Who Defines Good Or Bad?

[Rad3n]

Imagine a horrible song that everyone loves. Is it still a bad song if 99% of the world think it's great? Is it a good song if 49% of the world think it's great? If it's an awesome song and only 5 people like it in the entire world, is it a bad song?

I know that a lot of these threads come down to people's personal definitions. Who decides what's good or bad? Is it the general consensus or is it something else. I'm selfish in this way. I don't care if the whole world loves it, if I see it as a bad song ( for whatever reason ), it therefore is a bad song. ( Not to say I don't usually confer with others at some point ).

Here's something to stimulate your thinking; A long time ago everyone thought the world was flat. Only those who'd seen the world and knew it to be round believed it to be round.

If only a select few have seen what great music is, are they right to say what's good and what's bad? (this isn't to say I think my taste in music is ultimate)

Who defines what's good or bad music? Good or bad anything for that matter?

[Squeek]

There's a problem with your argument in that you're saying "a horrible song that everyone loves".

Who decided it was horrible?

You know who? You. You decide what pleases your senses and what displeases your senses. It's really easy.

And your example with flat/round Earth: that wasn't an opinion. That was fact. There's no fact involved in what people think of songs or movies or anything like that. A good way to think about this: if it's measurable or provable, it's a fact. If it's not, it's an opinion.

You can take a shuttle outside of Earth yourself and confirm that it's not flat. You can take measurements of the sun's movement over time using the shadows cast down a well to confirm it too.

[Sullyman2007]

I always believed the concept of good and bad to be, you say it better that me, the -general concensus- of the given example; example being, whatever it may be that you are trying to define as good or bad. If 99% of the worlds population thinks one specific type of music is bad, then it would make sense to think that the given type of music in question is indeed -bad-.

[Squeek]

The general consensus does not have the authority to tag on form of music good or bad. It's your own opinion.

Everyone I've asked says country music sucks. Therefore, country music sucks. That's what you're saying, right?

Just because I don't live in the South and only ask people whose musical tastes I already know has nothing to do with it, after all. It's the general consensus!

[Mr.Nothing]

Defining something as generally 'good' or 'bad' is impossible. Nothing can be absolutely terrible to every single person in the entire world. It is your opinion, and nothing/no one can decide what is good or bad to you, but you.

[Sullyman2007]

If I were to ask every single person I know wether or not they like country music, and ask for a yes or no answer, and every single person said no, then yes, it would make me think that country music was probably really bad since no one likes it. Of course that doesn't stop me from going and making my own opinion though.

I was merely stating that if 99% of the worlds population doesn't like a particular type of music, then it is reasonable to say that you probably won't like it either.

[Skelerex]

Imagine a horrible song that everyone loves.

I cannot imagine such a thing because I cannot think of anything in this world that everyone loves, good or bad. Plus, if everyone loved it, then how could it possibly be horrible? Music isn't something inherently good or bad. Even if everyone in the world liked polluting, polluting would still be bad. But if there was a single song that everybody liked, then I can't see any reason it would be considered a horrible song.

Is it still a bad song if 99% of the world think it's great?

It was never ultimately a bad song to begin with. It was just a song, and people formed opinions about it. If 99% of the people in the world think a song is bad, then it's great to the other 1%.

Who decides what's good or bad?

The individual. But no individual can decide for another.

[devonin]

Imagine a horrible song that everyone loves.

I'd suggest in fact that your statement here is inherantly contradictory. Since the music industry tends to gauge the success or failure of a musical act by how popular it is, if everyone loves it, it can't be horrible, and if nobody likes it, it can't be great.

The basic logical criticism to give you is "You need to define your terms" because as has been mentioned more than once in this thread, you're whinging your way merrily down subjectivity slope.

What I suspect you're trying to get at is a question more along the lines of "If a song demonstrates technical facility with music, as in, a skilled musician performed it and did so skillfully, but people don't enjoy listening to it, was it bad?" and conversely, "If a song demonstrates that the creator has very little facility as a musician, but people enjoy listening to it, is it bad?"

The answer to both of those questions is "Depends what you mean by good/bad"

If you define 'good music' as "Music which demonstrates objective skill and knowledge of the fundamentals of performance" then a skillful song that isn't popular is still good music, and a poorly performed but popular song is still bad music, but if you define 'good music' as "Music which entertains a large number of people, who derive enjoyment from listening to it" then the reverse is true.

This doesn't even necessarily come down to an issue of "subjectivity vs objectivity" so much as a "X is true for certain values of X" If you'd set out a clear set of criteria for what you consider to be good or bad (Though bear in mind that -you- are setting out the criteria subjectively) you can still decide objectively the degree to which something applies to those criteria.

