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Author Topic:   boasts of Athiests II
PaulK
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Posts: 17827
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 266 of 300 (332442)
07-17-2006 3:17 AM
Reply to: Message 246 by Faith
07-16-2006 9:35 PM


Re: subjective vs. objective or inherent value
quote:
So hard to figure out what your problem is.
Personal or subjective value/opinion = no truth value.
Personal or subjective value/opinion = matters to the person who holds it
Personal or subjective value/opinion = matters to person and has no truth value.
Objective value or statement = truth value, matters in itself apart from who holds it.
It seems to me that the problem is that Robin hasn't explained why he holds that subjective views have no truth-value. A statement that has no truth-value is meaningless but we accept personal and subjective statements as having meaning. So on the face of it, Robin's claim is clearly false. Hence, if Robin has a point he needs to explain it.a

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 Message 246 by Faith, posted 07-16-2006 9:35 PM Faith has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 267 by robinrohan, posted 07-17-2006 6:40 AM PaulK has replied

PaulK
Member
Posts: 17827
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 268 of 300 (332451)
07-17-2006 6:52 AM
Reply to: Message 267 by robinrohan
07-17-2006 6:40 AM


Re: subjective vs. objective or inherent value
If they have meaning, then they have a truth-value. It's not much of a "definite idea" if it can't be true or false.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 267 by robinrohan, posted 07-17-2006 6:40 AM robinrohan has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 269 by robinrohan, posted 07-17-2006 7:02 AM PaulK has replied
 Message 271 by Faith, posted 07-17-2006 7:25 AM PaulK has replied

PaulK
Member
Posts: 17827
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 270 of 300 (332457)
07-17-2006 7:24 AM
Reply to: Message 269 by robinrohan
07-17-2006 7:02 AM


Re: subjective vs. objective or inherent value
I'd say so. Happiness is subjective, but the statement "I am happy" is objectively true or false.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 269 by robinrohan, posted 07-17-2006 7:02 AM robinrohan has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 273 by robinrohan, posted 07-17-2006 8:16 AM PaulK has replied

PaulK
Member
Posts: 17827
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 272 of 300 (332460)
07-17-2006 7:40 AM
Reply to: Message 271 by Faith
07-17-2006 7:25 AM


Re: subjective vs. objective or inherent value
quote:
This is getting heavily semantically confused.
I think that you are the one getting confused. See below for reasons.
quote:
The statements in question have been *defined* as personal and subjective. Personal and subjective statements were further defined as having no truth value or being meaningless in the sense that they have no objective truth.
I saw no sign of any authoritative definition DEFINING such statements as having no truth-value. Let alone claimign that they are meaningless - which Robin denies. And I would suggest that Robin knows better what he meant better than you do.
quote:
Value statements were the main example and these are clearly subjective and personal -- you can't say that your preference for red is based on an objective absolute value of red so that it should be preferred over all other colors.
I don't see the problem here. Any statement that "red is best" either refers to an absolute value - which is, according to you, false since there is no such value - or it refers to a subjective valuation (e.g "red is my favourite colour") which can also be true or false. Or are you claiming that the statement "red is my favourite colour" is meaningless and cannot be true or false ?
quote:
That doesn't mean that people can't make true statements
This has nothing to do with what I said. My assertion is that all meaningful statements (and I class paradoxes as meaningless for the purposes of this discussion) have a truth value.

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 Message 271 by Faith, posted 07-17-2006 7:25 AM Faith has not replied

PaulK
Member
Posts: 17827
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 274 of 300 (332470)
07-17-2006 8:30 AM
Reply to: Message 273 by robinrohan
07-17-2006 8:16 AM


Re: subjective vs. objective or inherent value
Your thoughts here seem to be answered in my previous post, a reply to Faith.
To repeat, then IF "value" is assumed to refer to an objective property and there is no such objective property, then any claim that something is valuable is untrue. If it refers to a subjective property then it may well be true. In neither case is such a statement meaningless or lacking a truth-value.
I would add that such a claim is about both the experience and the person - to take it as being about either one alone would be wrong.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 273 by robinrohan, posted 07-17-2006 8:16 AM robinrohan has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 275 by robinrohan, posted 07-17-2006 8:39 AM PaulK has replied

