Qualifications

Are certain audiences more qualified to judge certain works than others? Are other audiences not qualified to judge other works? Who decides who is qualified, and who is not? What does one need to do in order to become qualified? I think everyone has the right to judge a literary work, but I also think that some people may have more refined opinions than others. If two people looked at a painting by Pablo Picasso, and one of them had never seen one of his paintings before, and the other had studied Picasso's works for years, you would be more likely to listen to the second person's opinion. I would imagine it would be the same for literature. Some people would have more knowledge about certain works than most other people, and we would trust the opinions of the more knowledgeable people to guide our own opinions of the works. But how knowledgeable does someone need to be to actually be considered an "expert"? How much more training and research do they need to surpass everyone else? How does someone actually become qualified enough so that their opinion seems to matter more than the average Joe walking down the street? Any ideas? 

Literature and Criteria

Can one develop the proper criteria to properly judge any literary work from any time period? Or does one need to develop different criteria for different works from different periods? In other words, can a work only be judged by the context of its time? I think that in order to define "literature" we must include some type of criteria. We need criteria to determine what is or is not literature, and then criteria to determine how good or bad the literature is. However, I personally cannot think of any way to create a criteria that would be able to properly judge literary works throughout the ages and the world. That would seem to suggest that you would have to continually create and change all literary criteria. And yet, that still doesn't seem to be the most logical approach to this problem. So, how do we develop the right criteria for literature? Any suggestions? 

The Philosophy Toolkit

Under the category of "Logical Terms" reads this definition, "Truth: the correspondence of a statement with the way the world is. Philosophers disagree with this definition (see above), but it is a good place to start." (7) I didn't understand why there would be any disagreement at all, this claim seemed to be indisputable. On further inspection of this claim, I wondered if the disagreement arose from the idea that this is a mostly metaphysical claim, and may or may not apply to epistemology or axiology. When you're talking about "the way the world is", you are making a primarily metaphysical claim. It may be true that the correspondence of a statement with reality is metaphysical truth, but perhaps there needs to be a greater criteria for the definition of "truth" in order to also incorporate epistemological and axiological truth. As far as what this definition might be, I'm afraid I don't have a clue. Does anyone else have any ideas?

About Myself

Hello, my name is Stacy Alice Fisher and I was born on November 19, 1991 and I'm 20 years old. I am a sophomore here at MCLA and I am currently undeclared, but I'm leaning towards Anthropology/ Sociology for a major and I'm going to minor in Philosophy. I have been interested in Philosophy for as long as I can remember, and I believe it is the fundamentally most important thing a person should study. I am extremely opinionated and have a hard time keeping said opinions to myself. One of the things I have been trying to learn from Philosophy is that everyone has a valid opinion that deserves to be heard, this is a much more difficult lesson to learn than I originally thought. I think there is so much a person can take away from Philosophy if they only open their minds and give it a chance. This is only my second year seriously studying Philosophy, and I have already noticed a big difference in myself and how I perceive the world. When I believe in something, I truly do believe in it with every fiber of my being. This makes it exceedingly difficult for anyone who wishes to change my mind on a particular matter. However, this also means that I am exceedingly impressed with anyone who actually can. I thoroughly enjoy arguing with people, because that is, interestingly enough, how I learn best. I want to see every point on every matter from every direction there is, and listening to other people argue their point, listening to their opponents, and listening to the devil's advocates all help me to further understand a discussion. I simply love a good debate. Well, that's all for now I suppose. Have a great day everybody! :)