Is there such a thing as objective quality in books or is it all subjective...

Is there such a thing as objective quality in books or is it all subjective? Is Twilight a better book than Moby Dick because more people like it?

Who determines good taste and how?

The objective quality is not in the books but exists in the community of readers.

McDonald's is the best restaurant.

that sounds like the opposite of objective quality

All subjective. Good taste is determined by some kind of phenomenon that exists in suspension between members of society. Read up on postmodern philosophy. Or, if you prefer to continue to trick yourself into thinking quality is objective, study aesthetics.

Depends on your understanding of 'objective', really.

Something can be objectively good on a subjective scale, which is arguably subjective. But if you have logic reasons to determine this subjective scale, then it seems objective to me.

You can definitely debate whether something's well written, complex, and has masterful use of literary techniques. However, enjoyment and emotional resonance is very much subjective.

who determines what is well written, complex, and has masterful use of literary techniques? Isn't that somewhat subjective?

So you would say no work of literature is better than any other in any concrete.

Not in any objective way, no

>Who determines good taste and how?

Basement dwellers who patronise anonymous image boards, so they can pretend they are superior to people with healthy social lives and a sex life.

take the redpill sheeple, we don't need women they're inferior and mere holes. If I just have my anime and vidya then i don't need love, because love does not exist, because all women are worthless whores who cannot truly love, and who only want Chad dick and know no loyalty

take the redpill. we're better off without them

I've jerked off to this picture.

I agree that there is not a objective way to measure the quality of books, but we might find some satisfaction to see how time often makes popular works among less-demanding people (readers with a more simple appreciation) to be often forgotten and abandoned.

There is a level of objectivity, in the sense that if everyone had read everything, they would agree on an approximate ranking (i.e. certain books being the best, but no necessarily ranking of individual books). This can be seen through the fact that people that read a large amount and a variety of books agree to a certain extent on an approximate ranking. So if you think, for example, that Portrait of the Artist is worse than The Bell Jar, you are objectively wrong.

It can, but sometimes it's just obviously objective that War & Peace is better than the story I wrote in first grade English class about a snowman that farts.

ok Sam Harris

Clearly nobody has heard of intersubjecivity in this thread. It is the answer to the silly objective/subjective debate

Damn straight.

There are objective criteria for rating how good a book is and the same goes for any art medium. A few examples of what determines whether a novel is great or not: Does the book utilize the medium in an exceptional way (prose, structure etc.)? Does the work bring to light universal truths in a way that is unique and original? Are there things expressed in the work which are genuine and valuable?

People determine whether a work has value or not over the course of time: bad books will be forgotten, good ones remembered.

>exceptional
>universal
>truths
>unique
>original
>things
>genuine
>valuable
Don't make me fucking say it.

How is the new SMT, OP?

>subscribing to the subject/object dichotomy
we are not separate from reality, we are of it. all of our concepts are equally valid and all axioms are arbitrarily interchangeable. it's like the polar opposite of nihilism, panilism?