That's what I'm saying. Starting from the finality of it (the result of the judgements) doesn't tell us anything. This is the point I'm trying to get across.
How does it not tell us anything? Each individual judgement does in fact tell us something.
Rank Film Director Year 1 Броненосец Потёмкин (The Battleship Potemkin) Sergei Eisenstein 1925 2 The Gold Rush Charles Chaplin 1925 3 Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) Vittorio De Sica 1948 4 La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc) Carl Theodor Dreyer 1928 5 La Grande Illusion (Grand Illusion) Jean Renoir 1937 6 Greed Erich von Stroheim 1924 7 Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages D. W. Griffith 1916 8 Мать (Mother) Vsevolod Pudovkin 1926 9 Citizen Kane Orson Welles 1941 10 Земля (Earth) Alexander Dovzhenko 1930 11 Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh) F.W. Murnau 1924 12 Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) Robert Wiene 1920
Man it sucks that the greatest movies ever were all created before 1950.. Why do people bother to make new films :-p
That's what I'm saying. Starting from the finality of it (the result of the judgements) doesn't tell us anything. This is the point I'm trying to get across.
How does it not tell us anything? Each individual judgement does in fact tell us something.
Not the final sum of it, but how one arrived at that judgement is what matters. Otherwise it would just be arbitrary.
That's what I'm saying. Starting from the finality of it (the result of the judgements) doesn't tell us anything. This is the point I'm trying to get across. That is why I said from the start that Scott was attacking this from the wrong direction. How the consensus is formed is more important than that the scores at the end come out the same.
All my posts in this thread have been directed at how Apreche chose to argue for an "Objective Quality". Not at whether or not there is an "Objective Quality".
Talking about the final scores the figure skating judges and art professors give people is the conclusion. Not the premises that lead to that conclusion. That's my point.
The same kind of argument hold with respect to morality. Also, solipsism is wrong.
Solipsism is fundamentally correct. I, as a single actor, have literally no possible frame of reference but my own, and all analysis of all things is subject to my own possibly distorted perception, with no possibility of an external frame of reference from which to judge it.
You likely mistake what solipsism means at its core. It doesn't mean you're the only thing that exists. It means you have no other frame of reference, or any possibility of another frame of reference, but your own, and thus can NEVER objectively evaluate anything. "Solipsistic doubt" is the one thing that can never be fully disproven.
Solipsism is completely, 100% correct in this regard, and also 100% completely useless. Argument from solipsism or pure objectivity is the last refuge of one who has already lost the argument.
So many of our arguments end in Solipsism. Sooo many to the point where I can remember about 10 years ago when I didn't know about Solipsism, now I'm a freaking expert.
I actually meant to write surrealism, but some weird brainfart happened and I wrote symbolism instead. Doesn't really change my argument.
No worries, I was going to say the same thing no matter that it was, b/c I was just trying to stir the post and bail out of this thread before it balloons past my desire to keep up with it. Enjoy your lively debates, good sirs!
All my posts in this thread have been directed at how Apreche chose to argue for an "Objective Quality". Not at whether or not there is an "Objective Quality".
Talking about the final scores the figure skating judges and art professors give people is the conclusion. Not the premises that lead to that conclusion. That's my point.
But you reverse-engineer the criteria from the final assessment. And use those criteria to make new assessments. And then reverse-engineer the new assessments...
You need to use the conclusions because that's how we talk about things - and since we're talking about consensus...
Rank Film Director Year 1 Броненосец Потёмкин (The Battleship Potemkin) Sergei Eisenstein 1925 2 The Gold Rush Charles Chaplin 1925 3 Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) Vittorio De Sica 1948 4 La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc) Carl Theodor Dreyer 1928 5 La Grande Illusion (Grand Illusion) Jean Renoir 1937 6 Greed Erich von Stroheim 1924 7 Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages D. W. Griffith 1916 8 Мать (Mother) Vsevolod Pudovkin 1926 9 Citizen Kane Orson Welles 1941 10 Земля (Earth) Alexander Dovzhenko 1930 11 Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh) F.W. Murnau 1924 12 Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) Robert Wiene 1920
Man it sucks that the greatest movies ever were all created before 1950.. Why do people bother to make new films :-p
There are many reasons.
