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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

> in what sense is that assessment objective?

There's no easy way of answering that on this kind of medium (an Internet forum). I took two graduate seminars and wrote several papers on it :) But as a primer, I strongly suggest reading Hume's 'Of the standard of taste': http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Hume/hmMPL23.html

In that essay, he attempts to provide some clear-cut criteria for an objective judgment of art, food, and literature.

(Note that there ARE people that are relativists and they have a somewhat compelling argument. That's perfectly fine. I just don't buy it and I think they're wrong.)

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Instead of saying, "It's too complicated to explain", why don't you give it a shot?

Or simply give links to the papers?

I would submit that any attempt at "clear-cut criteria for an objective judgment of art, food, and literature" will be subject to the culture in which it is developed, and that when these criteria are transplanted into foreign cultures, they will or will not work to varying degrees.

You allude this this when you say "GRRM can't hold a candle to the profound impact Harper Lee has had on American culture as a whole". Obviously your own criteria includes how this work affected America. How objective can this be if it may be assessed entirely differently by a Chinese, Russian or African person, where it may have had little or no discernible influence on their culture?

Leaving that aside, the passages in comparison are actually saying different things. Regardless of who wrote them, 3minus1 should be free to prefer that slightly different definition of courage. The source is irrelevant.

Thanks for the recommendation! I will definitely read that. I've no formal education in this area, but have read Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding", and got quite a lot out of it.

It's a little absurd to compare a story with essentially 1 thesis and 1 antithesis, to a story full of theses and antitheses where the reader is constantly asking "Which thesis will prevail above which?" and ultimately, "Which thesis will prevail above all?" The authors are doing completely different things. The latter of which is objectively more difficult than the former, the latter of which is much more representative of the world in which we all live.

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