TBH, it doesn't feel right completely separating enjoyment from your score.

HyperL said:


That's assuming I even agree with half of this Block guy's assertions.

I agree that we need criterias in order to make a quality evaluation. Btw, I'm considering quality and value as different things here.

I disagree, however, on the notion that any of these criterias are de facto objective, or in other words, inherent in its value or status as a parameter of evaluation.

katsucats said:
Notice your use of the word "derived". One must ask derived from what? Models of physical observations, or personal opinion? Clearly, the former. That has been repeatedly stated to you that logic in itself does not make something objective. It has also been stated that logical derivation from physical facts are tautological, by definition. The word tautology means that they mean exactly the same thing. So that a logically derived theorem cannot be independent from observation. Furthermore, mathematical systems aren't even described by the scientific method. Science describes how logic can be verified.

I see that you conveniently deleted my following statement so let me restate this for posterity. Countable quantities are measurable by definition, and uncountable quantities are a function of countable quantities. That is, we can show a quantity is uncountable by proving that it is not countable.

This is a form of the affirming the consequent fallacy. Supposing that X has properties (a, b), it does not follow that Y, which has property (b), must also have property (a). I'll give an example in the same grammar:

"Bananas are yellow. (Bananas are also a fruit) If you agree then you must agree that fruits are yellow." -- the venerable @RogertheShrubber

This is clearly false.

Intuition that does not require any deliberate judgment, unless you mean to suggest that science is not objective, or that science that requires intuition is equivalent to the deliberate judgment involved in thinking about how much a person enjoys Monet or the Bible. In other words, either you are falsifying science with this line of reasoning, or you are trivializing it.

Incorrect, rigor refers to validity not soundness. I don't have to demonstrate that 1 actually refers to anything in mathematics to demonstrate rigor.

deg said:
can we all just agree that the word objective has both strict/formal and informal definitions

katsucats said:
I wouldn't mind that if this confusion is literally, in my opinion, destroying the quality of anime reviews. People strive to be "objective" in a mistaken sense that causes them to talk about "enjoyment" in cognitive dissonance. It also causes them to attempt to summarize authoritatively character, story, sound, audio, etc., when that is a very contrived format for a review. I have never seen a review from any other medium, nor people, that seem to think this is a good idea. No professional reviewer writes in this format. Countless anime discussions are polluted by people purporting to be objective, and also purporting that subjective analysis are worthless, when they are the only kind of analysis that's worth something.

Nobody reads a good that says "This happened. And then this happened. And that happened." and thinks it's well-written, except for anime fans reading reviews. Only when these fobs stop perverting language with this nonsense can people go back to actually discussing what they like about something particular with articulate language.

The silver lining, I guess, is that I can find people who aren't afraid of themselves regardless of what any fake physicist says.

katsucats said:
I fully understand that, but what you do not understand is that the rules for real numbers does not apply necessarily to any other system, and that there are different rules for different systems does not contradict anything such as the objectivity of the rules, which are by definition, within the respective systems.

What you can't understand is that the rules being arbitrary make them subjective as a model for reality without demonstrative evidence for their veracity (in which case they are no longer arbitrary), but objective within the logical system -- because logical systems are rules that follow statements presumed to be fact, or premises. The soundness of those premises are not relevant to the validity or rigor of the argument. However, that objectivity exists only within the system. Calling logic objective with respect to aesthetic analysis only makes sense on the premise that your foundational opinions are presumed -- but they are not by anyone reading the analysis, including its author, if he is honest. The aesthetic analysis, which includes the foundational opinions, must then be subjective.

Axioms are things which are self-evidently true according to the definition in the dictionary. You can pervert the term to apply to rules in the typical fashion of your semantic fallacies, but that wouldn't change the fact that the rules become true only within the context of the system, and not without.

deg said:


i do not read much reviews anyway since with the strict definition of objective then that means as you said earlier there should be like a scientific measurement for art like anime so the anime industry should be able to make more objectively enjoyable shows and sturgeons law will become obsolete

and even in hollywood this so called critics especially professional ones at times fail to measure the public enjoyment of a movie anyway, example is Venom that is heavily rated down by critics but actually enjoyed by the public

so ye this objectivity in reviews here on MAL for example are usually pseudo-objectivity or loose definition of it

Aastra343 said:


Yeah, the critics sometimes have a different perception of the "public" (I guess you mean majority in this case), because they have a different baggage (regarding theory, media exposure, media knowledge, personnal tastes, experiences) with which to experience a work. In fact, everyone does. When you say "professional critics", you're using a quite small sample size, but when you say "public", you generalize and don't look at the individual perceptions each person has about it. It's just critics share more similar baggage amongst themselves than with the "public".

katsucats said:
I wouldn't mind that if this confusion is literally, in my opinion, destroying the quality of anime reviews. People strive to be "objective" in a mistaken sense that causes them to talk about "enjoyment" in cognitive dissonance. It also causes them to attempt to summarize authoritatively character, story, sound, audio, etc., when that is a very contrived format for a review. I have never seen a review from any other medium, nor people, that seem to think this is a good idea. No professional reviewer writes in this format. Countless anime discussions are polluted by people purporting to be objective, and also purporting that subjective analysis are worthless, when they are the only kind of analysis that's worth something.

