If you express an opinion, you're essentially expressing a proposition. So long as the language used is utterly water-tight, then it seems any proposition can be empirically quantifiable.

For instance, let's take the most subjective instance I can think of: "I think chocolate cake is best", where best = providing the most pleasurable stimulus. Immediately you can set up a neurocognitive experiment to determine if chocolate cake is indeed best for the individual in question. It's unlikely that the person in question is wrong about the cake that provides them with the most pleasure, but certainly not impossible.

Indeed, it's entirely possible that you could perform a global population-wide experiment to determine which kind of cake is objectively the "best" on net.

No. Literally anything can be subjective.

Not really.

If you think physics is subjective then you don't understand physics.

Quote from: TBlocks on July 07, 2015, 09:29:44 PM

No. Literally anything can be subjective.

Not really.

If you think physics is subjective then you don't understand physics.

Either that or you're a filthy, rotten, good for nothing Feyerabend-ite.

Mostly objective.

It's objectively wrong to think stabbing you in the face is morally right.

I feel like this is an elaborate "the cake is a lie" troll, but I'll bite. You're talking about subjective facts, right?

Well sure. It really winds me up when people think objective = mind independent.

The only facts to be gleaned from your cake example are that 1) the subject truly believes chocolate cake is best for them (subjective fact); and 2) either they are right or there are other foods they hadn't considered or haven't tried that they'd enjoy more, as could be discovered via brain scan (objective fact).

Neither is more factual than the other, despite one being subjective and the other objective.

Now if you wanted to conduct a global cake survey to find the objectively best cake, you'd need to give people samples of every flavor of cake ever made before polling. The verdict would also depend on whether you are taking a hedonistic utilitarian or a negative utilitarian approach, and whether pleasure and pain can be measured against each other on a linear scale (which I don't think they can be). With these in mind, the objectively best cake may not be the cake that the most liked, but the one that is the least disliked.

Opinions are facts because there is only one kind of possible proof, and that is first-person evidence. If I say "I think peanut butter is better than caramel", the only evidence available to support or deny the claim is my own proposition.

this is something we got into when i was arguing with tblocks

of course, "i think" statements are obviously always facts--it's a fact that you think something

however, whether or not peanut butter is empirically "better" than caramel by an objective standard of taste, however, is where the subjective part comes in--and i think that's what meta's asking

can peanut butter be objectively proven to be tastier than caramel (or vice-versa)?

Much of this comes down to conditioning. If I could contrive a scenario, perhaps the reason one might prefer peanut butter to caramel is because they joked on a piece of caramel as an infant, and that psychological experience caused you to think less of caramel in the future (subconsciously).

Obviously, not all of these conditionings will be so drastic or cartoonish or overt like that. But my basic point is, none of us are born with these proclivities--that would be the basic argument I'm making. Maybe it's simply as subtle as, you had two or three more pieces of some peanut butter treat as a kid than you've had of caramel, and as a result, you prefer peanut butter. Maybe you associate peanut butter with pleasant times you've had as a kid, or with another person. All of it matters. You aren't born a "peanut butter lover".

The same could be said of anything, really. If you like a certain kind of video game, you were most certainly conditioned to like it. Maybe someone who doesn't like violent video games only dislikes them because they associate any type of violence with negativity--perhaps because they had a bad accident as a child that involved pain or blood or something. I don't know.

I'm just not really willing to believe that some people like things for no discernible reason. We might not be able to provide the answers for why we like everything we like, but I don't think that's incredibly important. As for the objectivity of these opinions, I can't really say there's anything objective about it.

However, you CAN be conditioned in bad ways. For example, maybe the reason someone is a scat fetishist is because they were dropped on their head thirty times as a kid. That would be negative conditioning, and that would probably represent a bad reason to like something, and, consequently, a "bad" or "wrong" opinion.

