ON TASTE Reading Chapter 17 (analysis)

Taste is a term literally employed to refer to one of the five senses, the one that provides gustatory discrimination and enjoyment. As a bodily sense, taste is inevitably linked with pleasure or displeasure; that is to say, it is a sensory response that tends to carry a positive or negative balance. This affective component is one of the features of gustatory taste that lends itself to employment as a metaphor of aesthetic enjoyment, for the object of taste is not only perceived but also liked or disliked.

1- taste needs first-hand experience. this is known as knowledge by acquaintance. Just as one cannot decide that soup is well-seasoned without actually sipping it, so one cannot conclude that music is lyrical and moving without hearing it. 

2-  though aesthetic taste is grounded in natural dispositions, it clearly requires cultivation.

Cultivation doesn't mean elitism. It means having access to the information.

3- taste is a kind of sensibility, although some theorists such as Edmund Burke insisted on the role of understanding in determining appreciation. In any case, taste soon became the chief term employed to explain the perception of beauty. 

All you have to do is surmise that appreciating a painting is a form of tasting it visually. 

4- taste is inter-subjective: one has it, but in addition, one learns about it through exchange of information with others.  

5- judgements of taste are about objects: the statement "X is beautiful" is not just a report that it pleases the speaker, but a debatable claim that refers to qualities in X, that may be noticed and enjoyed by others.

Scottish empiricist David Hume makes central use of the idea that taste in art is developed in ways rather similar to taste for food or drink. To advance his argument he tells an anecdote about two tasters of wine who are ridiculed because they can detect faint traces of metal and leather in a hogshead of wine that no one else can taste. But they are vindicated in the end, because when the cask is drained it is found to contain a key attached to a leather thong, and the discerning tasters are proved to have the most delicate taste.

Hume unknowingly is advancing a realist position in aesthetics, THE FLAVOR OF LEATHER IS IN THE JUICE. Sommeliers do this all the time. remind me to talk about Triff's formula for wine tasting.

Hume talks about the body of sophisticated judges, whose opinions converge over time in agreement what I've called BEST CONSENSUS.

Taste and aesthetic qualities:

These are qualities that can be noticed by anyone with normally functioning senses who is paying sufficient attention. Aesthetic qualities are properties that distinguish an object as worthy of appreciation or criticism, example: delicate, elegant, powerful, profound, stiff, awkward, and so on are examples of aesthetic qualities. They are not easily discerned by all perceivers but rather require the exercise of a certain sensitivity that the tradition labels "taste."

1- aesthetic judgements diverge more than descriptions about non-aesthetic qualities. why? because aesthetic properties depends upon the presence of non-aesthetic properties.

2- aesthetic realism defends the idea that aesthetic qualities are actual properties of objects. Perhaps they are ‘supervenient’ properties dependent upon non-aesthetic properties, such that objects with the very same non-aesthetic properties must have the same aesthetic properties.

3- taste may be considered an ability to discern subtle qualities in objects: in food or drink the person with (fine) taste can notice trace quantities of herbs or other flavors that lie beneath the threshold of detectability for others.