Nobody reads a good that says "This happened. And then this happened. And that happened." and thinks it's well-written, except for anime fans reading reviews. Only when these fobs stop perverting language with this nonsense can people go back to actually discussing what they like about something particular with articulate language.

The silver lining, I guess, is that I can find people who aren't afraid of themselves regardless of what any fake physicist says.

HyperL said:


In this case the so called loose definition fails to encapsulate true "hard" objectivity and allow for scenarios in which tecnically subjective concepts (by the standards of hard objectivity) are passed as hard objectives.

You can already observe the consequences of such equivoquence everywhere, including this site.

deg said:


i will add with those Academy Awards that usually give awards to like unknown movies most of the times that the public/majority does not care about, but ye recently they started giving awards to popular movies too

RogertheShrubber said:
"Notice your use of the word "derived". One must ask derived from what? Models of physical observations, or personal opinion?"

That is inconsequential, the theorem has no measurable justification, it rests exclusively on it's logical rigor. A implies B is still a logical argument even if A is empirically justified.

RogertheShrubber said:
"This is a form of the affirming the consequent fallacy. Supposing that X has properties (a, b), it does not follow that Y, which has property (b), must also have property (a). I'll give an example in the same grammar: "

I am telling you that the only quality mathematics has is that is is logically rigorous. It has no measurable justification, there is no experiment one can make which supports a mathematical theorem. They are built from each other exclusively through logic and are based fundamentally on axioms which are inspired through intuition. Nowhere in this system is there empirical evidence.

RogertheShrubber said:
"Furthermore, mathematical systems aren't even described by the scientific method. Science describes how logic can be verified."

I never said they were,

RogertheShrubber said:
There are many cases where theorems are derived mathematically (i.e through logic)

RogertheShrubber said:
my point is science is typically empirically justified whereas mathematics is never empirically justified however both are logically rigorous.

RogertheShrubber said:
"Intuition that does not require any deliberate judgment"

Why does this distinction matter? there could just as easily be an intuitive (i.e. non deliberate) judgment that a certain quality of art is valuable.

RogertheShrubber said:
"or that science that requires intuition is equivalent to the deliberate judgment involved in thinking about how much a person enjoys Monet or the Bible."

You would only say this if you havn't understood me. It is clearly not equivalent to the judgement of HOW MUCH a person enjoys monet or the bible but it is indeed equivalent to the judgement of FOR WHAT OBJECTIVE QUALITIES of those works would make them enjoyable to a person with identical value metrics.

RogertheShrubber said:
"Incorrect, rigor refers to validity not soundness. I don't have to demonstrate that 1 actually refers to anything in mathematics to demonstrate rigor."

I was operating under the assumption that rigor and soundness are synonymous, if they are not then simply replace everywhere I said "rigorous" with "both rigorous and sound".

RogertheShrubber said:
I am telling you that the only quality mathematics has is that is is logically rigorous. It has no measurable justification, there is no experiment one can make which supports a mathematical theorem. They are built from each other exclusively through logic and are based fundamentally on axioms which are inspired through intuition. Nowhere in this system is there empirical evidence.

deg said:


i do not read much reviews anyway since with the strict definition of objective then that means as you said earlier there should be like a scientific measurement for art like anime so the anime industry should be able to make more objectively enjoyable shows and sturgeons law will become obsolete

deg said:
and even in hollywood this so called critics especially professional ones at times fail to measure the public enjoyment of a movie anyway, example is Venom that is heavily rated down by critics but actually enjoyed by the public

deg said:
so ye this objectivity in reviews here on MAL for example are usually pseudo-objectivity or loose definition of it

RogertheShrubber said:


"I fully understand that, but what you do not understand is that the rules for real numbers does not apply necessarily to any other system, and that there are different rules for different systems does not contradict anything such as the objectivity of the rules, which are by definition, within the respective systems."

Yes I agree with this, the fact that they contradict does not preclude objectivity. In fact I have been making that point since the beginning.

RogertheShrubber said:
"What you can't understand is that the rules being arbitrary make them subjective as a model for reality without demonstrative evidence for their veracity (in which case they are no longer arbitrary), but objective within the logical system -- because logical systems are rules that follow statements presumed to be fact, or premises. The soundness of those premises are not relevant to the validity or rigor of the argument."

