There's one more kind of language that we need to discuss because it's also used to
stop the skeptical regress. Much like assuring and guarding and discounting.
This language is evaluative. Just imagine that a politician says, you ought to
support my health care plan because it would be good for the country. What is the
word good? Doing here. Now some philosophers are going to tell you that
the word good is just a way of expressing your emotions or maybe telling you what to
do. So the politician is saying, yeah for my healthcare plan or telling you in an
imperative form, you ought ta support my healthcare plan, but that can't really be
the whole story. Because when someone says, yay, Duke, like I do when I cheer
for the Duke team. First of all, I'm not saying that the team is good. I might
cheer for the Duke team even when I know they're not good. And secondly, you can't
ask me why, if I go yeah Duke. It doesn't make any sense if you turn to me and say
but why? Why yeah, Duke? It doesn't make any sense. So merely to express your
emotions with something like yeah, Duke is very different from saying Duke has a good
team and saying yeah, for my healthcare plan is very different from saying that
the healthcare plan is good for the country. Similarly, if I say I don't like
fish, so we shouldn't have fish for dinner. Well, I don't really owe you a
reason. I can just say, I just don't like the taste of fish,. end of story. Leave me
alone. I don't know your reason for why I don't like fish. I just don't but if I
say, it's immoral to eat fish. It's wrong to eat fish. You ought not to eat fish,
it's a very different story. Now I owe you a reason. If I say it's immoral to eat
fish, I need to say what's immoral about it? I need to point to some feature of
eating fish that makes it immoral. I can't just use that evaluative language without
some kind of reason to back it up. That would be illegitimate. So, what that shows
is that merely expressing preferences is very different from making an evaluation
and saying that somethi ng is good or bad or right or wrong, or immoral or moral.
And one way to capture this feature evaluative language is to interpret a word
like good as, meet the standards, and bad as, violates the standards. Notice it's
very vague, 'cause it doesn't tell you what the standards are. And those
standards will change from one context to another. If you're talking about a good
painting, the standards of a good painting are different from when you're talking
about, say, a good investment. Where the standards are going to be completely
different from the aesthetic case. So if we interpret good as, meets the standards,
and we say my healthcare program is good for the country, then that means it meets
the standards for what will make the country function, in a certain way.
Whereas, if we say eating fish is immoral, what we're saying is that eating fish
violates a certain kind of standard. And more specifically, it's a moral standard.
That's why we use the word immoral. So we can interpret this language in terms of
meat eater violating standards, and then to get the reason why it's good or bad or
right or wrong or moral or immoral. We can cite the standard and apply it to the case
in order to give a reason for why the evaluation holds. But now here's the
trick, when we call it good we don't say what the standards are. We leave that up
to the context to specify what kind of standards we're talking about. So, it's
kind of like assuring, when you say, I assure you, and you might cite some
authority or tell them that you do have some reason and you don't tell them what
the reason is. When you call it good, you say it does meet the standards, but you
don't say what the standards are. So by, alluding to the standards without actually
laying them out. You have made your claim a little more defensible. Because if you
laid out the standards, they might be questionable and your audience would know
exactly what to questions and what to deny, and how to object. But if you simply
say it's good, and all you're saying is, it meets the st andards.
Then you've avoided an objection, and made your premise more defensible. And that's
how this type of evaluative language might help to stave off the skeptical regress.
