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Plasmon comments on On Empirical Truth and Affective Truth - Less Wrong
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Comments (23)
No. "This painting is round" is a statement about the properties of the painting itself, independent of any observer. "This painting is beautiful" is a statement about the reaction of the speaker's brain upon seeing the painting. The syntactical similarity between those different kinds of statements in English (and all other natural languages that I know of) is unfortunate to say the least.
I was trying to get at the unnecessary turn into neuroscience.
Why bring the brain into it? Why not say that "This painting is beautiful" is a statement about the reaction of the speaker? Or, paralleling Good_Burning_Plastic, a statement about the reaction of people generally (at least those raised in etc.)?
No particular reason.
That is what I mean, yes.
Whether we define beauty to be the reaction of the speaker, or the reaction of the majority of a certain group of people that are similar to the speaker, is not relevant: in both cases "This painting is beautiful" becomes an empirical truth instead of an "affective" truth.
Well, not only the speaker, otherwise it'd be completely equivalent to "I like this painting" which it isn't. It is a claim about ambijective features of the painting -- more or less "this painting has certain features such that brains (at least those raised in cultural contexts similar to us) typically produce pleasant reactions".
As I understand it, "This painting is beautiful" is completely equivalent to "I like (the visual aspects of) this painting".
Definitional arguments are not useful. Even using your interpretation, the point stands: the statement, properly understood, is empirical truth.