Evaluation, Language, Experience

Implicitly agreed in the traditional dispute in Aesthetic Theory--whether a Value is a Primary Quality, a Secondary Quality, or a Tertiary Quality, i. e. a property of an object, a property of a subject, or, a property of the relation between an object and a subject--is that the paradigmatic scenario of Evaluation is a reaction of a subject to a given object.  Furthermore, none of the disputants, even the Nominalist variety of the second party, seems to explain why a verbal formulation of an evaluation is not extrinsic to the fundamental scenario.  Hence, that traditional dispute fails to consider that as a linguistic construction, the verbal formulation of an Evaluation is a social act functioning in a different paradigmatic scenario.  That is, qua verbally formulated, an Evaluation is commendatory, i. e. it advises whether or not it would be better to believe some proposition, whether or not it would be better to perform some action, or whether or not it would be better to observe some Artwork.  Implicit in such advice is that the fundamental locus of a Value--Truth, Goodness, Beauty, respectively--is in the determination of some prospective course of experience, with respect to which a previous reaction to an object can play an instructive though subordinate role.