ABSTRACT
VALUE-JUDGMENTS AND OPINION (SUBJECTIVITY) The one thing that all these statements have in common is that they express an opinion about the comparative merits of two people or things, or the desirability of something, or the undesirability of something else. Another feature common to all of them is that there is no method of measuring the truth of the statements against an outside criterion. We may find a large number of people who share our subjective view about the relative merits of peace and war, or of coffee and tea as a breakfast drink. We may also find some people who support our view that Smith is better than Jones at English. However in the latter example, we could just as easily find someone who-disagrees violently with our judgment. If the person who disagrees with me does so as the result of impressions which he has gained from the work of Smith and Jones in English, he is as entitled to his point of view as I am to mine, because he uses the same grounds as evidence for making the statement. If I say that the man who contradicts me about the respective merits of Smith and Jones in English is wrong, I am guilty of using the word 'wrong' incorrectly, because I am virtually saying that he has no right to make his statement.