[NFD]

If you think about it from the view of the government, the president, and everybody under that basically. If you think about it from a point of view about something so unimportant as music, it's always going to be you, or an adult figure in your life that decides things for you because they feel that you aren't competent enough to make your own decisions.

[MystictheHedgehog]

It's all about opinion here. Take the song "I kissed a Girl" the has recently become very popular. Personally, I think it's a terrible song, and I don't enjoy it. That would be my opinion. Just because many people like it doesn't determine if it is a good song or not. It comes down to what YOU think. You can set the criteria for what you consider bad or good, like dev said, but then again that comes down to your opinion of what makes a good or bad song.

[Cursebred]

People might actually love a horrible song because, well, they don't see it is horrible. Using the word "horrible" is from your own thoughts. There is not really much that could come to a 99 to 1 scenario, just to throw that out there...

[awein999]

it's all in the eye of the beholder.

Let's say in another universe high pitched wailing is what most people enjoy hearing, but a select few don't like it. Does this mean high pitched wailing is good music?

[Verruckter]

Some people will say that the sense of beauty is innate. Show a monstrous face to a baby, it'll cry. Others say, you can learn it. If the first things a baby sees is the faces of the same monstrous beings, maybe it'll get used to that and be scared of actual humans (not sure if this experiment has been tried).

All in all, what defines good or bad is yourself. But there are certain limitations to this.

For example, some people consider that good music is original, unique and doesn't follow a predetermined pattern. Their ear will still enijoy the catchy pop music, but in their consciousness they will be able to say in all honesty that they don't actually like the music, because they prefer something more complex or simply different. In this way, everyone can enjoy the music, but not everyone will appreciate it the same way.

Good or bad is just a "rank" you give to anything you use your judgement to appreciate. It's relative. The reason why you're wondering "who set the standards" is because a catchy song will please all ears, but as I've said before, not everyone will appreciate. In the same way, not everyone will actually try to define themselves their tastes and will just like what's catchy and easily listenable.

[UserNameGoesHere]

Pairing good/bad is the same thing as advantageous/disadvantageous.

Is something ultimately advantageous? Then it is good.
Is it ultimately disadvantageous? Then it is bad.

The ability of each person or group to determine degree of value, with better value given to the more advantageous things, is the ability to distinguish between what is good and what is bad. The better one is at such approximations, the better one is at such determinations.

As to who defines good/bad depends on if there are absolute values for them. If there are, and I believe this to be the case, then there will be absolute correct answers for the good/badness of anything though it may be incalculable for humans. If there aren't, there is no absolute objective measure for it, which makes the question itself less important.

There is also a subtle difference between good vs. bad and good vs. evil.

[tsugomaru]

Music is a pattern. When people listen to new songs, they tend to really hate it because they don't understand the pattern. Our mind will do one of two things, either reject it or try to solve the pattern. If we reject it, we say that we hate the song. If we chose to solve the pattern and we do, we end up liking it for a while and then getting bored of it after some time. If we don't get the pattern after listening to the song a repeated number of times, we just don't like it.

You decide whether or not you like the song. Ultimately, that is your decision. You can trick yourself into believing that other people have influences on your taste in music, which is true. You could be listening to a song you really like and then share it with your friend, who hates it. If you start hating it because he hated it, although he influenced your decision, you still made that decision to hate the song.

No matter how many ways you look at it, society will always have some kind of influence on you, whether or not you like it. The society will have an opinion, but it's up to you to chose whether or not you want to share it.

~Tsugomaru

[Zythus]

Subjectivism and Empiricism is your friend.

[Flaming_Dingleberry]

Here's something to stimulate your thinking; A long time ago everyone thought the world was flat. Only those who'd seen the world and knew it to be round believed it to be round.

If only a select few have seen what great music is, are they right to say what's good and what's bad? (this isn't to say I think my taste in music is ultimate)

The world is a lot bigger and a lot more difficult to understand than music. Every song has someone who doesn't like it, I think a songs quality depends on the ratio between how many like it and dislike it. Since we are the ones who create opinions, we should be the ones who decide what the general opinion should be, and since that's impossible to keep track of, it's not important.

[GamerShadow]

"Good and Bad" Is completely based upon one thing, perspective. What one individual thinks is rotten, awful, and terrible could be worshipped by another. (This should remind you of the saying which goes "One man's trash is another man's treasure.)

