From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Jan 18 2004 - 20:40:19 GMT
Hi All:
Are you the ultimate judge of quality? If you say a painting of Elvis on
velvet has higher quality for you than a self-portrait by Rembrandt, shall
we take your judgment to be just as valid as someone who has spent a
lifetime studying painting?
In one sense, the answer must be yes. Matters of personal taste are
unarguable. But, there is an important distinction between personal taste
and educated opinion. The former is purely subjective while the latter
possesses an objective element, independent of personal biases.
In his new book, "Human Accomplishment-The Pursuit of Excellence in the
Arts and Sciences," Charles Murray draws upon a essay by David Hume (1757)
who distinguished between two aspects of taste, sentiment and judgment.
"All sentiment is right," Hume writes, because "no sentiment represents
what is really in the object." Sentiment is a matter of perception. When
it comes to sentiment we may not argue with the admirer. But judgment is a
different matter, Hume says. Judgment refers to the attempt to make true
statements about the object being contemplated.
What is meant by "true statements?." According to Murray, ". . . the
criteria for choice are rootedness in human experience, seriousness of
purpose, and intellectual depth." Compare to Pirsig's tests of truth,
"logical consistency, agreement with experience, and economy of
explanation."
For both Murray and Pirsig, there's more to judgment than one person's
idea of quality is as good as another's. If your opinion isn't thought
out, cannot be backed up by experience in the field, and lacks the
possibility of influencing or persuading another, then chances are you're
expressing a personal opinion with little objective quality.
Objective quality? Can any opinion, even those of experts, by free of
personal biases? Hardly. But, the Murray thesis is that personal biases
can be effectively discounted by a consensus that emerges across experts
across time. Statistical distributions take care of individual sentiment.
The combined evaluations of cognoscenti can provide a useful numerical
measure of high aesthetic Quality.
So the answer to "Who are you to judge?" may be "Seek and ye shall find."
More to come as I delve further into Murray's book.
Platt
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