They can also have different assessments at different times, and those assessments can change as they come to different beliefs about facts, or different mental health states, etc., but that doesn't amount to their assessments being right or wrong. Their assessment isn't the same as any of those other things. — Terrapin Station

Quality of life is a belief and beliefs can be false. You seem to be unjustifiably pinning quality of life down to one individual instance and how someone felt at that time.

So for example a woman may be very happy for a long period of time then the police knock on her door and tell her that her son has been killed in a road accident. She immediately feels distraught and suicidal and would rate her quality of life as terrible.

But a short while later the police come back and tell her they knocked on the wrong door and it is not her son that died.
Then she feels massive relief and is overjoyed. Now you are pinning her quality of life down down to that one instant when due to a false belief she felt awful and not on the all the moments of her life when she was not in that state. But the only reason she had this bad moment was a false belief.

However if a woman had been depressed for years and had a few months of happiness due to a romance before declining again I would accept that the overall quality of her life was poor.

I think the quality of someones life is caused by circumstances and not how they feel. Because feelings can be temporary and readjusted but overall quality of life throughout a person existence is a measure of how much positive things happened to them.

Quality of life is a belief — Andrew4Handel

Presumably you wouldn't say that it's a belief about how someone feels or what their assessment of their life is, otherwise it wouldn't be any different than what they feel/what their assessment is.

So you'd say it's a belief about what, exactly?

I had a severe toothache once but during that time I did not have the belief that I had a poor quality of life. The judgement I have a poor quality is an overall assessment and substantial elements of this are based on objective fact.

I don't know how you are using the term subjective here but I do not think that everything subjective is only subjective. Some things might be entirely subjective but others things are both subjective and objective.
For example me imagining a magic green octopus is all subjective and in the imagination. Me believing I live in poverty is not.

Some things like pain require subjectivity even though there is no doubt the pain is real unlike the magic green octopus. Therefore the belief that people in severe pain have a poor quality of life is not an entirely subjective judgement. Just because pain is private does not mean it is not a fact.

The claim that people have a bad quality of life is not a moral claim. I think a moral claim is subjective. but the reality of other peoples suffering is not.

I had a severe toothache once but during that time I did not have the belief that I had a poor quality of life. The judgement I have a poor quality is an overall assessment and substantial elements of this are based on objective fact. — Andrew4Handel

You're not answering the question I asked. I don't know if you're doing that intentionally or not.

You said that you thought that "quality of life" was a belief, and a belief that people can get wrong.

I said that presumably you wouldn't say that it's a belief about how someone feels or what their assessment of their life is, otherwise it wouldn't be any different than what they feel/what their assessment is.

So you'd say it's a belief about what, exactly?

To answer my question, you'd have to tell me what you'd say it's a belief about.

I said that presumably you wouldn't say that it's a belief about how someone feels or what their assessment of their life is, otherwise it wouldn't be any different than what they feel/what their assessment is. — Terrapin Station

An assessment of one's life is not purely subjective.

If someone cures cancer and saves millions of lives then there life had an immense impact on other peoples well being whatever they think.

Any belief can be false and Assessment is a belief. Like I said is if someone is happy because they think (or assess) that poverty has ended then that is an assessment based on a false belief and an emotion derived from a false belief.

I think what you are doing is giving a disproportionate importance to someones most trivial feelings.

How about the question I asked, and how about me pointing out in that last post that you didn't answer it?

I don't understand the question you are asking. Are you claiming an assessment is purely subjective? I don't accept that premise. An assessment involves a belief that can have truth or falsity. An emotion simply happens and cannot have truth or falsity..

So for example, if the person has a belief that their son or daughter died in a car accident, the belief is made true or false/right or wrong by the objective fact whether the son or daughter is still living or whether they're no longer living because of a car accident.

Re quality of life being a belief, it's made true or false/right or wrong by what (objective fact(s))?

Someone can assess their quality of life based on misinformation.

Someones quality of life can depend on objective facts and the access they have to them.

A person for example might think they have a great marriage because they are unaware their partner is being unfaithful to them.

If you know this persons spouse is unfaithful then you know that they have made a quality of life assessment based on misbelief.

I want to suck tomorrow's dick.

We actually agree on all of that, but we're coming to completely different conclusions about it with respect to quality of life assessments and whether one can be wrong about them.

Do you understand why we're coming to different conclusions?

I am not convinced quality of life is based on how someone feels. — Andrew4Handel

I think this might be the core of the issue. Quality of life is an objective measure, defined by psychologists, and their like. We only have to DuckDuckGo it to find this out.

But individuals - laymen and women - understand it quite differently, as a subjective measure of (roughly) how happy their lives make them, or some similarly vague concept. To the average person, quality of life is wholly about feelings, their feelings as to how good their lives are.

Hence the misunderstandings? :chin: :wink: :up: :smile:

Do you understand why we're coming to different conclusions? — Terrapin Station

You originally said:

When we're talking about quality (of life), value, etc., we're talking about someone's personal assessment, how they happen to feel towards something — Terrapin Station

I am saying this personal assessment is not everything and can be wrong. I am not reducing quality of life down to what one person thinks at one moment .

And I am not just referring to how someone feels at the time but to every scenario involved in life..

I am also including ethical considerations. I think if something like a genocide is occurring or people are happy whilst exploiting slaves then how they feel in that scenario has far less weight.

Like I think I said if you reduce quality of life and values down to how one person feels that is a nihilism where everyone else experiences are irrelevant.

