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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9108495" data-attributes="member: 42582">To me this seems like arguing that because tallness is contextual (a tall building, a tall tree, a tall child, etc) therefore there is no fact of the matter about whether one thing is taller than another.There are even simpler cases: whether X is between Y and Z, as a matter of spatial relations, is contextual in the sense that you typically can't work it out just by inspecting X but also need to inspect Y and Z. It doesn't follow that there is no fact of the matter about whether or not one thing is in between two other things.This seems to confuse the issue of epistemic access with the issue of whether or not something is the case.It also seems to confuse the issue of whether or not something is vague and whether or not something is muti-dimensional with the issue of whether or not something is subjective.The notion of influence is vague and is multi-dimensional. It's not particularly subjective, however. Suppose we confine ourselves to the classical European tradition, we can ask whether Mozart or Beethoven was more influential, and adduce various sorts of reasons that speak to the various ways in which influence manifests itself. That can be a reasoned discussion even if there is no agreement at the end of it.If someone wants to broaden out the discussion - and, for instance, make the point that the first human to clap two rocks or sticks together to produce percussive rhythm, or the first human to string some gut across a bit of wood so as to use it to produce a sound, was pretty influential! - well, that's fine too. At a certain point the dimensions of comparison may become incommensurable at least for practical purposes. Or perhaps it might become useful to stipulate some parameters of investigation and analysis.None of this tends to show that judgements of influence are subjective in any interesting fashion.</blockquote>

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