[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Objective measures of worth / value?

How would you count for it? I mean Karl Marx spent the first sections of his Capital to analyse the different meanings and scopes of "value" coming up with more fuzz than a definitive answer...

There is the "use-value" of a thing (how well a product does the thing it's made for - or more modernly: how well it answers the needs of the buyer) and the "market-value" of a thing (how much people are ready to pay for it because they think it worth it), but also the "surplus-value" (how much is it acceptable to charge "from between" by the owner of the production-system) and all that stuff...

How would you determine the objective worth or value of a thing produced in a human society? A cheap thing can be good, inattentive labour may bring forwards decent results and much attention may end up in poor quality - and sometimes someone makes it well without knowledge and a cognisant person may make bad stuff if he has a bad day or something...

Oh, if we are talking philosophers, they can determine with determination until the cows come home and still not have a clearly determined answer.

But if we are talking economists, and accountants, and CEOs then clearly they do daily come up with operational definitions of worth/value, as they are the ones who decide quantities of raw goods and materials to be used--ie, the planned obsolescence of the item being manufactured--salaries, bonuses, tax write-offs and, largely, market prices. (And when they're wrong, there goes the company, unless it is large enough to 'merit' a government bailout.)

Originally Posted by Noggie

And can we approach a thing like quality from purely objective measures in the first place?

Hmm. Maybe I'm confused. I didn't think we were necessarily discussing quality here but emotional attachment. The two are related but not equivalent, methinks.

Originally Posted by Noggie

But I'm not sure it's up to a "subjective measure" either, but more like to a culturally relative measure which changes by times and cultures - and fashions - which people live themselves into and believe it's them who decide about the value of things...

Now this is something we can agree on--cultural relativity--a third item which needs to be discussed.

Originally Posted by Eönwë

Yes, craftsmen can skimp while machines can't, but they can also create great works, not just as the product itself but as a work of art. Machines cann't make art. They can only create what they've been told to do.
That is why a machine could never create a weapon with a "soul" like Gurthang.

Yes, that's what I meant. There is greater variability in quality with craft, as you say, than with machined objects, which are standardised to a certain level of achievement. Although, someone programs the machine to do what it does and therein lies the potential, I think, for the question of art to be applied to the machine process. But likely in rare cases.

Originally Posted by Eönwë

And when I say craft, I separate it from craftsman because the crafting I mean is like a long time ago, when crafting was your life's work, and everything you made had your name on it, so if you ever produced a product that anyone hated, your reputation would be damaged. Now peole can just change their company name to avoid this, but then it was the craftsman who personally associated themselves with the product.

But many of our ancient relics don't have the makers' names engraved on them. They are anonymous (now at least, although Tolkien supplied names to his crafts). And anyway, isn't this like branding and logos are now? People buy products because of the logo, both for the cache of the name and because of the supposed quality that implies.

Originally Posted by Noggie

This I think Tolkien was very much aware of: the machine gun, the artillery... faceless killing by mass-produced machines of destruction detached from the suffering and somehow also from the guilt of doing so. A most moral issue!

yes, this is said to make killing in our time 'easier' psychologically, yet one has only to read about the terrible slaughters that occured during the Crusades, those purportedly glorious battles of the Middle Ages, to know that the crusaders killed happily and willingly. And for Europeans who weren't lucky enough to be able to trek to the Holy Land to do the killing, they happily turned to killing Jews--men, women and children--in their local towns and villages. They were 'morally detached' also no matter where or how their weapons were made.

But I don't think Tolkien was discussing actual, historical warfare. I think much of his writing leans towards the kind that we can easily associate with symbolism, so that magic becomes a believable quality, where it wouldn't be in an historical account.

My, I have run on. And now must do a Monty Python battle act--"run away! run away!"