This can also be applied to good vs evil. There is no good, and there is no evil. They are merely two perspectives which oppose one another.

Take for example a young child and their parents. If the parents create tons of rules which restricts the child's behavior, they might go off and say that their parents are "evil." However, the parents believe that what they are doing for their child is "good", as it promotes more rigid behavior and thus, you have two conflicting views.

The same thing applies to the innumerable fantasy tales where the great "villian" is attempting to conquer the world for their own gain, and the others are trying to stop them. The "villian" sees what they are doing as "good" (at least, for themselves), while everybody else dislikes the "villian's" actions, thus they claim that they are "evil."

Edit: To actually answer the thread question, it is the individual which decides for themselves only what is "good or bad". Other individuals decide for themselves as well.

[Frozen Beat]

But some parents will beat their child and call it "discipline" from simple things such as grades while their child is in first grade, or maybe they didn't do their homework fast enough.

Trust me it happens.

[Zythus]

Trust me it happens.
From the parents' perspective, it is intrinsically beneficial regardless of age or whatever attribute you happen to empathize with.

Seeing the redundancy of this thread, I wish to add a more realistic boundary to the subjectiveness we debate in circles.

a horrible song that everyone loves.

There are two parts to this statement. "A horrible song" is the conception you, the individual, ascribe to the song because of the elements that do not fit your particular taste. Despite your preference as the lone individual, the majority of the audience constitutes a rating of a positive preference for the exact same song;"that everyone loves" . You can argue the song is tasteless due to your empirical preference, but it is also substantially valid that the song is a good song to have enticed the larger majority of the audience. This can be said to be an objective evaluation of good and bad, based on consensus and statistics. Your subjective perspective may apply and prevail to yourself, but majority's perspective is equally moving.


Is something ultimately advantageous? Then it is good.
Is it ultimately disadvantageous? Then it is bad.

As to who defines good/bad depends on if there are absolute values for them. If there are, and I believe this to be the case, then there will be absolute correct answers for the good/badness of anything though it may be incalculable for humans. If there aren't, there is no absolute objective measure for it, which makes the question itself less important.

Consequentialism is one way to subjectively distinct between "good" and "bad".
However, I don't see why it would be less important just because there is no "objective measure". If that was the case, I can say that morality does not matter because priorities may be different.

[Verruckter]

Subjectivism and Objectivism is your friend.

Fixed.

Empirism has nothing to do with good or bad.

[Zythus]

Fixed.

Empirism has nothing to do with good or bad.

No.
To be empirical is a common perquisite to be subjective. You feel and experience to conclude your perspective.
On the other hand, objectivism is irrelevant. There would not be a contradistinction between Good and Bad if an objectiveness existed. There is only perspective when there is choice and duality that provide many avenues. To be objective is to be subjected to only one avenue.

Please don't edit posts again, especially in Critical Thinking. There are rarely any "wrong" answers that need to be "fixed" provided that there is a appropriate and distinct justification for your post.

[Verruckter]

No.
To be empirical is a common perquisite to be subjective. You feel and experience to conclude your perspective.
On the other hand, objectivism is irrelevant. There would not be a contradistinction between Good and Bad if an objectiveness existed. There is only perspective when there is choice and duality that provide many avenues. To be objective is to be subjected to only one avenue.

Please don't edit posts again, especially in Critical Thinking. There are rarely any "wrong" answers that need to be "fixed" provided that there is a appropriate and distinct justification for your post.

Sorry for poking your ego.

As you said it yourself, emprisim is implied into subjectivism.

[chained_to_a_pipe]

Each individual has their own belief of what's "good" or "bad." I personally believe there's no such thing as a universal good or bad. It all depends on each person's beliefs.

[tsugomaru]

It really depends on the scope of things. If you are looking at the entire universe, there is no good and bad. If you look down to a scale of one person, there will be a good and bad in his universe. If you look at an entire population, there can be a "universal" good and bad. Although I may not have thought so a year ago, there are some universal feelings shared by all human beings, one of which is killing and murder. The human population as a whole has agreed that killing and murder is bad and a lot of people believe it is so. After all, who likes it whenever they see a loved one being killed?

~Tsugomaru

[chained_to_a_pipe]

That is a good point, but while most people see murder as bad, do all murderers think so? No. Many of them enjoy it and feel no remorse. Some see nothing wrong with what they've done. Therefore, it isn't necessarily a universal belief.