And here's another way evaluation can help. We don't always have to agree about
what the standards are. Suppose we're driving down the road and I say, you know,
we ought to turn left here. And you say, yeah, we ought to turn left here. Well, I
might think that we ought to turn left here because that's going to be a quicker
way to get to our destination. But you might think that we ought to turn left
here because that's going to be a more beautiful view, and you'll be able to look
out on the hills. But we can agree that we ought to turn left here. Because we both
agree that turning left meets the standards. Even though my standards are
efficiency, and getting there quickly and your standards are aesthetic, and getting
beautiful views. So if you can get more people to agree to your premises, simply
by saying, this health care plan will be good for the country, without saying
exactly how it's going to be good. Then you've avoided people disputing your
objections because they can agree to it, since they can use their own standards to
determine whether it's good or not. And that can be yet another way to avoid the
skeptical regress. Notice, that evaluation can occur at a lot of different levels. We
have some words that are very abstract like, good and bad, and ought and ought
not, should, should not, right, wrong. And those words can be used in a lot of
different contexts. You can have the wrong investment or a good investment or an
investment that you ought to make. But you can also drive on the right path, or a bad
path, or a way that you ought not to go. And so, you can have navigational
standards, and economic standards, but they can all be expressed by these really
general, and abstract, evaluative words like, good and bad, and right and wrong,
and ought and ought not, and should and should not, and so on. But other
evaluative words are m uch more specific. Now, for example you can call a painting
beautiful or ugly. But you don't call fertilizer beautiful or ugly. You would
never say that a stock is beautiful or ugly. They're just not the kind of thing
to be evaluated in that way. So an evaluative word like beautiful or ugly. Is
more specific. It only applies to a small range of things. Whereas other words
apply, like good and bad, apply to almost anything. Here's another example, cruel or
brave. A person can be cruel or brave. But you can't say that a painting is cruel or
brave or a desk is cruel or brave. Or a chair is cruel or brave. A chair might be
comfortable. But, a painting's not comfortable. And a soldier's not
comfortable. Soldiers are brave or not, chairs are comfortable or not. But chairs
are not brave or not, and soldiers are not comfortable or not. So these evaluative
words, like brave or cowardly, and beautiful or ugly, or comfortable or
uncomfortable apply only to limited ranges of things rather than to, just about
anything. So we have very general or abstract evaluative words. And we have
more specific or concrete evaluative words. And, of course, which ones are
specific or concrete will vary. Some are more concrete than others. It's not an
absolute dichotomy but some words that are evaluative really will apply to almost
anything and other words apply to a more limited class and they vary on how limited
that class of things that they apply to will be. So, you might ask, why are all
these words evaluative words? Well think about it, if you want to explain a more
limited evaluative word like beautiful, you want to explain what it means. You
need to. Defined it in terms of the more general words like good. If you wanna say
it's beautiful, that kinda means looks good. And no, that's not quite right, but
basically when you wanna define the word beautiful, you need to cite one of the
more general words, good, and then cite the specific way in which it's good,
namely the way it looks. And when you wanna say an economic word like bargain .
Bargain means a good price. It sells for a good price. And a good price is a low
price. So, when you define what a bargain is, you need to cite the word good in
order to define bargain. So the relation between these very general. Evaluative
words and the more specific evaluative words that makes them all evaluative is
that you need to define the specific evaluative words in terms of the more
general ones. So it all comes down to what makes something evaluative is it's
connection to what's good or bad, or right or wrong, or what ought or ought not to be
done, or should or shouldn't be done, and so on. Now the trickiest cases of
evaluative words are. Words that are contextually evaluative. They don't
actually get defined by good or bad or right or wrong, as their general meaning.
But they do suggest an evaluation in a particular context. Let me give you an
example of what I mean. A conservative politician might criticize her opponent by
saying. Well his policies are way too liberal. Now, by calling them liberal, is
that a criticism? Well, she intends it as a criticism. But, does the word liberal
mean that it's bad? Not really, if you think about it. Because the opponent might
say, I'm proud to be a liberal. Being liberal's good. Yes, it's liberal. So
what? Yes, it's liberal. Nothing wrong with that. The word liberal by itself
doesn't mean that it's bad. Even though the conservative thinks that things that
are liberal are bad. So that word liberal is not evaluative in the strict sense.
