A short philosophical guide to the fallacies of love
- London Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2021
- x, 132 p.
Table of Contents Chapter 1: Basic Ideas about Love What we talk about when we talk about love Some fundamental properties of love Truth, justification, and knowledge The fallacies of love Sex, gender, and stereotypes Some final remarks
Chapter 2: The Invention of Reasons Rationalization The you-you fallacy The virtue fallacy Purported sour grapes Lost love's labours Inference to the worst explanation
Chapter 3: The Power of Desire over Belief The glasses of love Belief without evidence Evidence without belief Love is blind The diamond fallacy
Chapter 4: Wanting it all Complex cases of cognitive mistakes The divided lover The princess The Don Juan The emotional terrorizer
Chapter 5: When Love Goes Away The end of love The sunk costs fallacy The sweet lemons fallacy Inertia and uncertainty Desamor
What can epistemology tell us about love? Here two philosophers use their training in arguments and reasoning to uncover the role of ungrounded beliefs when we fall in love.
This not a self-help book, it is a philosophy book. Free of advice, methods and strategies for being successful in love, it does not offer solutions for problems. What it gives us instead is a reading of love as it actually is. The authors illustrate the fallacies of love by drawing on personal experiences, literary characters and imaginary individuals. They provide examples of ungrounded beliefs in Aesop's Fables, Cinderella and Don Giovanni amongst others, and illustrate love as an inexhaustible source of misperceptions, misunderstandings and misconceptions.
By tackling those characteristic and all-too familiar ways in which ungrounded love beliefs arise, the book forces us to question why baseless beliefs are maintained and reinforced, showing us that many love beliefs are built on anything but logic.