What do you mean by ‘subjective valuation concept’? Rationality is a ‘subjective valuation concept,’ in several senses; its metric is relativized to, established by, and finds much or all of its content in individual mental states, and it is an evaluative term whose applicability standards are likewise stipulated by a mixture of common language usage and personal preferences. What makes ‘X is rational’ more objective than ‘X sucks’?
Well, the answer is either:
a) Rationality is better defined, similar to how 2+2=4 is more objective
b) Rationality is not more objective than suckiness.
My gut says A, but I suspect that a random population survey would be evidence more towards B.
Now, if you’ve redefined Rationality in to a technical term, like it’s generally used here on LessWrong, AND you’re speaking in a context where your audience understands that you mean the technical term, no issue. Same as how “Bieber is crappy” communicates plenty to people who already know YOUR definition of crappy.
I would agree that the main problem is a lack of clear truth conditions for “x sucks;” the fact that it’s a claim about subjective states, and that it relies on implicature, is immaterial. But this is a problem to some extent for nearly all natural-language terms, including “x is rational” in the colloquial sense. And the problem can be resolved by stipulating truth-conditions for “x sucks” just as easily as for “x is rational.” So I think we’d agree that we should focus on getting people to taboo and clarify all their words, not just on feigning ‘objectivity’ by avoiding making any appeals to preferences or other mental states. Preferences are real.
What do you mean by ‘subjective valuation concept’? Rationality is a ‘subjective valuation concept,’ in several senses; its metric is relativized to, established by, and finds much or all of its content in individual mental states, and it is an evaluative term whose applicability standards are likewise stipulated by a mixture of common language usage and personal preferences. What makes ‘X is rational’ more objective than ‘X sucks’?
Well, the answer is either: a) Rationality is better defined, similar to how 2+2=4 is more objective b) Rationality is not more objective than suckiness.
My gut says A, but I suspect that a random population survey would be evidence more towards B.
Now, if you’ve redefined Rationality in to a technical term, like it’s generally used here on LessWrong, AND you’re speaking in a context where your audience understands that you mean the technical term, no issue. Same as how “Bieber is crappy” communicates plenty to people who already know YOUR definition of crappy.
I would agree that the main problem is a lack of clear truth conditions for “x sucks;” the fact that it’s a claim about subjective states, and that it relies on implicature, is immaterial. But this is a problem to some extent for nearly all natural-language terms, including “x is rational” in the colloquial sense. And the problem can be resolved by stipulating truth-conditions for “x sucks” just as easily as for “x is rational.” So I think we’d agree that we should focus on getting people to taboo and clarify all their words, not just on feigning ‘objectivity’ by avoiding making any appeals to preferences or other mental states. Preferences are real.
“a lack of clear truth conditions”
That is a very useful definition, thank you :)