Today I was involved in an unexpected email exchange about a subject which I thought to be in the past. Living on tangents (not unlike the Hounds of Tinaldos), I proceeded from one aspect of this to another until I arrived at a perpetual source of interest to me, language.
In general we can divide statements up into two classes, the first type being of the form
I weigh 161 pounds.
Einstein invented the Theory of Relativity.
This book has 345 pages
These are all verifiable, falsifiable statements. The other type are subjective statements such as
Maths is hard.
I like Key Lime pie
There are no heroes.
Of course the last is tied intimately into the source of my inspiration. Let's examine it...
Since a hero is a person who has performed a heroic deed, we must expect that heroic deeds are no longer occurring. While I personally disagree with this, we first need to ask "What quantifies a heroic deed?" Again a subjective statement. Although some "heroic" deeds" might be performed out of desperation (Wrestling the controls of an airplane from a terrorist), it does not any more or less make it heroic.
Perhaps we have to assess the etymology of "heroic"? It makes little difference since unless we can reduce a subjective question to a quantifiable one, we are without foundation.
Certain subjective statements might come close to being quantifiable, "Stalin was a bad man" might be an example of a subjective statement which is falsifiable, but there is still room for ambiguity. No amount of subjective statements necessarily make another subjective statement true, "Stalin had many people killed" does not necessarily equal "Stalin was a bad man".
The actually email I received was a terse rebuttal of what I had written in my diary about the above mentioned statement. Being humble enough to admit I was wrong, I mentioned this to my correspondent and emailed the person who I had criticized and apologized for such.
Life goes on, no differently to before.