With enough conditioning an abstract principle can become intuitive, I'm sure, but initially they are learned or reasoned out and may have no personal value at all. People can adopt principles on faith. — praxis

You said that we can value an abstract principle. I was saying something about that--about valuing abstract principles. I wasn't saying aside from that about abstract principles. Just about valuing them, since that's what you had mentioned.

We can value abstract principles, however, which can override our intuitions. — praxis

The only way to know if you value an abstract principle is via your intuition.

Re the earlier comment, it's the same rudimentary misunderstanding people make all the time when discussing this stuff. It's not that you necessarily value every aspect of something equally. You often assign different values to different aspects and weight each differently.

There are extreme cases. — Moliere

The only thing "extreme" about cases like that are whether an opinion would be popular or unusual. Some people tend to be swayed popularity of opinion, especially when we're talking about a popular opinion among specialists. But that's an example of the argumentum ad populum fallacy. It's not correct in any way, shape or form that Beethoven is a better composer than a 2-year-old who just started banging on some pots and pans five minutes ago. It's simply a matter of what someone likes versus dislikes, where most people can give some details about their likes and dislikes.

But something is good because of such and such reasons which have to do with comparison between artworks, context, history, the elements of art, and the principles of art. — Moliere

You can compare etc. all day long and it doesn't amount to anything re good/bad aside from people liking whatever they do. No comparison, no context, nothing about history, nothing about "principles" has any bearing whatsoever on whether anything is good or bad, better or worse than anything else outside of people liking whatever they do.

There is a difference between my saying "I like Star Wars" and my saying "Star Wars is a good movie" - — Moliere

I couldn't more strongly disagree with this, though.

The sort of reasons one gives are things like "it's primarily plot-driven." It's not good or bad for something to be primarily plot-driven. You can like or dislike (or be neutral towards) something primarily plot-driven, but there's no right answer regarding whether something should be primarily plot-driven or not.

It's no different than saying, "I like Casablanca more than Star Wars because Star Wars is primarily plot-driven, and I don't like things that are primarily plot-driven as much as things that are primarily character/relationship driven."

There are plenty of facts about films, facts that are not at all opinions. For example, "Star Wars is set on other planets than the Earth." None of those non-opinion facts are at all indicative of anything being good or bad, better or worse than anything else.

Values ARE just ways that people feel about things.

And re the other comment we didn't get to yet, the only way that Beethoven is a better composer than anyone else--Chuck Berry, say, is to a particular individual, if that individual likes Beethoven's writing more.They can give reasons why they like his writing more. Anyone should be able to do this if they've introspected just what it is they like and dislike in any detail. But none of that translates to anything other than their likes/dislikes. It's just telling us what specifically they like/dislike.

I've seen many thousands of films, but unfortunately I haven't seen either of those two yet. I'm familiar with both to some extent. I just haven't gotten around to watching them yet.

We could pick other examples, but the one I'm going to say is the better movie is the one that I like better overall, due to a combination of my tastes in plots, scripts, acting, cinematography, editing, scoring, production design, etc.--all of the elements that make up a film.

That's a lot to read into two simple questions.

Also, "fact" doesn't imply "not relative" by the way. (It also doesn't imply "not subjective," as there are facts about minds.) "Fact" does imply "not opinion" in the evaluative/good-bad sense of "opinion."

It was a rejection of a question?

So, truth is not merely subjective or relative, then.. — Janus

Didn't I just explain that I use "truth" and "fact" differently, a la the conventional distinction in analytic phil, and then you said it was common knowledge, etc.? Whether something is a fact doesn't tell you anything about the ontological status of truth per this view.

Take notes maybe.

You're the one with no idea what an emoticon indicates; — Janus

Right, especially when it was in lieu of answering a simple question. I was looking for an answer, not a deflection.

It indicates that you have Asperger's? Why would you be telling me that all of a sudden instead of just answering the simple question I asked?

If you can't at least paraphrase it from memory then your claim is completely empty. Why is it ridiculous to ask for textual support for a reference that you have introduced? — Janus

Is it because you're expressing skepticism about it or something? I don't care if you don't believe it. I'm not going to reread the book to find a reference in the hope that you'll believe it if I find it and give you the citation. Nothing hinges on whether you believe it. If you want to be skeptical about it, that's fine.

The rest of your explanation doesn't tell me anything that isn't pretty much common knowledge. — Janus

If my personal view is common knowledge, so much better for common knowledge, although it's curious why you had to ask for an explanation in that case.

Is this a fact or is it merely your subjective opinion? — Janus

Fact. It's what the world is like ontologically.

Invention.