PaulK
Member
Posts: 17827
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 276 of 300 (332475)
07-17-2006 8:50 AM
Reply to: Message 275 by robinrohan
07-17-2006 8:39 AM


Re: subjective vs. objective or inherent value
quote:
Would you say that a statement such as "Arithmetic is green" is meaningful?
I would say that it is not, because arithmetic is not the sort of thing that could be considered "green" in any sense I am aware of.
quote:
I was using the term "meaningless" to mean statements like that.
I don't think that this discussion was about your use of "meaningless". It was about your claim that subjective evaluatiosn had no truth-value. The issue of meaning came in becsuse that entailed that such statements were meaningless.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 275 by robinrohan, posted 07-17-2006 8:39 AM robinrohan has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 280 by robinrohan, posted 07-17-2006 1:10 PM PaulK has replied

PaulK
Member
Posts: 17827
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 281 of 300 (332553)
07-17-2006 1:51 PM
Reply to: Message 280 by robinrohan
07-17-2006 1:10 PM


Re: subjective vs. objective or inherent value
The negation of a meaningless statement is autmatically meaningless - that is trivial.
quote:
So if we go back to the premise that there are no objective values, we can say that objective value is not a quality that can be applied to experiences, in the same way that color is a quality that cannot be applied to arithmetic, or other such concepts.
For this to be analagous it cannot be simply the case that value is not objective, it must be the case that it makes no sense to even suggest that value is objective. A false statement is not the same as a meaningless one.
quote:
You were saying that the experience and the person could not be separated. But the movie in itself has no value.
Your argument here is problematic. The experience is watching the movie - not the movie itself. And normally that expereicne will depend on the content of the movie Even if the movie itself is considered not value, it does not negate the fact that it os a part of the value.
quote:
And I would think that the fact that I had a subjectively valuable experience cannot be used in evidence that the movie has value for
others.
It would be evidence that it is valuable for some others. It is unlikely that your situation is so unique that nobody else would find a similar value in the watching.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 280 by robinrohan, posted 07-17-2006 1:10 PM robinrohan has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 282 by robinrohan, posted 07-17-2006 3:28 PM PaulK has replied

PaulK
Member
Posts: 17827
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 283 of 300 (332591)
07-17-2006 3:40 PM
Reply to: Message 282 by robinrohan
07-17-2006 3:28 PM


Re: subjective vs. objective or inherent value
I think you're still hung up on the question of objectoive versus subjective.
If we accept that there is no objective ranking then any claim to objectively rank one colour over another is necessarily false. On the other hand a subective ranking may well be true - in fact for it to be false you'd either have to be lying or wrong about your own preferences.
TO deal with your specific examples
quote:
Now if I make a generalization, and say, "Red is a superior color to blue," my judgment is purely subjective. [It has no truth-value at all in that it has no logical basis.]

Firstly the judgement has a truth value as I've stated above. Lacking a logical basis does not make a statement meaningless, so the statement in square brackets is a non-sequitur.
quote:
I change the words in brackets to the following: "It has truth-value but there is no evidence for my claim."
That depends if it is meant objectively or subjectively. If it is meant subjectively there would be evidence in your reactions (availabel to you and to a lesser extent those observing you)
quote:
nd then in another statement I made to Jar, in his asking what difference it made whether my judgment was subjective or not, I said,"It may make no difference to me, but it makes a huge difference in regard to the value of the color. [My judgment of it is meaningless].
The statement in square brackets is another non-sequitur. Subjective judgements aren't meaningless jsut because they are subjective.s

This message is a reply to:
 Message 282 by robinrohan, posted 07-17-2006 3:28 PM robinrohan has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 284 by robinrohan, posted 07-17-2006 4:25 PM PaulK has replied

PaulK
Member
Posts: 17827
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 285 of 300 (332619)
07-17-2006 4:58 PM
Reply to: Message 284 by robinrohan
07-17-2006 4:25 PM


Re: subjective vs. objective or inherent value
Seems OK.1

This message is a reply to:
 Message 284 by robinrohan, posted 07-17-2006 4:25 PM robinrohan has not replied

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