Taking love and people-in-certain-relations as intrinsically valuable helps show mistaken various views about acting rationally (or well). First, maximization: i.e., if you value “item” C and if state S has more C than does S’, you act rationally only if you choose S—unless S’ has more of other items you value than does S, or your cost in getting S, as opposed to S’, is too high, or you are not well enough informed. Where C is love (and indeed where C is many, if not more, valuable things), this does not hold—not even if all the values involved are self-regarding. Second, paying attention to value differences, being alive to them and their significance for acting rationally: just consider a person who (often) checks to see whether a love relation with another person would be “better” than the present love. (J. Stocker, ‘The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories’, Journal of Philosophy 14 (1976), p. 459 n. 4)