On what logic are we to assume the premise of an artistic review is arbitrary? I made it quite clear that is was necessary to justify this premise as to ensure it is constructive and self consistent.

RogertheShrubber said:
"Calling logic objective with respect to aesthetic analysis only makes sense on the premise that your foundational opinions are presumed However, that objectivity exists only within the system. Calling logic objective with respect to aesthetic analysis only makes sense on the premise that your foundational opinions are presumed -- but they are not by anyone reading the analysis, including its author, if he is honest. The aesthetic analysis, which includes the foundational opinions, must then be subjective."

And why can this premise not be presumed? There could just as easily be an artistic value metric which is informed by intuition as there are axioms which are informed by the same.

RogertheShrubber said:
"Axioms are things which are self-evidently true according to the definition in the dictionary. You can pervert the term to apply to rules in the typical fashion of your semantic fallacies, but that wouldn't change the fact that the rules become true only within the context of the system, and not without."

As you may remember there was another definition of Axiom, Axiom: a statement accepted as true as the basis for argument or inference. This is not necessarily self evident, it is merely something which is accepted as true. This also does not imply that it must be accepted by everyone but rather accepted only within the subset engaged with that particular axiomatic system.

RogertheShrubber said:
A good example of this would be philosophy, there are distinct philosophical schools of thought which are self consistent and logically rigorous, within these schools of thought there are premises which are accepted as true, these premises are therefore axiomatic.

Peaceful_Critic said:
@katsucats

"You seem to be confused as to the difference between proving something and being objective. Objectivity starts with an empirical premise (i.e. sensing, as opposed to perceiving). It involves no judgment. All character traits involve judgment. You can't see something and derive a trait without thinking about it. At the same time, "characters" do not exist in media, your mind constructs them through the combination of audio and visuals. For example, if audio sparsely correlates with the movement of a certain 'shape' of pixels, you might think that a "character is shy". However, this is several steps removed. Shyness itself involves interpretation. You might think a character is shy, but another person could have latched on to another aspect of the character, and called him boisterous. Another person could assert that it's not a character at all, but metaphorical representation of insecurity, and that the plot isn't actually happening. The discerning behind these 3 possibilities occur 100% in subjectivity -- defending them requires explaining how a person arrived at the conclusion with his line of thought. They all saw the same pixels, and describing the pixels amount to redundancy."

The objective starts and ends with the proof itself. You don't need to count the pixels in order to be objective in that case, that's an extreme form. What happens within that scene is objective in so far in what you were visually shown.

Peaceful_Critic said:
Now you can interpret and draw to different conclusions, but if they aren't supported by what's shown you reached a wrong conclusion.

Peaceful_Critic said:
Take saying a mute character is loud despite not talking in the show, you'll likely be wrong unless you show a scene where they make a lot of noise some other way. If there are no scenes like that, then the person would be wrong since nothing objective supports it.

Peaceful_Critic said:
"But not objective. None of what you are discerning can be scientifically measured. There is no definition of clumsiness that isn't culturally derived, and by relative comparison to the norm. I could say the character is an attention whore falling on purpose, and you'd have no decisive evidence to prove me wrong by any standard besides opinion."

Not everything objective is scientific, there are other forms. There is a definition on what counts as clumsy though, it may be a comparison type thing, but it is something that can be proven using the definition.

Peaceful_Critic said:
I could point to a scene where they were yelling and crying due to all the attention they were receiving. That would be decisive evidence that contradicts the claim.

Peaceful_Critic said:
"Subjectivity is not just what's good or bad, but also what's clumsy. What you need is a dictionary before you continue this conversation"

I wasn't defining subjectively. I just said to subjectively explain what is good or bad. I never told you what subjectively explain means. What you need to do is actually read what I said before you dismiss me.

Peaceful_Critic said:
Now I am able to apply it to the context and explain subjectively why it's good or bad, but I should still support the things I'm saying.

Peaceful_Critic said:
If I say a character is clumsy then I show you that they fall or trip all the time and I can show you several scenes to support that then I am objectively right.

Peaceful_Critic said:
"... subjective fact."

That's an oxymoron though if it's subjective than it isn't a fact something known or proven to be true.

katsucats said:
It is, despite what you've said before that you've now contradicted. A implies B might even be said to be objective, presuming A, if it is also valid. However, if A is expressly a subjective statement, then it is unreasonable to presume A. An analysis consists not only of the internal reasoning within the analysis, since that would mean there is no premise besides the conclusion.

