He raises that worry himself in Metaphysics Iota 5, with the triad ‘equal’ ‘less’ and ‘greater’. So if you shoved that in his face, he would probably admit that it’s a real puzzle for his view. His explanation in Iota 5 is confusing, but so far as I can tell he would say that apathy is a privation of love and hate alike, and therefore a kind of intermediate:
To which I can respond that love and hate can be combined in the same person (along the base of the triangle, at their most intense), while having neither would be at the top. Measuring it along one dimension fails to differentiate between people I never meet and people for whom I have strong and mixed feelings. I can generalize that to a tetrahedron, if there are four mutually contrary descriptions, and I think to an analogous geometric construction in n-1 dimensions for n independent mutually contrary things (Concave, each point is the same distance from all other points)
To which I can respond that love and hate can be combined in the same person (along the base of the triangle, at their most intense), while having neither would be at the top.
If they’re not mutually exclusive, then they’re not opposites.
I never said they were opposites- I said that they were contraries; opposite corners of a continuum.
The continuum between love and hate does not pass through apathy. There is also continuums between love and apathy and between hate and apathy; those two pairs are also pairs of contraries.
To which I can respond that love and hate can be combined in the same person (along the base of the triangle, at their most intense), while having neither would be at the top. Measuring it along one dimension fails to differentiate between people I never meet and people for whom I have strong and mixed feelings. I can generalize that to a tetrahedron, if there are four mutually contrary descriptions, and I think to an analogous geometric construction in n-1 dimensions for n independent mutually contrary things (Concave, each point is the same distance from all other points)
If they’re not mutually exclusive, then they’re not opposites.
I never said they were opposites- I said that they were contraries; opposite corners of a continuum.
The continuum between love and hate does not pass through apathy. There is also continuums between love and apathy and between hate and apathy; those two pairs are also pairs of contraries.