One is that invention is the tiebreaker. Let's say you make a revolutionary film that invents and perfects all sorts of amazing techniques. I then make another film that is equally good and also perfectly executes those many techniques. You edge me out because you invented them.
Another reason is that a lot of those older films were far less commercialized. Oh, they were definitely profit-making endeavors just as today. But you won't see product placement in Battleship Potemkin. You didn't have a record executive forcing whatever his new "hit" single happens to be onto the soundtrack of Ladri di biciclette.
Another is length. Movies today are relatively short. I'm not saying longer is better, Potemkin is actually crazy short, but epic is better. Going long is more difficult in every respect, but if you pull it off it's hard to beat the epic result. It's a high risk high reward scenario. That's why you get Lawrence of Arabia (4 hours) or The Godfather (3 hours) ranking so highly so often. Because they were allowed a length which is rarely permitted these days. they were able to achieve an epic result that a short movie can not.
How is epic better? Consider this. A miniature Taj Mahal built on a pinhead. That's crazy awesome! How about one made on silicon, also crazy awesome! A perfect replica built at a scale that can fit on a table with a model train? Also crazy awesome! Yet, as awesome as all of those things are, the real deal is a wonder of the world. Being a wonder of the world is pretty much the best a work of art can be. That's like winning a world championship for the whole Olympics, as opposed to any particular event. To be a wonder, you usually have to go large.
But you reverse-engineer the criteria from the final assessment. And use those criteria to make new assessments. And then reverse-engineer the new assessments...
You need to use the conclusions because that's how we talk about things - and since we're talking about consensus...
But there's an inherent problem with that. If we get a consensus, but the reasons for that consensus have no consensus whatsoever, we have no tool. If no two people have even relatable reasons for their valuation, we have gained nothing. It's the reasons for the valuation that give it a criteria by which we can make an objective statement, not simply the scores at the end of the day.
But you reverse-engineer the criteria from the final assessment. And use those criteria to make new assessments. And then reverse-engineer the new assessments...
You need to use the conclusions because that's how we talk about things - and since we're talking about consensus...
But there's an inherent problem with that. If we get a consensus, but the reasons for that consensus have no consensus whatsoever, we have no tool. If no two people have even relatable reasons for their valuation, we have gained nothing. It's the reasons for the valuation that give it a criteria by which we can make an objective statement, not simply the scores at the end of the day.
Yes. There is a consensus on those reasons. You just don't know what they are. That's how come the critics/judges/etc. all come up to relatively similar conclusions even though they do not collude or collaborate in any way whatsoever.
The same kind of argument hold with respect to morality. Also, solipsism is wrong.
Solipsism is fundamentally correct. I, as a single actor, have literally no possible frame of reference but my own, and all analysis of all things is subject to my own possibly distorted perception, with no possibility of an external frame of reference from which to judge it.
You likely mistake what solipsism means at its core. It doesn't mean you're the only thing that exists. It means you have no other frame of reference, or any possibility of another frame of reference, but your own, and thus can NEVER objectively evaluate anything. "Solipsistic doubt" is the one thing that can never be fully disproven.
Solipsism is completely, 100% correct in this regard, and also 100% completely useless. Argument from solipsism or pure objectivity is the last refuge of one who has already lost the argument.
I agree that one's perspective is necessarily subjective; that isn't my beef with solipsism. However, I disagree with the statement that "only one's mind is sure to exist" because I disagree with any and all instances of certainty, including the solipsistic proposition that your own existence is a certainty.
Note that this doesn't mean that I don't think there aren't certainties in the real world, but rather that you cannot justifiably be certain of them.
While I would assign an astronomically high probability to the proposition that something exists - something like 99.999% - I cannot assign 100%. Why? The very concept of solipsism is a sophisticated construct of a complex and (almost certainly) flawed mind, the reasoning of which cannot be guaranteed to be trustworthy. Hell, I don't think it's reasonable to assign certainty to even the most basic principles of reason and logic and mathematics that underlie the solipsistic hypothesis, such as "not (P and not P)" (i.e. that no statement can be both true and false).
