The problem is anything can be quantified. Find something that can't, and when we define it as infinite, voilà.

I just thought of something. Non-quantitative comparisons do exist. For example, when a woman chooses her clothes, she asks ''which is better?'' Another example would be when a woman chooses among potential partners, she asks ''who loves me more?''

The examples above suggest non-numerical comparisons and in these instances, I think, qualitative infinity can be found.

How would we define infinity qualitatively?

In the case of love, it could mean willingness to give one's life for someone/something. Perhaps, something even greater like loving without expectations. Perhaps, subjectivity, being an important part in the domain of emotions, the definition of infinite love or courage or fear will differ from person to person. Yet, it seems there does exist qualitative infinity.

How would you define qualitative infinity? Is it subjective and so exists only as private meaning or is there an objective definition?

The examples above suggest non-numerical comparisons and in these instances, I think, qualitative infinity can be found. — TheMadFool

Do they? The comparison suggests they can be measured so the infinity is quantitative.

Do they? The comparison suggests they can be measured so the infinity is quantitative. — BlueBanana

Don't they?

How does a woman/man judge the love of two competing suitors? As far as I know, numbers aren't involved. I don't know how the system works but one way to evaluate love would be to set up a test - very common in folktales. These tests aren't quantitative tests. Rather, they're qualitative e.g. x did this for me and y didn't and so x loves me more.

I think the use of quantitative terms such as ''less'' and ''more'' obscures the qualitative nature of such comparisons. Nevertheless, there is a difference between love and, say, height or weight. The former is qualitative and the latter is quantitative. So, it's reasonable to look for a qualitative infinity. Is this a category error? No, it isn't because comparison includes the distinctions less and more and where such distinctions exist it's not odd to ask for the unlimited or, in other words, the infinite.

I think the average Platonist subjectively identifies Infinity with the feeling of exhilaration they experience when imagining the beginning of a sequence of successively larger sets without an apparent limit.

This explains their resentment when a finitist says that infinity isn't real because it isn't constructable via counting. They interpret the finitist as denying them a rush.

Any number can be defined as a categorical (aka qualitative) term, even infinity.

What about the color spectrum? Could it not be infinitely subdivided? That is, between two shades of color, there will always be a shade that is between them.

Do they? The comparison suggests they can be measured so the infinity is quantitative. — BlueBanana

That is not how quantitative works and there can be categorical comparisons.

Example:

"How I thought that movie was great! What did you think?"

"I thought it sucked."

There is a reason we have labels such as qualitative and quantitative, because not everything can be measured on an interval scale. Don't let the fact that numbers are involved confuse you on the difference between the two.

Take the president's approval ratings. That is not a quantitative measurement of how well the president is doing, is a proportional measurement of the opinions of how people feel the president is doing, which is a categorical response (aka qualitative). Getting the two confused is a common mistake, but it is important to understand the differences. There is no ruler we can take out to measure the way people feel about the president. We can say this many people feel this way, and that many people feel this way, but we cannot actually measure their feelings about the president and compare them on either an interval or ordinal scale. We can only say this many people feel this way, and that many people feel that way, which is categories.

But doesn't classifying or categorizing things presuppose the possibility of counting them? The qualitative and quantitative are different, yes, but you can't have one without the other.

Do any of you know of qualitative infinity? A non-numerical infinity? Does this even make sense? — TheMadFool

Part of my summer reading has been Levinas' 'Totality and infinity'. You might care to give him a try if you are interested.

Levinas takes the face-to-face encounter with the Other as one of irredeemable separation. We transcend the finite and potentially enter the infinite through our relations with Otherness - other people, the otherness of the world, the other in ourselves.

My interpretation is that this is contrasted with a 'totalising' view which constantly identifies forms of sameness. Such views, like the view of a scientiser for instance, believe that all is knowable by this method of totalising, of systematising. All can be numbered.

By contrast the I-you encounter isn't bounded. Through dialogical language we can express something of this infinity.

For Levinas personally this leads to religious conclusions: after a tough war in which he was imprisoned as German POW and many of his family were murdered, he returned to Jewish religion.

But it need not be religious. For Levinas it was a long-term response to Heidegger, who had influenced him deeply in his early days as a philosopher, a way of adapting a phenomenological approach to understanding without going the way of Sartre.

Personally I accept the profound insight, albeit re-interpreted in my own terms: qualitative infinity makes excellent sense. To be confined to the quantitative is to deny the profundity of experience, which is in and of a boundless world that we constantly strive to make boundaries in, in order to understand it.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour — William Blake

Simply because you arbitrarily assigned numbers to groups or the elements in those groups that does not mean the observations themselves are quantitative observations.

