A Short Philosophical Guide to the Fallacies of Love

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.

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 Index

About the Author :
José A. Díez is Professor in the Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Barcelona, Spain. Andrea Iacona is Professor of Logic in the Department of Philosophy and Education at the University of Turin, Italy.

Review :
[A Short Philosophical Guide to Fallacies of Love] would be useful for anyone who wants to explore the intersection of informal logic, epistemology and love. Love is one of the strongest emotions we experience, and it is a key driver of our actions. Love makes us write poetry, compose sonatas, and climb mountains, and can drive us to despair, up to the point where we kill in jealous rage. If you have ever wondered how we come to know about love – our own and others’ – and whether the feelings that drive our actions are justified, then this is the book for you. Díez and Iacona offer an authoritative discussion of the epistemology of love and provide a compelling analysis of its fallacies. It’s a must-read both for novices and veterans in matters of love. Love is the object of libraries of books, many of which bemoan or celebrate its illusions, follies and deceptions en bloc. Diez and Iacona, on the other hand, itemize, for the first time, the main forms of the illusions to which love is heir. Each is clearly described, anatomized and illustrated. Few readers will fail to experience the shock or click of recognition on reading one or more of these portraits. They neither preach nor praise. They simply describe, one after another, the different illusions of lovers and the beloved. They write lucidly. The philosophical distinctions they employ are introduced with a light touch and deftly deployed. Their book is for everyone interested in understanding one of the most important parts of life - but perhaps not for lovers. It is said that people don’t pay much attention to philosophy because philosophy doesn’t pay much attention to people. Fallacies of Love is a rare example of philosophers giving what we care about its due, setting analytic acumen to work on real-life ways we all fall into traps in affairs of the heart. Acute and stylishly written, this book is one of the best I have ever read on love. Diez and Iacona's elucidation of love’s epistemology is interesting and illuminating. Their book opens up fresh perspectives and it is sure to become a reference point in future debates of this topic Díez and Iacona’s book is a fun-to-read inquiry into one of the most common sources of misjudgments: love. Although poets and thinkers have considered the fallacies of love, the idea of the authors of fathoming love’s misguiding nature through the means of analytic epistemology is new, entertaining and instructing. A provocative, enlightening and entertaining book. Through vivid and amusing examples, Díez and Icona use the tools of logic and epistemology to deconstruct the myth of romantic love, which has always been a tool of social control and a powerful anaesthetic.