Fall_Child42 wrote:I never said subjectivity could not be influenced by measurable events, it most certainly has to be
ob·jec·tiv·i·ty (ŏb'jĕk-tĭv'ĭ-tē) n.
1. The state or quality of being objective.
2. External or material reality.
Well, I'm glad we both agree that there objective aspects to personal taste then.
Since as I imagine your life and my life would be fairly different with different associations with different sounds and noises we might actually understand a tone differently. This is where I feel the subjectivity lies.
I never said subjectivity didn't exist in the matter. I said that the subjectivity of personal taste is limited by and influenced by a wide range of objective external things.
You keep saying that just because a group of people like something, then it indicates there is some measurable force removed from personal interpretation that will allow people to rate the "goodness" of art. This would mean that it would be possible to make some form of art that will be better then all others, and that everyone MUST like it.
It is technically possible to roll a six sided dice six billion times and a 1 each roll. It's just the odds if it happening are so small that most just dismiss the idea as impossible. In the same way it is technically possible to make a piece of art that all six billion humans have exactly the same reaction to and same opinion as to if it's 'good' or 'bad'. Again, the odds of it happening are so small that you are dismissing the idea as impossible. Just because the extreme outlier is, realistically speaking, impossible does not mean that fundamental principle is wrong. Rolling dice is still random chance even though you will never roll six billion 1's in a row. Personal taste is still influenced and guided by objective standards even though you will never create an artwork all six billion humans alive will agree is 'good'.
I will not argue against the ability to manipulate feelings using forms of rhetoric, because it is clearly possible. However, though a speech may make two people sad, one person may like the speech and one may hate it for that very reason. The ranking of the speech as being "good" is subjective even though the reactions may be controlled by human instinct.
There's an entire field behind writing a speech that will be perceived as 'good'. There are psychological studies on how people react to speeches, focus groups to test and refine the speech, certain flairs of speech that are considered good by a large majority, and centuries of examples of speeches that more than a simple random sampling of people consider 'good' to comb through. As I said earlier, if taste was purely subjective you would expect opinions of goodness to be randomly scattered all over the place, the fact there are certain tricks to speech that most would consider good is indicating objectivity right there. Just because we can't slap a number on it and say 'Obama's speeches are +21.6 while Bush's were +3.97' doesn't mean the field doesn't involve objectivity.
Also note that you, and until now I, are confusing and equating two things that should be measured separately. Enjoyment and quality are two different things. AMVs have objective standards to them, are they synced well, are there orphan frames, was scene choice appropriate, etc. In general I do not like drama AMVs and I do like comedy and dance AMVs, which is my subjective enjoyment factor. Put those two facts together and you end up with there are many drama videos I acknowledge as quality pieces of work, 'good art' if you will, even though I personally did not enjoy them. Similarly there are dance videos I enjoy even as I fully well realize they have flaws like wrong AR, orphan frames, or other mistakes which means they do not have a high quality. So while my subjective tastes guide my enjoyment the matter of quality and if a video is 'good' is separate and can be judged off objective standards.
As well even though my taste are subjective, they are influenced by objective matters. For example the reason I do not generally like drama videos is that in my life I have enough stuff that makes me feel sad so I do not want or enjoy an AMV that makes me feel sad. If the external reality that makes me feel sad disappeared (for example, if you died) then my subjective tastes very well may shift to where I would get more enjoyment out of videos that make me sad. So as we can see even the subjectivity of personal enjoyment are also influenced by objective things, although in ways less obviously so than with quality.
