Will you check this argument?

Question:Just goofing around. Trying to sharpen my reasoning skills. Nothing serious, really. If you care to check it, much obliged. Here it is:

It seems that the maxim "love begins at first sight" is something that implies that we are not free to love whomever we love, nor when we love. For whatever is due to some external-cause is not completely controllable by a person and therefore not caused by the will of that person. Love, being something that begins with sight, is not caused by the will; therefore, love is not completely controllable by a person, for we do not will what we begin to see and thus we do not will love. Now, whatever we do but do not will is not something we freely do. And since we love and take love to be something beginning with sight it seems to follow that we do not freely choose love, the beloved or when we love.

Is there any reason to believe that it's possible that, if this is true, one can love one person for their whole

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Just goofing around. Trying to sharpen my reasoning skills. Nothing serious, really. If you care to check it, much obliged. Here it is:

It seems that the maxim "love begins at first sight" is something that implies that we are not free to love whomever we love, nor when we love. For whatever is due to some external-cause is not completely controllable by a person and therefore not caused by the will of that person. Love, being something that begins with sight, is not caused by the will; therefore, love is not completely controllable by a person, for we do not will what we begin to see and thus we do not will love. Now, whatever we do but do not will is not something we freely do. And since we love and take love to be something beginning with sight it seems to follow that we do not freely choose love, the beloved or when we love.

Is there any reason to believe that it's possible that, if this is true, one can love one person for their whole

Your argument is, I think, well reasoned. If love begins at first sight, we have little control over it.

Now whether we have a life-time of security in such a love is a different question. If sight caused the love, and if the effect always follows the cause, then as long as you still "see" the person, there is no reason to think the effect will change.

The real question, of course, is whether the maxim is true. If it is false, the whole argument falls apart. For then, even if the argument is valid, it is not sound. And the maxim, while popular, may very well be false.

Another complication, it seems to me, in all of this, is whether "first sight" exhausts the causal story. Perhaps the first seeds of love are planted upon "first sight," yet the decision about whether to nurture those seeds is still up to the individual. Thus, while "first sight" might limit the range of available choices, it is still up to the individual as to whether those seeds, first planted, will flower. In that way, we may say the person still has some freedom in the matter, and may thereby, make a life-time of love more likely.

Just some thoughts.

lust at first sight, love comes later, much later if at all, after trials and revelations, after the earning of respect and trust, after lonliness and learning to respect and the allowance for growth and change, after giving birth for some......there are many types of love and not all are sexual.

Ultimately, I don't mind that love could be "head over heels".
But a possible objection could be the following. Much is involved in sight. When we see a person, there are visible marks that we pay attention to and others we do not. Depending on a person's visual and conceptual acumen, they may see the same thing differently. What determines HOW they see the other, is not a passive sensation, but an active-interpretive one, which is already involved in intentional states.

I think that the use of the word "cause" and the word "unfree" or "not freely" are merely used as synonyms in this argument. Now if this is the case, the presence of the word "unfree" in the conclusion means that the argument is question begging. That is, it assumes what it tries to prove. I believe the argument is if sight then love, this is a cause-effect relationship, anything with a cause-effect relationship is unfree, therefore love is unfree. But it was assumed that unfree is equal to caused, earlier -hence the question is begged. But if I am wrong then your argument is pretty well established. Especially if you syllogize it. In that argument form the argument looks like All love is caused, All causation is unfree, All love is unfree. A perfect Barbara syllogism which, if the premises are true, the conclusion is 100% correct. Who knows -maybe you discovered a new facet of romance!

It depends on how love is defined. Who or WHAT is doing the loving!