Because it doesn't get defined by the words good or bad, or right or wrong, or
should or should not. It's only evaluative in the context. It suggests an evaluation
because of the assumptions of the speaker. But it doesn't in and of itself mean that
anything is bad, or good for that matter. Because of this difference we will call
language evaluative only when it's openly and literally evaluative. So that it gets
defined in terms of words like good or bad, or right or wrong and not when it's
merely contextually evaluative. That is, i n the context, given the assumptions of
the speaker, this person means to be suggesting an evaluation. If they're not
openly saying this is good or bad or right or wrong then. They're not really using
what language that we will call evaluative. But there were a couple of
tricky examples that are worth bringing up. Okay? You might think that if you take
two good things and put ''em together it gets even better. And when you add a bad
thing to a good thing it makes it worse. At least that's the way it usually works.
But notice that when you say something's good that suggests it's good. But when you
say, eh, it's pretty good. Then you just added pretty, which is something good to
the word good. But, pretty good, it's not really any better than, good. It might
even be worse. But then you can add a negative word in the middle. Yeah. That
was pretty darn good. Well, that means it's very good. So, you've actually taken
a negative word, darn, and put it in the middle of two positive words, pretty and
good. And made something that means very good. So, you really have to think
carefully about exactly what the language means. It's not going to be a simple
formula of adding and subtracting goods and bads to figure out whether the
language is evaluative. Now, another word that's surprising is the word to. I like
spicy food so, when I say this food is spicy. That's good. Or at least it's
neutral. To say it's spicy to me means I'm probably going to like it. But notice that
if we just add that little word too, if I were to say this food is too spicy, that
means it's bad. The little word too takes a positive evaluation, or sometimes just
something that's neutral, and makes it bad. So the word too is actually a
negative evaluative word because it turns what was neutral or positive into
something bad. It moves it in that negative evaluative direction. So it's a
negative evaluative word. So is there anything wrong with using evaluative
language? No. Some people seem to think that you shouldn't evaluate at all, you
should just descri be. But, they're just kidding themselves. Try
going through life without deciding what's good or bad, or right or wrong, or what
you ought or ought not to do. You can't really live your life without making
evaluations at some point. So it's a mistake to think that evaluation is always
bad. Of course, when you do evaluate, it's not like saying yea Duke. You have to give
a reason. So you should think about the standards that you're applying and why
they apply to this case. That's going to be your reason for evaluating the thing as
good or bad. Now it's often going to be hard to come up with the exact standards
that you're applying. Because people tend to think of things as good or bad without
getting very specific about what the standards are. So you're not always going
to be able to tell people what your standards are. And when you ask them,
they're not always going to be able to specify what their standards are. But it's
still going to be a useful exercise, whenever you make an evaluation, to think
about why you think this thing is good or bad or right or wrong. What are the
standards that you're applying? And when somebody disagrees with you, to ask about
what their standards are, so that you can understand where the disagreement is
coming from. Although evaluation can be very useful and legitimate, it can also be
dangerous. Because some people use evaluative terms without reasons. Let's
call that slanting. You slant when you use an evaluative word and don't give any
justification for that use of the word. So you might call somebody an idiot or queer,
and you're using an evaluative word, or at least you take it to be negatively
evaluative. And you haven't given any reason why there's anything wrong with
what you're calling that nasty word. Now, that's slanting if you don't have any
reason. And that can be terribly illegitimate. When do people do it? Well,
they typically do it when they don't have any reason. If you don't have any reason
for your evaluation, you just use some nasty name, like you idiot. And, so when
people start using language like that, when they start slanting, then that's a
good indication to you as a critic that that's the point at which their argument
is probably weak. They're using that kind of language to paper over cracks, as I put
it before, in their argument so as to hide what's the real weakness. So we can use
evaluative language in arguments, and how it gets placed at certain points to signal
where the weaknesses and the strengths in the argument are. So now, what we've got
is, we've got argument markers, we've got assuring terms, guarding terms,
discounting terms, evaluative language. And in the next few lectures, we're going
to look at a general technique that looks at all those different types of language
and uses those different categories to analyze some real passages that we found
in newspapers. But before that, let's do a few exercises, just to make sure that you
understand evaluation.