David Schwartz wrote:
> "Jonathan Ball" <jonball@whitehouse.not> wrote in message
> news:WcFUa.121256$Io.10338990@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
> 
> 
>>What are your criteria for thinking it's "good for you"?
> 
> 
>>>A person is incapable of
>>>error when it comes to estimating how much something will or won't
> 
> benefit
> 
>>>them?
> 
> 
>>Did I say that people are incapable of error?  How does
>>that change anything?
> 
> 
>     Because if people are capable of error about values, then there must be
> some objective standard with respect to which they can be in error. If a
> person could be "wrong" about how artistic a painting was, that would mean
> that how artistic a painting is must be something other than how artistic he
> thinks it is.

If someone is in error regading their valuation they do not
need some objective standard; they are their own standard. The
only reason you would need some objective standard would
be if one person were to be performing the evaluation of both
value and the error for someone else. Without the objective
standard the result would be the impossition of one person's
will upon another. Unfortunately there is no objective
standar for value.

The porblem with your art expample is that both the artist
and the other evaluator could be in total disagreement and
yet both be right. The artist is right for his criteria and
the critic right for his. Neither of those necessarily mean
anything about the value of the art to whoever might see
or buy it.


> 
>>>And what's your definition of 'subjective' anyway?
>>
>>I think you know what "subjective" means.
> 
> 
>     I don't know how you're using it, honestly.

It means that it's a personal evaluation based on
the internal preference ordering of an individual
mind. Favorite color, favorite flavor of ice cream,
favorite artist. There isn't any objective standard
that aplies to everyone but rather each makes their
own evaluation based on whatever criteria they want.

At least I assume that's his definition.

jmh