A Path to Loving

TL;DR

This paper develops a formal ontological framework for understanding love as a combination of passive sensations and active judgments, aiming to support interdisciplinary scientific and AI applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel ontological model of love based on BFO, integrating affective and cognitive components with causal links, for formal scientific analysis.

Findings

Love can be modeled as concatenation of sensations and judgments

A causal correlation model links affective and cognitive components

Provides a scalable ontological foundation for interdisciplinary research

Abstract

This work lays the foundations for a rigorous ontological characterization of love, addressing its philosophical complexity and scientific relevance, with particular emphasis on psychology and sociology, as well as highlighting ways in which such characterization enhances relevant AI based applications. The position defended here is that love is best understood as a concatenation of passive sensations (e.g., emotional arousal) and active evaluative judgments (e.g., perceiving the beloved as valuable), in the interest of balancing the involuntary aspects of love with its rational accountability. To provide a structured foundation, the paper draws on Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and other applied ontological methods to differentiate various senses of love. This work engages with objections to the understanding of love as concatenation, particularly concerning the relationship between sensation and judgment. A causal correlation model is defended, ensuring that the affective and cognitive components are linked. By offering a precise and scalable ontological account, this work lays the foundation for future interdisciplinary applications, making love a subject of formal inquiry in ontology engineering, artificial intelligence, and the sciences.