That's true, pedantically so. It ignores the empirical intuition that inform the rules, whether you define the number line as cardinality of a set or by induction. Math, if defined as a logical system, does not regard the veracity of its premises; yet as we know, the numbers, the premises, mean something that corresponds to reality. So what's absolutely heinous on your part is treating math rigorously and informally when it is convenient. If rigorously, the truth value of the axioms are irrelevant. If informally, the truth value of the axioms is relevant. You cannot have it both ways. If it is irrelevant, why did you waste 2 pages arguing about axioms? If relevant, then what are you talking about here? I think this is just another way for you to score a superfluous "win".

But suppose formal math is just a logical system with arbitrary parameters, which it had been developed into post hoc. Even so, those arbitrary parameters are not the result of any deliberate judgment, insofar that the conclusions relate to the judgment. I'll give an example. In anime, if you say that a character doesn't talk a lot, therefore he is shy, the conclusion rests on the deliberate judgment of the character not talking a lot. However, asserting that someone is shy from the fact that he doesn't talk a lot is a stretch. Shyness implies something further beyond the inference. It gives new information, perhaps on the motivation. The rules of math does not because it is formally tautological.

Furthermore, while there is deliberate judgment in deciding the rules of math, applying the rules of math itself does not require a similar judgment. Applying whether a character is shy because he talks a lot always requires personal judgment, even after the judgment that characters who don't talk a lot must be shy has already been made.

You did, here


That clearly wasn't your point. Your point was that you wanted your cake and to also eat it. You wanted to assert science as being free from necessary empirical justification, while being free from the solipsist conclusion yourself.

There is not. That is why it matters. The intuition involved in math could be said to be inductive reasoning, classification, etc., all of which can be formally defined and consistently applied. That they began with intuition is not as important as the preciseness in which they could be reasoned.

There are no objective qualities that directly translate into enjoyment. Value metrics, whether quantified or existential, are subjective by nature. While indeed a Monet painting has objective qualities, it is not those objective qualities that a person feels. For example, a person does not usually describe paintings as blotches of blue above blotches of green, but in subjective terms of movement, warmth, and inspiration, etc. YOU, so far in any of your posts, certainly, have not objectively described any anime, only subjectively, so I wonder why you're so intent on selling a fantasy.

Bullshit. This is a direct contradiction with what you wrote earlier. I quote:

katsucats said:
There is no fact that they contradict since they do not contradict. Your point since the beginning was that football contradicts basketball, which is incidentally irrelevant to the conversation. They do not preclude objectivity because either:
1. They are an axiom, self-evidently based on intuition.
2. They do not require deliberate judgment to apply.

On no logic, but empirical evidence that people have different opinions.

There has not been any aesthetic metric that could be measured intersubjectively, nor that people could universally agree upon the same standard. Therefore, the premise of any aesthetic valuation cannot be presumed, because it is likely that no audience would precisely agree. What could logically occur here is a red herring. The fact is that it empirically has not. Perhaps, now's your chance to win your Nobel prize for finding the objective basis in opinions.

Thank you for reminding me; however, that is not the definition I am using to define an objective premise. Using this definition, I could say "I love the color blue" as a premise for an argument, which would not be an objective statement.

Axiomatic within those systems. Look, you can presume your own opinions are true all you like, but that doesn't mean the rest of us won't roll our eyes.

Pyro said:
It shouldn’t feel right because that’s such a faulty and ridiculous way of thinking. If you completely remove enjoyment from your rating, then that’s basically the same as removing your taste since the personal aspect of appeal is gone. Like you said, there’s no point after that. I, myself do incorporate enjoyment on a lesser degree, but it’s still there. It’s still a key factor. To completely remove it from your summation of judgement is just impractical.

I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who does that and if they are out there, they’re certainly an extreme minority.

Vice-versa rating solely by enjoyment and removing all critical view is ridiculous as well. There should always be a middle ground.

Luthandorius said:
I only score by enjoyment + maybe +-1 additional point when it feels technically better. But then again: This is subjective. Only things like fps are objective. And you probably wouldn't score by them.

The usual "technical" stuff which people try to score objectively are "animation" and stuff like that. Where less animated on purpose could still be good. (And not always more = better.) Also the anime itself is a composition of design, animation, sound (as in background noises) and music (the ost) and voice acting and directiong (story, pacing).

Hard (or stupid) to score these things individually when combined with each other they could give a totally different impression. (Lilke with the less animation on purpose where it is to create a unique style which could fit perfectly together with all the other stuff. This can only be interesting for "animation fetishits" which purely want to care about animation and need an score only for this seperately because they don't care of overall it is a good anime - as long as the animation is top notch and enough to satistfy them.)

TsukuyomiREKT said:



How is rating based on enjoyment ridiculous?