Your Mom Does Not Love You for Who You Are

Thinkhttp://journals.cambridge.org/THI

Additional services for Think:

Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click here

YOUR MOM DOES NOT LOVE YOU FORWHO YOU ARE

Luke Semrau

Think / Volume 14 / Issue 39 / March 2015, pp 95 - 97DOI: 10.1017/S1477175614000268, Published online: 12 December 2014

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1477175614000268

How to cite this article:Luke Semrau (2015). YOUR MOM DOES NOT LOVE YOU FOR WHOYOU ARE. Think, 14, pp 95-97 doi:10.1017/S1477175614000268

Request Permissions : Click here

Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/THI, IP address: 203.64.11.45 on 02 Apr 2015

http://journals.cambridge.orgDownloaded: 02 Apr 2015 IP address: 203.64.11.45

YOUR MOM DOES NOT LOVE YOU FOR WHO YOU ARELuke Semrau

There are good reasons to think that mothers lovetheir children, and love them for who they are. Thereare also good reasons to think that contingentevents can decisively influence who one becomes.This entails, I argue, that your mother does not loveyou for who you are.

It seems true: mothers love their children. And it seemstrue: mothers love their children for who they are. But I willargue: your mother does not love you for who you are.What would it mean to be loved for who you are?

Minimally, your lovers love must be modulated by the pres-ence or absence of your defining features. That is, if thecharacteristics that make you who you are change, but yourlovers love does not, then you are not loved for who youare.What makes a person who they are? Clearly, some

aspects of ones identity are more important than others. Ican change in trivial ways get a haircut, or learn a newword that leave my identity intact. Other changes aremore significant: a longtime smoker may strongly identifyas such, and dropping that habit may, in some non-trivialsense, change who that person is. But some traits are whatyou might call centrally constitutive of ones identity: losingone of these traits renders one a different person. Manydeeply religious people regard their faith as importantlyconstitutive of their identity. Because their religion playssuch a significant role in their lives, by changing their atti-tudes, values, and aspirations, one cannot excise thisfeature from them without also fundamentally changingthem. Let us say then, to be loved for who you are is to beloved for at least one of your centrally constitutive features.

doi:10.1017/S1477175614000268 # The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 2015

Think 39, Vol. 14 (Spring 2015)

ThinkSpring2015

95


Now, consider Smith. He is an avid runner. Much of histime is spent running, or thinking or talking about running.Smiths friends are runners, as is his wife. The only thing ofcomparable importance in Smiths life is his relationshipwith Jesus Christ. Smith is deeply religious. These two fea-tures, Smiths devotion to running and commitment toJesus, are centrally constitutive of his identity. He so abso-lutely identifies with them that he could not imagine himselfin their absence: he would no longer exist. That personwould be someone else. Also: Smiths mother loves himvery much.Suppose, counterfactually, that Smith, as a young child,

was in a terrible accident that took his legs and his fatherslife. Though surely traumatic, the loss of ones legs is notyet the loss of a centrally constitutive feature of ones iden-tity. So too, is the case with the death of a loved one:Smith, the healthy child who woke up that morning, is thesame person who, later that day, lays legless in a hospitalbed beside his widowed mother. However, this event wouldradically alter Smiths life trajectory. Time passes. In thecourse of his physical therapy, Smith develops an interestin medicine. And, absent his pious fathers influence, Smithnever comes to know Jesus Christ. Instead, impressed byhis studies in medical school, Smith loses interest in thesupernatural. Given the accident, Smith develops differentcentrally constitutive features. His life is organized aroundpracticing medicine and promoting rights for the disabled.In this case too, Smiths mother loves him very much.Something is amiss. If Smiths mother loves him in either

scenario, yet the features that are centrally constitutive ofhis identity differ between the two, then it appears asthough she does not love Smith for who he is. If she did,then her love would be modulated by the presence orabsence of those distinguishing features. Thus, Smithsmother does not love him for who he is. Nor, I hasten toadd, does yours.One may be tempted to interject: You have misunder-

stood mothers love! Mothers love their children for who

Semrau

YourMom

DoesNotLove

YouForWhoYo

uAre96


they are, whoever they are. Smiths mother would love himwhether he were religious, or athletic, or disabled, or noneof these things. And when she loves him, she loves him forthese identity-constituting features. She loves the religiousSmith because he is religious and because he is anathlete. And if tragedy intervenes, and Smith insteadbecomes an advocate for the disabled, it will be this consti-tutive feature of Smiths identity that is the ground for herlove. Thus, the objection goes, it is perfectly consistent tohold that mothers love their children whoever they are, andthat this love is based on those features that are centrallyconstitutive of their childrens identities.The apparent force of this objection depends on an

equivocation. There are two very different things one mightmean in saying, a mother loves her child. On the de dictoreading, to say that a mother loves her child is to say thatshe loves whatever entity satisfies the description mychild. On the de re reading, to say that a mother loves herchild is to say of some determinate individual, that she isloved by her mother.The equivocation that undermines the objection is now

apparent: It is true, in the de dicto sense, that mothers lovetheir children, and love them for who they are. But this factis fully compatible with the claim defended here, that yourmother does not love you for who you are. This is possiblebecause you, understood de re, are not identical to yourmothers child, understood de dicto. Thus, even if yousatisfy the description, your mothers child, and even ifyour mother loves her child for who that child is, it does notfollow that your mother loves you for who you are. Shedoes not.

Luke Semrau is a graduate student at VanderbiltUniversity. [email protected]

ThinkSpring2015

97

YOUR MOM DOES NOT LOVE YOU FOR WHO YOU ARE

Documents

Your Mom Does Not Love You for Who You Are