For a less extreme example, take video games. Maybe the reason someone likes beat-em-up games is because they were bullied as a kid, and these kinds of games allow them to virtually "get back" at the bully. The conditioning that led this person to like this type of game is a negative experience, or a negative conditioning. While innocuous, it could also be argued that his reason for liking the game is wrong (if you believe that "revenge" is generally a bad thing, which I do).

i hope what i'm trying to say is at all clear

Much of this comes down to conditioning. If I could contrive a scenario, perhaps the reason one might prefer peanut butter to caramel is because they joked on a piece of caramel as an infant, and that psychological experience caused you to think less of caramel in the future (subconsciously).

Obviously, not all of these conditionings will be so drastic or cartoonish or overt like that. But my basic point is, none of us are born with these proclivities--that would be the basic argument I'm making. Maybe it's simply as subtle as, you had two or three more pieces of some peanut butter treat as a kid than you've had of caramel, and as a result, you prefer peanut butter. Maybe you associate peanut butter with pleasant times you've had as a kid, or with another person. All of it matters. You aren't born a "peanut butter lover".

The same could be said of anything, really. If you like a certain kind of video game, you were most certainly conditioned to like it. Maybe someone who doesn't like violent video games only dislikes them because they associate any type of violence with negativity--perhaps because they had a bad accident as a child that involved pain or blood or something. I don't know.

I'm just not really willing to believe that some people like things for no discernible reason. We might not be able to provide the answers for why we like everything we like, but I don't think that's incredibly important. As for the objectivity of these opinions, I can't really say there's anything objective about it.

However, you CAN be conditioned in bad ways. For example, maybe the reason someone is a scat fetishist is because they were dropped on their head thirty times as a kid. That would be negative conditioning, and that would probably represent a bad reason to like something, and, consequently, a "bad" or "wrong" opinion.

For a less extreme example, take video games. Maybe the reason someone likes beat-em-up games is because they were bullied as a kid, and these kinds of games allow them to virtually "get back" at the bully. The conditioning that led this person to like this type of game is a negative experience, or a negative conditioning. While innocuous, it could also be argued that his reason for liking the game is wrong (if you believe that "revenge" is generally a bad thing, which I do).

i hope what i'm trying to say is at all clear

Ay I gave you practice!

Indeed, it's entirely possible that you could perform a global population-wide experiment to determine which kind of cake is objectively the "best" on net.

not really though

i don't need to tell you that "more people think x" =/= "x is the best way to think"

if anything, it would just show that, statistically, the average person would be most likely to enjoy x type of cake
some cakes would have a greater probability of being enjoyed, but nothing is absolute

hmm

fair enough, if that's his argument

Blurring the line between opinionated statements like "chocolate cake is best" and tangible propositions such as such as "chocolate cake, for the most part, suits the purpose of providing more pleasure for most people better" removes the significance of the word opinion.

Goalpost moving at best.

Quote from: eggsalad on July 08, 2015, 09:21:21 AM

Blurring the line between opinionated statements like "chocolate cake is best" and tangible propositions such as such as "chocolate cake, for the most part, suits the purpose of providing more pleasure for most people better" removes the significance of the word opinion.

At that point, you have to question the significance of opinions in the first place.

But the point I'm making is that there is no fundamental, epistemological difference between an opinion and a truth-apt proposition.

"Chocolate cake is best" is an opinion because it makes no attempt at establishing the context of what "best" means and thus can be answered truthfully by different viewers of the question because they hold differing values. When it is established that the goal of cake is to be tasty to humans, something can actually be determined.

Quote from: eggsalad on July 08, 2015, 09:32:04 AM

"Chocolate cake is best" is an opinion because it makes no attempt at establishing the context of what "best" means and thus can be answered truthfully by different viewers of the question because they hold differing values.

Well, no.

If you haven't established the definitions of the words in your claim, it can't be answered properly at all.

I guess I thought that's what distinguished opinions from actual proposals.