I think it is a calculation probably where if millions of people are unhappy that should concern the whole of society where as if only one person is unhappy in a thousand people that can be treated as a personal issue. Another example is if one person is sick because the water is polluted that should concern everyone. I don't think one persons well being, or lack of, is self contained.

"No man is an Island" John Donne.

To the average person, quality of life is wholly about feelings, their feelings as to how good their lives are. — Pattern-chaser

I agree. I think obviously we would want each individual to feel good about his or her life (I hope) and value their feedback. But like I said in my last post life is in a wider context.

Society effects well being and trends and stats. If you live in a low income high unemployment are you will often report worse outcomes.

Ii would not go up to someone and yell at them "you have a terrible quality of life". But I would be concerned about society as a whole and groups of vulnerable people.

It is a problem if a rich person feels great about his life and also does not want to give to charity or pay taxes then we would be tempted to intervene in his selfish but pleasurable quality of life.

I could ramble so much on this subject.

You originally said:

When we're talking about quality (of life), value, etc., we're talking about someone's personal assessment, how they happen to feel towards something — Terrapin Station — Andrew4Handel

Yes, and I'm still saying that.

Do you understand how I can say that and yet agree with everything in this post:

Someone can assess their quality of life based on misinformation.

Someones quality of life can depend on objective facts and the access they have to them.

A person for example might think they have a great marriage because they are unaware their partner is being unfaithful to them.

If you know this persons spouse is unfaithful then you know that they have made a quality of life assessment based on misbelief. — Andrew4Handel

I think that if someone thinks they have a great quality of life, but their spouse is cheating on them, then they have made a false assessment and their real quality of life is different.

I understand if you think quality of life is how someone feels at a given moment because that seems like all quality of life is, but it seems to me that our quality of life is actually based on other factors and the personal sentiments come after our quality of life has occurred.

For example if someone is hit over the head and then they claim they have a headache and poor quality of life, the poor quality of life is being hit over the head, not just how they felt after. If someone is chronically depressed the poor quality of life is an objective illness.

So I don't think poor quality of life is caused by a persons personal assessment. It is just obvious some scenarios will lead to people making a poor quality of life assessment.

I think that if someone thinks they have a great quality of life, but their spouse is cheating on them, then they have made a false assessment and their real quality of life is different. — Andrew4Handel

You don't believe that a quality of life assessment is the same thing as whether their spouse is cheating on them, do you?

You don't believe that a quality of life assessment is the same thing as whether their spouse is cheating on them, do you? — Terrapin Station

Quality of life is their spouse cheating on them. The assessment does not equal the quality of life. Quality of life is someone living in poverty not how they feel about it.

The exceptions I would make is mental illnesses where the quality of life is the mental state. But even with mental illness it can be correlated with bad life circumstances.

Quality of life is their spouse cheating on them. — Andrew4Handel

Okay, so you do think it's the same thing.

Why would how the person feels about their spouse cheating on them be irrelevant to their quality of life? At the very least you'd be using language very oddly.

We seem to be focusing on individual cases but life is not just one person. That is like solipsism.

I think that there is a solipsistic feel to consciousness and perception though. But I don't think we can base societies and values coherently around that.

How do we get to non-personal quality?

Why would how the person feels about their spouse cheating on them be irrelevant to their quality of life? — Terrapin Station

Like I said in my last but one post the way they feel is dictated largely by their spouse cheating on them.

It might be that they are really happy to be cheated on but that would be a small minority of cases and an anomaly.

I am not sure if you are saying quality of life is only how someone feels, or whether you believe it is how someones feels and the circumstances that caused them to feel that way?

How do we get to non-personal quality? — Terrapin Station

What does a personal quality mean?

Are you referring to individual conscious experience regardless of the functional state of the body and environment?

I am not sure if you are saying quality of life is only how someone feels, — Andrew4Handel

That.

Like I said in my last but one post the way they feel is dictated largely by their spouse cheating on them. — Andrew4Handel

That's an empirical claim, and even with data, which you don't have--you're just making it up, basically--it still wouldn't be generalizable to everyone.

It might be that they are really happy to be cheated on but that would be a small minority of cases and an anomaly. — Andrew4Handel

Of what relevance is how common something is?

What does a personal quality mean? — Andrew4Handel

"Personal" is a feature of quality period. Quality (of anything, in the value sense that we're talking about) is an assessment that individual people make.

If you want to claim that quality isn't personal, then you have some work to do. What is non-personal quality supposed to be?

"Personal" is a feature of quality period. Quality (of anything, in the value sense that we're talking about) is an assessment that individual people make. — Terrapin Station

This is just a bald assertion your making. Things have functions such as the human heart and there is telos they can be described in terms of. If a car is designed to travel on the road and fails to do that that is objective evidence of it's lack of quality.

Like I have said quality only exists in the context of their being an external world that effects the individual unless you are a solipsist. So someones personal feelings cannot constitute the entirety of anything.

Of what relevance is how common something is? — Terrapin Station

It is relevant for making causal explanations and predictions.
If someone was going to cheat on their spouse they might not cheat on their spouse because of the evidence that it usually harms the spouse.

So they are making an assertion about how their behaviour will effect someones quality of life by using empirical statistics because there is a good causal case for certain actions leading to the same reaction except in a minority of cases.

This is how we can predict someones quality of life reliably by their circumstances.

This relates to the morality issue.

You can say "It is not wrong, in my opinion, to stab someone" But you can't realistically say it is not harmful to stab someone. And even for a moral nihilist actions can be guided by an assessment of harm.

The problem with conceptual value claims is whether they have a reality out side of concepts. But Harm has a reality. You might even compare it to where mathematics exist in reality.