[tsugomaru]

A "universal" good and bad will never be a belief shared by everyone. The point is, a large group such as the entire world can agree on one thing in general. Before each civilization met each other, it was probably already established that murder and death were bad things and these groups came to that conclusion by themselves. The British didn't have to teach the Native Americans that murder was a bad thing. If these individuals and groups can come to the same conclusions by themselves without the influence of the rest of the world, some kind of "universal" good and bad exists.

EDIT: I've decided that what we should call this is an "accepted" good or bad rather than a "universal".

~Tsugomaru

[blindreper1179]

i think sacrificing a goat for satan is a good thing, and worshiping jesus is a sin. but you probably don't agree.

[tsugomaru]

Look, I don't have to agree with what an entire population thinks if I don't want to. The point is, there will be an accepted belief that most people can agree on and until anther belief knocks that one off its metaphorical pedestal, that will be the definition of good and bad for society.

~Tsugomaru

[Patashu]

Good and bad are socially defined and motivated. If you were a member of a solitary species, good would be anything that benefitted you and bad anything that didn't. But when you're a social creature like humans and you band together with other humans, a new rule arises and is in fact the reason why society can exist; it's a rule formed by induction, as follows. If I harmed others they'd similarly want to harm them back, so harming others is a bad thing for me AND for society. Repeat for every other crime or percieved 'badness' and an unwritten law has arisen through empathy.
The people who can't follow this induction to its finish are sociopaths, btw.

[stargroup]

Okay, I thought about this for a while, and looked at it from an outer perspective.

Ultimately, everything humans do is for survival. Although there are exceptions this is generally the case for pretty much all life.

Something should be defined as good if it benefits survival, whether it's indirectly or directly. For example, take music. Listening to trashy pop doesn't benefit survival obviously, you can do with or without it. But listening to it may cause people to act differently or create images or ideas in someone's head that may not be beneficial to society, one example being media violence. Listening to, let's say calming classical music, would ultimately soothe the mind and soul, and since classical music generally incorporates more advanced musical elements than most pop, it will also open people to newer musical perspectives.

I haven't thought this completely through but that's my argument for now: how much it ultimately benefits survival.

[Zythus]

Who's survival do you benefit?

[devonin]

His own, clearly. As well as any current or future dependants.

[Zythus]

And that is exactly why it would not qualify to be an "outer perspective" or objectiveness.
As long as survival benefits you, you can violate the same right in the other adherents of this idea, because it may potentially benefit you and your survival. Two people stuck on an island with one coconut. Obviously, you'd snatch it and consume it. What happens to the person who didn't receive the only item of food? Would it be fair to kill the other person for the coconut because it does benefit their only chance of survival?

I feel creating a universal standard/objective/Or a rule that applies to everyone, as these three terms are the same thing, is strictly impossible. Even objective is subjective. The only pseudo-objectiveness is the conformities that we whimsically label as "right and wrong".

[Redsky139]

Animals do not have a concept of quality and yet they are defined by evolutionary maxims as stargroup suggests. More importantly, many things survive that are not as good as others simply by chance (a meteor falls on the fastest running dinosaur in the herd). A number of other things that promote survival are intuitively not good, as well, including a number of genetic diseases which in some way promote survival of the species, are certainly not 'good'; i.e., although one can a priori define all things that promote survival as good and all that do not as bad, intuition and evidence would challenge the construct validity of this definition of quality.

#1, if you want a real discussion of quality, read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." I'm going to give my own thoughts here, but I can't help but realize they are heavily influenced by this book and so I am referencing it.

There are actually two types of quality being discussed here. General consensus is a measure of quality, but it is not quality itself. I'd call it an inaccurate measure of what I'd call Subjective Quality, which is related to beauty, art, and music. Objective Quality, in contrast, has to do with precision, logic, accuracy, and skill. FFR players can be assigned objective qualities, based on their measurable ability to tap keyboard keys accurately corresponding to the arrows they see. The number of bpm they can do stream is measurable and can define them as a 'good' player. This is intuitive - most would agree that individuals who can play faster songs with more complicated patterns are of greater skill.

Subjective quality, the definition of which is essentially the question being asked in this post, is a little tougher to put in a box everyone feels comfortable with. Yet, we know intuitively that some pieces of art are more inspiring and more beautiful than others. The difficulty is that value in subjective quality is both not quantifiable and indefinable (and yet it exists!). In our FFR player example, objective quality is determined by the measurable values of accuracy (hitting the correct arrow and hitting it within the time window.) Yet, for music, we cannot define a set of values or they end up being artificial and meaningless (many have tried).