While I agree with solipsism that nothing outside your own existence is certain, I disagree with it because I don't think my existence is certain either. In simple terms - nothing is certain, not even the fact that nothing is certain.
There is a being X. X can perceive things. It can perceive itself perceiving things. It can also think. Those perceptions could be illusions, so they are not certain. The very nature of the being X itself is uncertain. It could be a biological organism, a computer program, some quantum nonsense, or who knows what else. Even if all the perceptions themselves are illusory, the ability to perceive anything means that the being X exists in some form.
How can something that does not exist perceive anything, or think, or know itself? There has to be something there to do those things. Nothingness can not think, perceive, or know itself. If it did, it would no longer be nothing. If the vacuum of space could think, it would have 100% assurance, to itself, that it was a being that existed.
How can something that does not exist perceive anything, or think, or know itself? There has to be something there to do those things. Nothingness can not think, perceive, or know itself. If it did, it would no longer be nothing. If the vacuum of space could think, it would have 100% assurance, to itself, that it was a being that existed.
How do you know nothingness can't think, perceive, or know itself?
You're basing your claims off principles of logic that I've just said you cannot be certain of. Not only that, but notions such as "exists" "perceive" and "think" are far from simple concepts.
If you want to establish your point, you'd first have to convince me to be 100% certain of "not (P and not P)" and the like - which is something you can't do without infinite evidence.
Where Descartes went wrong is in assuming that he could be certain of the principles of logic and reason, despite the fact that the demon could just as easily have corrupted his very understanding of those concepts. He didn't take his skepticism far enough.
But you reverse-engineer the criteria from the final assessment. And use those criteria to make new assessments. And then reverse-engineer the new assessments...
You need to use the conclusions because that's how we talk about things - and since we're talking about consensus...
But there's an inherent problem with that. If we get a consensus, but the reasons for that consensus have no consensus whatsoever, we have no tool. If no two people have even relatable reasons for their valuation, we have gained nothing. It's the reasons for the valuation that give it a criteria by which we can make an objective statement, not simply the scores at the end of the day.
If 100 people arrive at the same assessment, and in dissecting those 100 different assessments you find 100 different parameters - you have 100 different parameters. It's complicated.
But this is highly unlikely. There are almost always trends, categories, and so on. This is why statistical analysis is useful. Finding 100 truly unique parameters is hard - more than likely, you need to dissect the parameters more to find their common denominator.
It is very very rare to arrive at consensus without some common criteria - even if we're not aware of them. We are not all the different from one another.
Also, with regards to the strong solipsistic hypothesis (i.e. metaphysical solipsism), while it cannot be experimentally tested, it fails Occam's razor - laws of physics are strictly simpler than minds.
The problem is that the statement "I do not exist" is literally nonsensical. It's not that you certainly exist - it's that denying your own existence is logically inconsistent. If you didn't exist, your statement would necessarily lack a subject.
If 100 people arrive at the same assessment, and in dissecting those 100 different assessments you find 100 different parameters - you have 100 different parameters. It's complicated.
You are correct, but in that circumstance it doesn't yield a particularly useful tool from my subjective opinion about the value of these qualitative measurements.
Of course, we could figure out an objective standard for the quality of these tools by which to measure them if you want, and then apply those rules recursively. :P
If 100 people arrive at the same assessment, and in dissecting those 100 different assessments you find 100 different parameters - you have 100 different parameters. It's complicated.
You are correct, but in that circumstance it doesn't yield a particularly useful tool from my subjective opinion about the value of these qualitative measurements.
Of course, we could figure out an objective standard for the quality of these tools by which to measure them if you want, and then apply those rules recursively. :P
Nah, we've got enough consensus to say you're wrong. :P
The problem is that the statement "I do not exist" is literally nonsensical. It's not that you certainly exist - it's that denying your own existence is logically inconsistent. If you didn't exist, your statement would necessarily lack a subject.
That may just be a language problem. To say dragons don't exist isn't a nonsense statement. To say that that which exists does not exist is a logical problem.
