In a message dated 2/27/09 6:26:13 PM, [email protected] writes:
"I believe it is possible to speak of good and bad qualities in things, and these qualities are independent of the perceiver's/interpreter's set of standards for such things. The raw material that leads to "good" and "bad" predicates reside in the objects, not exclusively in our heads." I'm working on a somewhat defendible posting right now, but I'll interrupt myself to address what you say here, Michael, because it may help clarify what I'm working on. Your two sentences above claim that what you call "good and bad qualities" and "The raw material" BOTH in some way reside "in the objects". Do you think of them as two different entities? I can see claiming that "raw material" resides in objects, but I hear no justification for the existence of something you call "qualities". The "predicates" 'good' and 'bad' can be taken as solely the words, or as the notional feelings inside our heads. In either case they do not "reside in" the object. You may reply, "When you squeeze a rock, don't you encounter the quality of hardness?" No. My fingers encounter only rock. My fingers then send certain nerve impulses that eventuate as sensation in my brain. I notice the rock does not crumble when I squeeze. "That thing is hard!" I cry. But the big strong guy next to me crushes the thing to crumbs. "That wasn't hard," he says. "In fact it was only dried mud." Can you see that "hard" or "soft" is not a "quality" of the thing we squeezed, but only a word we summon up to describe our experience caused by our encounter with the "raw material"? Similarly "goodness" or "badness" is never in an external object. Only "raw material" is. ************** You're invited to Hollywood's biggest party: Get Oscars updates, red carpet pics and more at Moviefone. (http://movies.aol.com/oscars-academy-awards?ncid=emlcntusmovi00000001)