The phrase that comes to mind is one I've already used multiple times: intuition. Although many people do not listen to it when assessing whether they like something or not (e.g., 12-15 year old girls, for whom 90% of music from major record labels is designed these days because they have no sense of quality), it is really what guides our sense of good and bad in subjective matters. An inability to, or conscious choice not to, listen to intuition is the reason why many bad songs become popular, along with herd mentality and the effect of overexposure.

Although I've used different terms and slightly altered definitions than the above referenced book, an example used therein may be helpful in illustrating my point. In science, which is so often considered an objective field, there is an acute problem in determining the skill of a scientist objectively: namely, in hypothesis generation. There are an infinite number of hypotheses that can be tested in order to explain any given aspect of nature, and the breadth and scope of work (and money) necessary to test even a small amount of them is astronomical. In fact, for every study that we do that comes out with a positive result, it generally creates more questions, for which an infinite number of possible hypotheses can be postulated. A 'good' scientist, though, intuitively determines the correct question to ask and a reasonable hypothesis that will give meaningful results. He or she cuts through the fog of infinite incorrect answers and grabs the correct one. This is subjective quality - there are certainly better hypotheses than others and research questions that will more meaningfully affect our understanding of the world, and the determination of what a good question or hypotheses is is made through subjective intuition.

Yes, one can apply a definition to both subjective quality and intuition, but they would be artificial and merely descriptive rather than defining.

[Zythus]

There are actually two types of quality being discussed here. General consensus is a measure of quality, but it is not quality itself. I'd call it an inaccurate measure of what I'd call Subjective Quality, which is related to beauty, art, and music. Objective Quality, in contrast, has to do with precision, logic, accuracy, and skill. FFR players can be assigned objective qualities, based on their measurable ability to tap keyboard keys accurately corresponding to the arrows they see. The number of bpm they can do stream is measurable and can define them as a 'good' player. This is intuitive - most would agree that individuals who can play faster songs with more complicated patterns are of greater skill.

By who's criterion is this measuring ability validated and put into effect? Is it not by the subjectiveness of Tass that a FMO or VC is what it is? You seem to argue that there are intrinsic values in the measurement of objective. However, it is only given subjective value by the person in power.


Objective Quality, in contrast, has to do with precision, logic, accuracy, and skill.

You speak as if Subjective quality is a whimsical and baseless judgment. I can give you infinite number of examples of why subjective quality is just as profound as your objective quality. After reading your argument, the conclusion for subjective quality is "This person is a good player." The conclusion for objective quality is "This person is a good player because Tass said so." You are basing Objective on the Subjective.

Intuition is based on experience. I doubt you'd go into a haunted house expecting fairies or elves because one Halloween or the other, you've been to a haunted housed or have seen it in a movie or have heard it by word of mouth. So now that you visit a haunted house again, you would be tense and fearful due to the past experience that you have.

[Shaygr]

Ah.. when you use music as an example, the only answer you can expect to your question is "you do." :P
But, isn't that the truth?
See - in forms of art (such as music), individuals have the chance to creatively interpret what's good or bad for themselves, 'cause it defines the free personality you're allowed to have in the world today.

As for why you'd decide if it's good or bad, I'm pretty sure it's one of those "you live what you learn" deals. For example, a person who was brought up to be accepting and as open-minded as possible would most likely be more relaxed with more than one genre of music - as opposed to someone who grew up isolated.. with only one radio station!

However!
I think you were meaning to get at who and what decides what's morally right and wrong. D:
And the depressing answer is society. Individuals have only a tiny bit of room for creative interpretation in this area. (or else you'd have half the population thinking murder was a good sport..) I agree with stargroup in believing these decisions are made for our survival and health benefits. Religions also have a huuuge effect on these decisions!

Mm, tl;dr: It depends on what you're measuring when it comes to who decides what's good or bad.

[Spif]

Good or bad as terms are defined by a heavy, dull book we call a dictionary.

But in all seriousness, society's general opinions or morals defines whether something is good or bad. In a case such as music, only yourself can decide whether it's a good song or a bad song. Even if 99% of the population loves it, it could be, in your opinion, not too great. Same goes with taste in clothing, taste in food, your favourite colour even. It can't really be determined by any other means aside from your own personal stand-point.

[Kilroy_x]

Doesn't matter who defines it. Hell, it doesn't even matter that it's subjective. In the search for objective truth, we always expect some sort of ceiling, so we refine our theories with the implicit idea that they'll eventually lead us into full, direct contact with the objective world. With subjective truth, we still have to keep looking for something comparatively better, the process of selection just goes on forever. Subjectivity does not imply impermeability. The subjectivity of morality imposes our first moral duty upon us; the duty to always think.