Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: What is love?
Position‹2 of 6›: Love is a verb
Argument‹4 of 4: Love is a concrete action

Love is demonstrated best through action, not just words.

The argument

Love is a verb. To love someone is to long and display immense affection for another human being. Like swimming, this manifests itself in different actions, but all are encompassed under the verb 'to love'. The analogy is precise about what kind of thing love is: swimming is not a feeling one has about water but something one does, performed differently by different people and still recognisably the same activity. The key is that it is an action. This view of love also makes love quantifiable, which a purely internal state could never be. If doing X means someone is in love, and he or she does these actions more with person A than with person B, then it is fair to assume that they love person A more than person B. Where love consists in what is done, it can be observed, compared and weighed, and disagreements about it can be settled by looking rather than by asking. For someone to just say that they love another person is not enough. It must be reflected in their actions. A declaration is easy to make and costs nothing, whereas the conduct the word is supposed to describe is demanding and sustained, which is why the statement cannot be the thing the love consists of. For instance, a woman who is being domestically abused may claim that her partner loves her, but they have demonstrated with their horrific actions that this is not true. That case is decisive for the argument: if love were a feeling a person might sincerely hold whatever they did, the claim could not be contradicted by the conduct. Because it plainly is contradicted, love is a concrete action.

Premises

[P1]To love someone is to display immense affection through action — like swimming, it manifests in different concrete behaviours all encompassed by the verb 'to love.' [P2] This makes love quantifiable and testable: someone who performs loving actions more toward person A than person B loves A more, and merely saying 'I love you' is not enough if actions contradict it, as when an abuser's conduct disproves their claim of love. [C] Because love must be reflected in concrete action rather than words, love is a verb.

Counter-arguments

Love cannot be reduced to behaviour. Our definition of love must include more. If love was simply the way we behave towards other people, then actors would be in love with their co-actors or actresses when playing the part of an on-screen couple. They are behaving as though they are in love, therefore, by this narrow definition, they are in love. Love must be more than simply acting or behaving in a certain way. It must include feeling and desire. The action without the presence of the feeling is not love, it is acting.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Love is also an abstract noun. [Rejecting P3] Love cannot be reduced to actions. It has a corresponding feeling which is necessary to be in love. Without the feeling, you are acting as though you are in love, without being in love.