I don’t know how much to trust the Wikipedia article, but logical positivism, in its strong forms, is meaningless. That is, it is based on a proposition that by its own criteria, is not verifiable. However, what is truly valuable—because I say so! -- is developing a recognition of what is verifiable and what is not. To go further and claim that unverifiable statements are therefore meaningless is to go too far.
A writer here wrote, about the statement “[JB] sucks.” And another commented, what if “JB’s music is objectively crappy music??” After this was tagged as not a rational statement, he changed the text to read “That JB’s music is crappy music according to some standard.”
It gets preposterous. Yes, the writer was correct. If there is a standard, which can be objectively applied, for “crappy music,” then one could make a claim that the music is “objectively crappy by the standard.”
But that standard itself, is it objective? How was it determined? Suppose we take a survey of his target audience, choosing 100 children in a certain age range. If the survey has a scale of 1-10, with names for each choice, with, say, 1-2 being labelled “crappy,” and we play them a song, and ask for their response, and a majority of them rate it as “crappy,” that would allow us to claim a certain kind of objective measurement (of a subjective response).
But this is not what we ordinarily mean when we say something is “crappy.” I would mean
(1) I don’t like it.
(2) We don’t like it. (I.e., me and some undefined group, maybe my friends).
(3) It doesn’t work, it’s buggy, ugly, etc.
But the expression is not objective, it doesn’t point to objective measures or standards. If we had something objective to report, we wouldn’t say it that way, except perhaps as a summary or lead-in.
Language is fluid, ordinary human speech is not mathematics. I’ll put it this way: it’s always wrong and it’s always right. That is, it is always possible to interpret it to find flaws, and always possible to find something that works.
I don’t want to say “is true,” because that would enter a completely different territory of discussion. Right now, we are talking about types of statements, and it’s a valuable inquiry.
I don’t know how much to trust the Wikipedia article, but logical positivism, in its strong forms, is meaningless. That is, it is based on a proposition that by its own criteria, is not verifiable. However, what is truly valuable—because I say so! -- is developing a recognition of what is verifiable and what is not. To go further and claim that unverifiable statements are therefore meaningless is to go too far.
A writer here wrote, about the statement “[JB] sucks.” And another commented, what if “JB’s music is objectively crappy music??” After this was tagged as not a rational statement, he changed the text to read “That JB’s music is crappy music according to some standard.”
It gets preposterous. Yes, the writer was correct. If there is a standard, which can be objectively applied, for “crappy music,” then one could make a claim that the music is “objectively crappy by the standard.”
But that standard itself, is it objective? How was it determined? Suppose we take a survey of his target audience, choosing 100 children in a certain age range. If the survey has a scale of 1-10, with names for each choice, with, say, 1-2 being labelled “crappy,” and we play them a song, and ask for their response, and a majority of them rate it as “crappy,” that would allow us to claim a certain kind of objective measurement (of a subjective response).
But this is not what we ordinarily mean when we say something is “crappy.” I would mean
(1) I don’t like it.
(2) We don’t like it. (I.e., me and some undefined group, maybe my friends).
(3) It doesn’t work, it’s buggy, ugly, etc.
But the expression is not objective, it doesn’t point to objective measures or standards. If we had something objective to report, we wouldn’t say it that way, except perhaps as a summary or lead-in.
Language is fluid, ordinary human speech is not mathematics. I’ll put it this way: it’s always wrong and it’s always right. That is, it is always possible to interpret it to find flaws, and always possible to find something that works.
I don’t want to say “is true,” because that would enter a completely different territory of discussion. Right now, we are talking about types of statements, and it’s a valuable inquiry.