The problem is that the statement "I do not exist" is literally nonsensical. It's not that you certainly exist - it's that denying your own existence is logically inconsistent. If you didn't exist, your statement would necessarily lack a subject.
Ah, but without the certainty, what's the point of solipsism? Sure, it's important to note that you're running on flawed hardware, but that's a point that is better demonstrated by cognitive science than by any of this philosophy. The notion of "existence" is, frankly, a somewhat strange and confusing one - why place special significance on it instead of more basic concepts?
Instead of solipsism, you can just make the much simpler point that you can't justifiably be certain of anything, because you're running on flawed hardware. From there, you can pragmatically accept the principles of inductive reasoning and Occam's razor, and from there you can start dealing with the real world.
Isn't that not only simpler and more pragmatic, but also more accurate?
The problem is that the statement "I do not exist" is literally nonsensical. It's not that you certainly exist - it's that denying your own existence is logically inconsistent. If you didn't exist, your statement would necessarily lack a subject.
Ah, but without the certainty, what's the point of solipsism? Sure, it's important to note that you're running on flawed hardware, but that's a point that is better demonstrated by cognitive science than by any of this philosophy. The notion of "existence" is, frankly, a somewhat strange and confusing one - why place special significance on it instead of more basic concepts?
Instead of solipsism, you can just make the much simpler point that you can't justifiably be certain of anything, because you're running on flawed hardware. From there, you can pragmatically accept the principles of inductive reasoning and Occam's razor, and from there you can start dealing with the real world.
Isn't that not only simpler and more pragmatic, but also more accurate?
You said it yourself. You are running on flawed hardware. You can't possibly be running on NO hardware. It is 100% certain that there is some kind of hardware.
No, I accept pragmatically that I'm running on flawed hardware; I don't need to be certain of it (nor of anything).
The notion of "existence" is confusing and far from fundamental, and your claim depends quite a lot of simpler concepts. If you to convince me of that point, you first have to convince me to be 100% certain of, say, the law of non-contradiction.
In order to 100% convince me with a logical argument, you first have to 100% convince me of logic - 99.999999% isn't good enough. It's a basic issue of epistemology that is summed up by the Münchhausen Trilemma.
I can accept universal uncertainty. The whole point of solipsism is to demonstrate the extent of uncertainty in life - being uncertain about myself is only margianlly more skeptical than accepting my existence and being skeptical of everything else.
Comments
1 Броненосец Потёмкин (The Battleship Potemkin) Sergei Eisenstein 1925
2 The Gold Rush Charles Chaplin 1925
3 Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) Vittorio De Sica 1948
4 La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc) Carl Theodor Dreyer 1928
5 La Grande Illusion (Grand Illusion) Jean Renoir 1937
6 Greed Erich von Stroheim 1924
7 Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages D. W. Griffith 1916
8 Мать (Mother) Vsevolod Pudovkin 1926
9 Citizen Kane Orson Welles 1941
10 Земля (Earth) Alexander Dovzhenko 1930
11 Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh) F.W. Murnau 1924
12 Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) Robert Wiene 1920
Man it sucks that the greatest movies ever were all created before 1950.. Why do people bother to make new films :-p
Talking about the final scores the figure skating judges and art professors give people is the conclusion. Not the premises that lead to that conclusion. That's my point.
You likely mistake what solipsism means at its core. It doesn't mean you're the only thing that exists. It means you have no other frame of reference, or any possibility of another frame of reference, but your own, and thus can NEVER objectively evaluate anything. "Solipsistic doubt" is the one thing that can never be fully disproven.
Solipsism is completely, 100% correct in this regard, and also 100% completely useless. Argument from solipsism or pure objectivity is the last refuge of one who has already lost the argument.
You need to use the conclusions because that's how we talk about things - and since we're talking about consensus...
One is that invention is the tiebreaker. Let's say you make a revolutionary film that invents and perfects all sorts of amazing techniques. I then make another film that is equally good and also perfectly executes those many techniques. You edge me out because you invented them.