No idea what that would indicate.

Star Wars was primarily plot-driven, that the characters were two-dimensional, and the dialogue came out because of the storyteller had a plot they wanted to tell and it drove that plot.

In general -- engaging with the history of an artform, in its production and as audience, is how you discover aesthetic values. — Moliere

So something shouldn't be primarily plot-driven, dialogue shouldn't just be there to drive the plot, characters shouldn't be "two-dimensional" because . . . I don't know. You're saying that whether they should be that way or not doesn't have anything to do with anyone's opinion, right? So maybe they shouldn't be that way because other films you watched/studied weren't that way? Because most films are not that way? Or . . . ? (It can't be something like "because most films considered 'good' by cinephiles, film professors, etc. don't have those features, because that has to do with those folks opinions)

Well, please cite or quote the text, then. — Janus

I'd have to search for it, and I'm not about to reread the whole book just to give you a citation for whatever ridiculous reason you'd be asking for one.

Propositions are conventionally the meanings of statements (rather than the particular expression of them). And the truth value property is conventionally a relation between propositions and something else. (I'm not specifying the something else because that then depends on the specfici truth theory, whether we're talking about correpondence, coherence, or whatever)

On my view, meaning is a mental phenomenon. Related to this, the only way that these meanings have any ("checkable") relation to something other than themselves is via making a judgment (not in the value judgment (good/bad/etc.) sense, but in the "considered decision" sense) about how the meaning "hooks up" with something else. Again, this is something that only happens as a mental phenomenon.

according to the rules (conventional syntactical practices) — Janus

So you use "rule" to just refer to a conventional practice?

You could have simply said that if so, no?

So you believe the different senses of 'fact' have never been acknowledged by any analytic philosophers, — Janus

Obviously they're aware of other uses. But the term isn't used that way in an analytic philosophy context, and there are reasons it's not used that way (reasons that were made explicit in texts like Russell's Philosophy of Logical Atomism)

What it was relevant to was my explanation of why I'm a relativist on truth. That's rooted in the way that analytic philosophy conventionally parses what truth is (namely--it's a property of propositions).

Let's try this, then: how do we discover values?

It's trivially true that language originated in humans, but it was not "invented" as if there was some conscious effort at design involved. — Baden

Okay. Again, a common definition of "invent" is "create or design (something that has not existed before); be the originator of." The term doesn't necessary imply that there were board meetings about it. (So to speak.)

Do they occur external to our thinking? If so, why wouldn't we be talking about a fact?

It's a value. — Moliere

Sure. And what are values?

Wouldn't there be many things that are different from those? — Moliere

The question is about the status of flaws in a film--wasn't that what I was asking you about? It's not a fact that there are flaws in a film, and it's not simply a result of preferences/opinions, but it's what?

And so the alternatives would be?

Here's a common definition of "invent," by the way: "create or design (something that has not existed before); be the originator of."

So if we didn't invent language--and specifically a language like English, then we didn't create it, we're not the originators of it. Who or what is?

Were you just getting at the notion that some homo sapiens ancestor species invented language?

Why does the genesis of english seem this way to you? Most (all?) historical linguists would profoundly disagree (unless you're playing extremely fast and loose with 'invent', 'agree' etc.) Your account sounds a little bit like Rousseau's idea that the original humans must've been running around, on their own, until they got together and decided to have a society. — csalisbury

What would you say the alternatives are to humans inventing languages and agreeing with each other on how to use them?

<shrug> :roll:

Neither. Values differ from facts, so they are not factual. But it is not just an opinion or preference either. — Moliere

What would you say it is that's different from facts or opinions/preferences?

Rules need not be explicit. For example, the so-called rules of grammar were operative long before anyone analyzed actual language usage and explicitly formulated them. So a rule is certainly not merely the statement of it. — Janus

I wouldn't understand how you're using the term "rule," in the vein of my comments above re how I use that term.

I agree that a rule isn't merely the statement of it (people need to apply meaning to the statement, for example), but I don't get what you'd be referring to re an inexplicit rule. What definition of "rule" would you be using?

In the moral sense, if we're talking about morality — S

First, we were talking about word usage. But we could talk about morality instead. The moral sense of "it's right" is that it's how you feel about interpersonal behavior, the behavior that you'd prefer.

Moral shoulds (rather than, say, conditional shoulds--conditional shoulds being that "if S wants y, S should do x, because that will give S y") are just a way of saying that you'd prefer if everyone behaved how you prefer . . . which of course makes sense, given what preferences are. There's nothing more to moral "shoulds" than that.

By your standard it's what's right in what sense?