What I think is going on here, is not philosophy, but a general misunderstanding of what these terms mean. Pick up a intro to statistics book and start reading.

I think there's a misunderstanding here.

I wasn't claiming that, to take your example, people can simply be pegged to a spot on some approval scale. I was saying that part of classifying their qualitative judgments as "approve" or "disapprove", say, is that we can count them -- four approve, six disapprove. Predicates need quantifiers. Seven say this tastes good, nineteen say it doesn't.

I wasn't claiming that, to take your example, people can simply be pegged to a spot on some approval scale. I was saying that part of classifying their qualitative judgments as "approve" or "disapprove", say, is that we can count them -- four approve, six disapprove — Srap Tasmaner

You are not even looking at the variable of interest any more. You are looking at the proportion and not the observation, you can't pull our a ruler and measure how someone feels about the color blue. You can count how many people like blue, and how many don't like blue, but now you are summing something different. You can say this group is bigger than that group, but now you are looking at the number of people in a group and not their feelings towards blue. The variable of interest is categorical; quantitative does not means that there are numbers within proximity.


**And there was no misunderstanding, I just didn't want to waste my time explaining something so basic to you.

I got this crazy idea, instead of debating the difference between the two here in this thread, how about people get a book from a reliable source and read it. I know that not making stuff up off the top of your head is a new concept for "philosophers", but I think it is just crazy enough to work.

You are not even looking at the variable of interest any more. — Jeremiah

That's a fair point. In responding I conflated two different acts of categorizing. I ended up talking about counting acts of categorizing, which wasn't helpful.

Back to the question at hand, what do you make of the fact that people do arrange their qualitative judgments comparatively? For instance, with your movie example: people say things like, "It wasn't as bad as the third Batman movie, but it was pretty bad." "Hires root beer is okay, but I'd rather have A&W", etc.

There is no meaningful measurement there; I can't say the 2nd Batman is 5 meters better than the 3rd Batman, as that would be gibberish. There is no way to measure how much better 2 is than 3.

The ranking being used is arbitrary. I could rank Batman 3 as a 5 out 5, but what does that mean? Is it good? Is it bad? I could rank them A to F, I could even rank them fish to pizza. They are only labels.


I think we need to clear up what these terms actually mean:

Quantitative is numerical measurements that have meaningful units.

Categorical, is categories or labels.

The notion of infinity is inseparable from numbers (quantity) — TheMadFool

When was the last time you or any one measured an infinite quantity?

How about the grammatical "infinite comparison": "This is better."

The qualifying infinite may be used in various ways.

Give me something to drink.
Give me a chair to sit.
It was a sight to see.
This is a thing to admire.
2) to qualify a verb like an adverb

I came to see you.
We are going to play the match.
It is going to rain.
3) to qualify an adjective like an adverb

The book is nice to read.
This picture is beautiful to look at.
4) to qualify a sentence

To tell the truth, you are a fool.
To be frank, I don’t like him.

Say you're a movie critic, and at the end of the year you publish a top-ten list. It's natural to attach numbers to the list precisely because to you the list is already well-ordered under the relation "better than".

There's a sort of implicit "unit of preference" here, but that's less important than being able to order the set.

It does not matter that you are using numbers, it is still an arbitrary ranking with labels. You need to ditch this idea that quantitative = numbers, because it is more than that. Gradations of your personal and subjective "likes" is not quantitative, as it is not an intersubjectively verifiable numerical measurement with meaningful units.

Gradations of your personal and subjective "likes" is not quantitative, as it is not an intersubjectively verifiable numerical measurement with meaningful units. — Jeremiah

Well what we'd look for if we did want to head down this road is behavior.

For example, there's Ramsey's famous suggestion about how to measure degree of belief. Suppose you're walking from one town to the next and come to a fork. You're not certain which is the correct way, but you think it's to the right. Now suppose you see a farmer out in a field. How far would you be willing to walk to ask him if you're going the right way? The more confident you are you're going the right way, the shorter that distance, and vice versa.

If you say like A&W better than Hires, we'd expect you to buy A&W more often, be willing to pay a little more for it, drive a little further to a store that carries it if you have to. How much further? How much more are you willing to pay?

Sorry, but I lost interest.

Yes, discussions on quality invariably leads to emotions. Is it because we've quantified almost everything else? I don't know.

Any number can be defined as a categorical (aka qualitative) term, even infinity. — Jeremiah

Can you clarify.

(Y)

Can you clarify. — TheMadFool

Already did.