Another reason is that a lot of those older films were far less commercialized. Oh, they were definitely profit-making endeavors just as today. But you won't see product placement in Battleship Potemkin. You didn't have a record executive forcing whatever his new "hit" single happens to be onto the soundtrack of Ladri di biciclette.
Another is length. Movies today are relatively short. I'm not saying longer is better, Potemkin is actually crazy short, but epic is better. Going long is more difficult in every respect, but if you pull it off it's hard to beat the epic result. It's a high risk high reward scenario. That's why you get Lawrence of Arabia (4 hours) or The Godfather (3 hours) ranking so highly so often. Because they were allowed a length which is rarely permitted these days. they were able to achieve an epic result that a short movie can not.
How is epic better? Consider this. A miniature Taj Mahal built on a pinhead. That's crazy awesome! How about one made on silicon, also crazy awesome! A perfect replica built at a scale that can fit on a table with a model train? Also crazy awesome! Yet, as awesome as all of those things are, the real deal is a wonder of the world. Being a wonder of the world is pretty much the best a work of art can be. That's like winning a world championship for the whole Olympics, as opposed to any particular event. To be a wonder, you usually have to go large.
Note that this doesn't mean that I don't think there aren't certainties in the real world, but rather that you cannot justifiably be certain of them.
While I would assign an astronomically high probability to the proposition that something exists - something like 99.999% - I cannot assign 100%. Why? The very concept of solipsism is a sophisticated construct of a complex and (almost certainly) flawed mind, the reasoning of which cannot be guaranteed to be trustworthy. Hell, I don't think it's reasonable to assign certainty to even the most basic principles of reason and logic and mathematics that underlie the solipsistic hypothesis, such as "not (P and not P)" (i.e. that no statement can be both true and false).
While I agree with solipsism that nothing outside your own existence is certain, I disagree with it because I don't think my existence is certain either. In simple terms - nothing is certain, not even the fact that nothing is certain.
There is a being X. X can perceive things. It can perceive itself perceiving things. It can also think. Those perceptions could be illusions, so they are not certain. The very nature of the being X itself is uncertain. It could be a biological organism, a computer program, some quantum nonsense, or who knows what else. Even if all the perceptions themselves are illusory, the ability to perceive anything means that the being X exists in some form.
How can something that does not exist perceive anything, or think, or know itself? There has to be something there to do those things. Nothingness can not think, perceive, or know itself. If it did, it would no longer be nothing. If the vacuum of space could think, it would have 100% assurance, to itself, that it was a being that existed.
You're basing your claims off principles of logic that I've just said you cannot be certain of. Not only that, but notions such as "exists" "perceive" and "think" are far from simple concepts.
If you want to establish your point, you'd first have to convince me to be 100% certain of "not (P and not P)" and the like - which is something you can't do without infinite evidence.
Where Descartes went wrong is in assuming that he could be certain of the principles of logic and reason, despite the fact that the demon could just as easily have corrupted his very understanding of those concepts. He didn't take his skepticism far enough.
But this is highly unlikely. There are almost always trends, categories, and so on. This is why statistical analysis is useful. Finding 100 truly unique parameters is hard - more than likely, you need to dissect the parameters more to find their common denominator.
It is very very rare to arrive at consensus without some common criteria - even if we're not aware of them. We are not all the different from one another.
Of course, we could figure out an objective standard for the quality of these tools by which to measure them if you want, and then apply those rules recursively. :P
Oh god don't bring in the Wittgenstein! NOOOOO!
Instead of solipsism, you can just make the much simpler point that you can't justifiably be certain of anything, because you're running on flawed hardware. From there, you can pragmatically accept the principles of inductive reasoning and Occam's razor, and from there you can start dealing with the real world.
Isn't that not only simpler and more pragmatic, but also more accurate?
:P
The notion of "existence" is confusing and far from fundamental, and your claim depends quite a lot of simpler concepts. If you to convince me of that point, you first have to convince me to be 100% certain of, say, the law of non-contradiction.
In order to 100% convince me with a logical argument, you first have to 100% convince me of logic - 99.999999% isn't good enough. It's a basic issue of epistemology that is summed up by the Münchhausen Trilemma.
There. We're super-skeptics.