Dana Youngblood wrote: ↑October 10th, 2024, 4:54 pm
On page 75: "True conscious love is a two-way street. It comes from both (1) the existence of conscious experience of consciousness in the lover and (2) the projection of that consciousness onto that which is therefore lovingly empathized."
I understand what each of these words means alone and some of them put together. However, the first part that says "the existence of conscious experience of consciousness in the lover" is confusing to me. I think it might mean that we are having a conscious experience with our lover but they also need to be conscious in this moment too. There are parts of the book that talk about a "zombie" and that connection here would make sense. If our lover is not conscious of love, like a zombie, then we cannot have true conscious love. The two-way street would then be that we are conscious and our lover is conscious also. The second part, I am just completely unsure about. I know it is something about projecting this conscious love, but cannot comprehend what the rest of it means.
Thank you for your time!
Hi,
Dana Youngblood,
Thank you for your reply!
The sentence you quoted is really just a rephrasing/reiteration of the previous paragraph:
In It Together (Page 65) wrote:That instinctive empathy, of which even a philosophical zombie is capable, is very different from the special extra empathy that results from true conscious love, from empathizing specifically with the consciousness of a creature or in other words the conscious experience of the creature, not just the physical creature itself. That special extra empathy and true conscious love results by definition from the perception or belief of true consciousness in the beloved.
Since you understand what the above paragraph means (and agree with it), you can just consider the sentence you posted as meaning the same exact thing.
I will look into rephrasing that second more clearly before releasing the newest edition (which will be the third edition).
Basically, it's just saying that "true conscious love" (i.e. the "extra empathy" of which a philosophical zombie is incapable) requires that the lover is conscious and that the lover believes the loved person is conscious.
To have "true conscious love" for a person is to love/sympathize/empathize with the consciousness (a.k.a. spirit) of that person.
In other words, that sentence it simply saying you can't love their spirit if you don't believe it exists. If you believe they do not have a spirit (i.e. you believe they are not truly conscious), then you can't love their spirit/consciousness.
In yet other words, you can't love their true self if you believe they don't have a true self.
I hope this helps clarify what is meant in that section!
With love,
Eckhart