I don't give much of a shit. Being what I am makes it difficult to retain any dignity at all in this world. I can't be humiliated anymore... but this comes at the cost of a lack of trust, and belief in others.

I'll figure out how to just go for it someday too. I'm like an expect at putting shit off until later though. Fuck future me.

Nah, I think they're crappy. People might like them, but that doesn't make them not crappy. It's a matter of personal taste how you find the movie, but that's not the issue. — The Great Whatever

How do you propose that anything about quality in the sense of assessments or value judgments could be not about personal taste?

Why would it be about personal taste?

I know this is a bit tangential but which gilmore girl do you like more - the old one or the young one? — csalisbury

Unfortunately I'm not at all familiar with it beyond the fact that I've heard the name of the show mentioned before.

I do watch plenty of fictional TV shows, though I only watch them on DVD/Blu-Ray, and as with movies (I'm a huge movie fan), as well as novels for that matter, I stick almost exclusively with "genre fiction," which in my case is basically a way of simply saying that I don't care very much for anything that's "just drama," especially realist drama (though it's also a way of saying that I am a huge horror, SciFi, fantasy, thriller, mystery, action etc . fan, and I'm also a huge fan of more absurdist-leaning comedies). If there were a crime, mystery or comedy angle I might be interested--for example, I love "Rizzoli & Isles", or if one of the cast or crew were someone I'm a huge fan of--that's the main way I wind up watching some realist dramas, but looking at some brief info on "Gilmore Girls," it doesn't look like something I'd be very interested in.

Because the evidence shows that those sorts of assessments/value judgments obtain nowhere else or in nothing else. It's difficult to even make sense of what we'd be saying with respect to them not being personal taste.

What evidence?

Empirical evidence re what's occurring and where it occurs when those sorts of judgments are made.

Like what?

Like someone saying "Such and such is an excellent film," or "Such and such is awful," or "Such and such is sublime," or "So and so doesn't display the elegance of melodic phrasing in this piece unlike this other piece," etc. etc.

OK, I agree people say those things. How does that show that the truth of those claims consists in personal taste?

I explained this already. There's zero evidence that those sorts of quality assessments/value judgments are anything but personal taste, and it doesn't even make any sense what we'd be saying re how they'd obtain as something other than personal taste.

What's the motivation for thinking they have to do with personal taste in the first place?

A particular person says them. That particular person is telling us how they feel about the thing in question. That's what personal taste is.

No, if they were telling us how they felt about them, they would say something like, 'I feel that this movie is...' or 'I find this movie...' If you say that a movie is excellent, you're saying something about the movie, i.e. that it's excellent, not something about how you feel about it. You might thereby convey that you feel that it's excellent, if you're being sincere, but that's not what the sentence is about.

No to your no. I'm not saying anything about them explicitly saying "I feel", and I am not saying anything about their beliefs per se.

So why is 'The movie was excellent' about personal tastes, rather than about the movie? The sentence is clearly about the movie. There seems to be no motivation you've provided for thinking it's about personal taste.

If you want to claim that it's something more than what they feel, despite beliefs the person may have to the contrary, you need to support that that is the case.

So for example, if you want to claim that the "excellent" property is somehow in or of the film itself, you'd need to support that, show evidence of the property being in the film itself.

Why? You haven't made the case that it is about what they feel to begin with. Your hypothesis is not the null hypothesis: you yet have to prove your initial assumption it's not that I have to then prove something on top of this.

'The rock is heavy.'

'The movie is excellent.'

These sentences are about, respectively, a rock and a movie. Neither makes any reference to a person's feelings. So why would you think that's what they're about?

We know that at least the person feels that the film is excellent, right?

If they are being honest, yes – but then, in virtue of uttering the first sentence, they also feel the rock is heavy (or else they would be dishonest in saying so). This is a feature of all sentences.

What happened to you?

(And by the way, I'd say the person at least feels "that rock is heavy")

So is a sentence like 'the rock is heavy' also an expression of personal taste?

Are there any sentences that do not express matters of personal taste? If not, which ones don't?

That's fine. But we at least know that they feel the film is excellent, as long as they're being honest. So that's why if we want to claim that it's something more than that, we need to show evidence of it, explain what it would even amount to as something else, etc.

So is a sentence like 'the rock is heavy' also an expression of personal taste? — The Great Whatever

Taste is an assessment of like/dislike, preference, etc ., so no. I didn't say that. I said it's also an expression of something they feel.

So what is the difference between those sentences? Why is one a matter of taste and the other not, and how do you know?

I'm assuming you wrote that prior to the comment that taste is about likes/dislikes, etc.


The difference aside from that is that in the one case we can show objective evidence for the claim, we can explain what it amounts to in terms of objective properties, etc.

But you can show objective evidence that something is interesting, or good. A movie is something you can watch that has qualities, and based on these qualities it can be clear that it's trash.

But you can show objective evidence that something is interesting, or good. — The Great Whatever

Hence why I asked you in the first place to attempt that. So provide an example. What would we "point to" re where the quality interesting or good would be, just what it would amount to as something objective, in the movie itself?

Sure.



As you can see, Harrison Ford can't act. Movies with actors that can't act are bad. So the movie is bad. This is objectively observable as much as a rock's weight.