What it means to say that something is "a matter of opinion" is that there is no fact of the matter at all. There is nothing true or false about it. That is very different from saying that the physician's opinion is that the child has measles.

I see why you would say that, but I still don't think it's that simple. Because it's a matter of opinion as to whether or not something is a matter of opinion. "Measles" is just a word, an abstraction. And doctors could argue about whether this word was applicable.

To refer to a physician's diagnosis when the thread has contained references to rape is to suggest that moral judgements are equivalent in character to empirical results.

In other words, you're suggesting moral absolutes. Is that what you intended to say?

It is not a matter of opinion whether it is a matter of opinion whether vanilla or chocolate ice-cream tastes better since there is no fact of the matter about whether something tastes better or not.

But that's just your opinion....

Sometimes it is difficult to be sure whether the person has a particular disease of not. What has that to do with the word, "measles" though, is more than I can tell. Are you actually saying that we cannot apply the word "measles" to a set of symptoms because the word is "abstract" (whatever that may mean)? In any case, the fact that doctors may not be sure whether the kid has measles or not is irrelevant to whether the kid has measles or not. The kid either has measles or he does not. It is not a matter of opinion whether the kid has measles. It is a matter of fact.

Ugh. It is my opinion, certainly, But what makes you think it is just my opinion?

What is truth? Is truth something that person treats as the case? Or something that a plurality of persons agrees upon?

According to the Channel 4 television documentary Dispatches: The Lost Girls of South Africa (which, I should caution you, is almost unbearable to watch), in a survey of a quarter of a million schoolchildren in that country, 63% of male respondents stated that forcing sex on someone is not an act of violence. Is the endemic rape of young girls in that country then not truly violent?

I have. Whether vanilla tastes better than chocolate ice-cream is not a matter of fact, but a matter of opinion. In that case, there is no fact of the matter, which is to say that there is not true or false about whether vanilla tastes better than chocolate. Quine thinks that there are times when there is no fact of the matter about what I mean by what I say. That there may be a number of things that I might mean, but that there is no fact of the matter about which of them I do mean. He calls that the indeterminacy of meaning.

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This ties into the proof/persuasion issue. What is truth? Is truth something that person treats as the case? Or something that a plurality of persons agrees upon? Does truth wait outside of us for recognition? Is truth the by-product of the language use of a particular form of life?

Its not a matter of opinion that either vanilla or chocolate tastes better.

Depends on who you ask, I guess. "Violence" is another abstraction.

At the risk of pursuing a highly unpleasant and unphilosophical tangent: what are you talking about? :eeek:

The inhabitants of Sodom (which God destroyed) And the worshippers of Baal (A decadent false deity).

If it's not a matter of opinion, then it's a matter of fact, and if it's a matter of fact, then it's either true or false that vanilla tastes better than chocolate, but I don't see that it's true or false that vanilla tastes better than chocolate.

Does the sentence, "Vanilla ice cream tastes better than chocolate ice cream" actually express a proposition? Meaningful yes, but cognitively meaningful? I don't think so since it's not true or false (hence, not a matter of fact--but instead a matter of opinion) that one tastes better than the other.

Now, if I can just say it twice more! It'll definitely be true.

I repeat, what are you talking about?

There is no need for him/her to be one or the other aside from a definition a third party imposes on the actions taken by the bomber.

Of course we're going to use the definitions. What do you mean we impose the definitions, though? The actions taken by the bomber are what make him a terrorist, and not, say, a humanitarian.

The idea I was attempting to get accross is that the bomber is both, or rather anywhere/all definitions on the scale between the two since, unlike the inept example of vanilla and chocolate which are discrete inputs the bomber is singular input witnessed on a relative kline. Much like a language or dialect continuum the bomber's actions serve different functions/ Isofunctions or isofunction bundles within the cultural system of the witness. In one system s/he serves an actual freedom fighter function, integral to the perpetuation of the system. In another s/he serves a terror function, also integral to the perpetuation of the system. It is legitimate to call the person both, and to an unbiased observer, which none of us are, it could be that the bomber serves either no function in the system or all functions between two possible poles in the system. Also along the cultural continuum between the two cultural systems the bomber can serve any integral function between the two poles, making the bomber both freedom fighter and terrorist and anything inbetween for the continuum system as a whole.