If you're just saying that it's what you prefer, then why should I do what you prefer?

because it's implicit within a particular standard that one is expected to act accordingly. So if you don't act accordingly, then you're wrong — S

I think that's ridiculous though. Just because some people want to do things whatever way, have whatever preferences, why the hell am I expected to act that way or I'm "wrong"? That's basically demanding that I conform to what they want to do or what they like. On what grounds?

Re the question you asked, I'm a nihilist in the sense that I don't believe there is any objective value, meaning, etc.

Well, just because you have knowledge doesnt mean you are accessing it all at once. — DingoJones

I thought that was the distinction the TC was making, because he contrasted it with "knowing things one step at a time."

A person gives you a long list of things they say they believe would make them happy.

Do you advise them that they should reconsider whether they really want all those things (eliminate), reconsider the scale of their desires (downsize) or encourage them to work hard and fulfil their pre-requisites? — Judaka

I tell them neither things/statuses nor a lack of the same are correlated to happiness . . . which means that there's no more reason to discourage them from changing statuses/gaining things than to encourage them. That simply has nothing to do with happiness. What needs to change for happiness is the way they look at things, their disposition, their attitude, etc. towards what is.

For people who aren't happy overall, I'd want them to realize that it's a matter of attitude/disposition/perspective rather than an issue of having any particular statuses or possesions. Changes in statuses and possessions can have a short term impact, of course (including a negative impact), but on a broader scale, it's purely an issue of attitude/disposition/perspective.

That makes it more difficult in a way, because it's not something that can be gained or lost like a house or a boat can. It's harder to say just how one develops the disposition that will produce happiness. I think it can be cultivated if you aren't naturally prone to it, at least in many cases if not all, but probably different things work for cultivation for different people, and it's not something that we can just lay out a step-by-step plan for.

Well, it doesn't follow a particular standard, but why is it wrong to not follow that standard? A lot of people are going to read "wrong" with connotations that I'd want to avoid. If they would read "wrong" so that it just amounts to "is different from x" that would be fine, but people read "wrong" so that it implies something negative, suggests something normative, etc.

What happens? My brain starts smoking

Seriously, though, I can't even listen to two people talking at the same time. That really does make my brain start smoking. I get very annoyed when I'm trying to listen to someone--either in person, or if I'm watching a TV program or movie or something, and someone then starts talking on top of the other person. I can't parse two people talking at the same time, at least not beyond very simple, rudimentary things. So no way I could handle "all knowledge at once."

What I asked was if someone could choose something that they aren't aware of — Harry Hindu

Actually, the way you phrased it was this: "If not pre-determined, then are the only choices that are possible are the ones we are aware of?"

The answer to that question is "No," There are other choices possible. It can be the case that someone isn't aware of them, but that doesn't imply that those other choices aren't possible. Say that Pete's Diner offers five different types of bread for sandwiches. Joe isn't aware of all of them. The fact that Joe isn't aware of all of them doesn't imply that the other choices aren't possible.

Then you changed to focusing on the moment of decision: "In this moment of decision, Joe isn't aware of pumpernickel for some reason or another. Is it possible for Joe to choose pumpernickel in this moment of decision?"

The answer to that is "no" (which you agree with), because it's a truism for actualizing something versus the possibilities for that occasion. As I pointed out, this has nothing to do with determinism. Part of the reason why is that what's actualized could even be random.

Now you're focusing on this instead: "if someone could choose something that they aren't aware of."

I wouldn't say that would be impossible, but it would be very bizarre. So "no," practically. (Which again you agree with.) That doesn't imply that the choice is determined if there's a choice, just that for that particular chooser, it's limited to the options one is aware of.

Which is the concept, and which is that which is being conceived of?

If concepts are abstractions, and they are of abstractions, then they are of themselves? — creativesoul

Yes, concepts are "of themselves." They're tools we create, out of necessity, really, because it's too difficult to deal with the world as a set of unique particulars.

I never disagree with someone just to disagree or because I don't want to agree. I'd be happy to agree, but you'd need to say something I agree with. :razz:

I don't believe there's merit to just letting slide things we think are misconceived or in error when we're doing philosophy (or science etc.) Aren't we aiming to "get right what the world is like"? Otherwise what are we doing?

But I'll use an example. I grew up watching Star Wars. I love watching Star Wars. I have good memories of it and a soft spot for the fantasy world that inspired me as a kid.

But as I grew older and developed a taste for film I could come back to Star Wars and see its flaws. — Moliere

Start with this. Do you believe that what you're referring to are flaws factually? Or are you just saying that they're flaws in your later opinion, given how your preferences have changed?