships”, erotic friendships, companionate love, comet relationship, “eintagsleibe”, “carrying a torch”, yandere, trauma bonds, Stockholm syndrome…
