Confusing The Type Of Appraised With The Type Of Appraisal

Martin and Rose (2007: 39-40):

The borderline of character and value

There are several instances of attitude in our texts that could perhaps be analysed as either judgement of character or appreciation of things. For example, closely related to the positive appreciation of Vaughan’s album and its tracks are the evaluations of his performance:

raw soul and passion, artistry, inspired six-string diction

These bring us to the border of character and value (of judgement and appreciation). Because they directly value Vaughan’s guitar playing rather than the man, we’ll take them here as concerned with value rather than character. But they can also additionally be coded as tokens of Vaughan’s enormous guitar playing abilities — as betokening one positive dimension of his character (as opposed to the negative dimension of drug addiction, also noted in the review).

Blogger Comments:

[A] There are three interwoven confusions here.

1. The distinction of 'character' vs 'value' is a false dichotomy because the two are not mutually exclusive.  Consequently, it is not a distinction that is consistent with the notion of a systemic contrast, such as between judgement and appreciation.
2. The distinction of 'character' vs 'value' confuses two distinct dimensions of appraisal.  That is to say, 'character' is what is assessed, whereas 'value' is the standard by which an assessment is made.
3. The use of 'value' to distinguish appreciation from judgement is the logical error of using a superordinate term for a hyponym, since both judgement and appreciation are types of evaluation.

Moreover, if the attitudinal distinction between judgement and appreciation is taken to turn on the axiological distinction between ethical values and æsthetic values, there is no difficulty here.  The three attitudes expressed — raw soul and passion, artistry, inspired six-string diction— are all clearly (æsthetic) appreciation, not (ethical) judgement, and this is precisely what would be expected of a music review.

[B] Here the authors make the category error of using the type of appraised — 'guitar playing' vs 'the man' — as means of determining the type of appraisal, instead of using the type of values — ethical vs æsthetic — by which the appraisal is made.  Clearly, the appraised can be assessed in terms of appreciation ('dull'), judgement ('self-indulgent') or affect ('detest'), and, as such, do not determine the type of attitude enacted.