ON TASTE Reading Chapter 17 (analysis)

(My underline in red is my answer to Carolyn Korsmeyer's text) 

There is no obvious objective property that can be correlated with all instances of aesthetic appreciation.

true, but that doesn't mean that we cannot discuss aesthetic norms based on objective properties and achieve best consensus. by the way, the same with the soft sciences, when it comes to economy,  sociology or psychology, we don't find such certain objective properties either. 

Nor do they adequately account for the aesthetic enjoyment of nature or other objects that are not works of art.

sure, aesthetics is an approximative normativation

While this essay concerns the concept of taste in western philosophical aesthetics, this is not a culture-bound metaphor limited to philosophy grounded in Europe.

however there is a good chicken soup in India, one in China, one in Lebanon, one in Greece, one in Honduras, one in Haiti, one in Bahamas, i.e., and they all share chicken broth (which is better if it's slowly cooked)

‘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 valance. 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.

One of the most salient features of the use of a sense metaphor for aesthetic appreciation is the requirement of first-hand experience. Discernment of aesthetic properties of art or nature occurs only when one has direct experience of the object, which arouses appreciative pleasure as a signal of the apprehension of aesthetic quality. 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. 

 Good point, which seems to illustrate that aesthetic norms are not capricious, they're rooted in empirical evidence.

The need to educate taste is important, for the sense metaphor can too easily suggest that taste is just a ‘natural’ ability. This error is perhaps promoted by the choice of this particular sense as the root metaphor, because the bodily need to eat, which is abetted by the sense of taste, would seem to be built into the human frame for survival purposes.

so what?

But aesthetic taste, however grounded in natural dispositions, clearly requires cultivation for all but the simplest beauties, and the same can be said for sophisticated gustatory taste, as Voltaire points out. Situations that are likely to promote the cultivation of refined taste, such as leisure, education, and a degree of comfort, tinge the notion of aesthetic discernment with a certain social privilege.


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

Taste can be a term of manners as well, employed to describe the sensitivity required for polite social interactions and appropriate behavior. 

True, and manners are not -for the most part- capricious. They explain cultural adaptation to diverse environments, also known as RITUALS.

The use of the metaphor of taste weighed in on the side of interpreting aesthetic appreciation as 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. 

The concept emphasizes the subjectivity of experiences of beauty, understood as a particular type of pleasure, and pleasure is necessarily located in a perceiving subject. But this is not the whole story, for ‘judgements of taste’ also are about objects: the statement that a work of art is beautiful is not just a report that it pleases the speaker, but a debatable claim that refers to putative qualities of that object (such as harmony, balance, power, profundity) that may be noticed and enjoyed by others.

we already discussed this last class. this is the difference between aesthetic fact and aesthetic opinion, for instance, "I dislike Guernica" is Ok. "Guernica is a mediocre painting" is false.

de gustibus, non est disputandum: there is no disputing about taste.

agree, if you don't like it, you don't like it. DOESN'T THAT BEGS THE QUESTION? WHY DON'T YOU LIKE IT? THAT MORE INTERESTING! 

Works of art are among the most scrutinized, assessed, criticized, and lauded of human accomplishments.

Indeed.

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. He regards the recognition of value qualities in objects to be a function of the pleasure and pain responses of perceivers, and the similar constitution of all human beings furnishes the grounds for agreement about matters of value. To function properly, the evaluative sentiments must be in good working order. Just as a person with a bad cold is not in a position to assess the qualities of a meal, so an inexperienced and naive person is not well situated to judge the qualities of art. Hume advances his argument on behalf of standards of taste with 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, “where the organs are so fine as to allow nothing to escape them, and at the same time so exact as to perceive every ingredient in the composition” (Hume 1898 [1757]: 273).

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.

With practice and education, nearly everyone is capable of developing a degree of delicacy of taste, for Hume is confident that the psychological and dispositional constitutions of all people are as reliably similar as the morphological constancies that govern normally functioning senses. And even those who fail at delicacy can recognize the good taste of critics of finer discernment.

Wine tasting again!

Indeed, the ultimate standard of taste in Hume’s mind must be the body of sophisticated judges, whose opinions converge over time in agreement about the works of art that most repay attention and deliver the highest degree of appreciation.

what I've called BEST CONSENSUS.

Kant, an appreciative critic of Hume, was wholly unsatisfied with the conclusion that taste emerges as a general agreement among most good critics. He demanded a stronger brand of universality for aesthetic judgements, which requires him to emphasize the distinction between that which is merely pleasant (such as bodily pleasure) and that which is beautiful (Kant 1987 [1790]: 55). The judgement of beauty indicates a brand of pleasure that is not rooted in individual bodies replete with their idiosyncratic differences. It is grounded in the recognition of a harmony between the form of the aesthetic object and the structures of rationality and understanding, which, being the same in all rational creatures, demand a common recognition and qualify as ‘universal’ for all perceivers.

Ok, but even Kant can be modified a bit. The idyosincratic differences of the chicken soup are the ingredients (call it i) added to chicken stock, which is a constant, let's call it k*. Next we need the structure of rationality of the individual (call it R), and we have:

k* + i   + Rchinese = k* + i + Rhaitian + k* + i   + Ranglo... and so on

see what I'm doing, I'm suggesting that there are more constants than differences, namely k* and R itself (ingredient is, by definition, an add on, not an essence). the point Kant it making is that taste is real.

To account for his analysis of taste, Kant was particular about the type of pleasure that qualifies as aesthetic: it is not sensuous or rooted in the body, it is not a product of satisfied desire, it does not rely even on a preconceived idea of what the object of enjoyment ought to be or what it is for. It is, in short, quite ‘disinterested.’ In his analysis of taste, Kant advanced the modern distinction between aesthetic values and other kinds of values and objects of pleasure or satisfaction: moral, cognitive, instrumental.

Of course it has to be disinterested! You cannot taste well if you're hungry. 

The metaphor of taste entered common parlance and became rather taken for granted in aesthetic theory; but in the mid twentieth century it was injected with new vigor and controversy by the arguments advanced by Frank Sibley in a series of essays that invoke taste in an analysis of aesthetic qualities. Aesthetic objects are not just works of art or objects that we happen to appreciate; they are objects that are assessed and appreciated in virtue of certain qualities. But what kinds of qualities? This question links the standard for taste with the ontological status of aesthetic properties. Sibley’s argument relies on a distinction between aesthetic and non-aesthetic qualities (Sibley 1959).

Some qualities of art can be noticed by anyone with normally functioning senses who is paying sufficient attention. For example, the fact that a play contains four characters is a quality readily discernible to anyone who can see or hear and count. This kind of quality is ‘non-aesthetic’; other examples of non-aesthetic qualities include square, loud, pale, sonnet, and in a minor key. But these qualities are also value-neutral; they do not label the aesthetic attributes for which one praises or rejects art or any other object. Aesthetic qualities are the properties that distinguish an object as worthy of appreciation or criticism: 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 Sibley, following tradition, labels ‘taste.’ 

Because there is more variation in taste than there is in sense acuity, aesthetic judgements are more likely to diverge than descriptions about non-aesthetic qualities. Even assuming that aesthetic qualities ultimately depend upon non-aesthetic qualities, the former cannot be inferred from the presence of the latter.

So why is the best chicken stock that one simmered for hours?

That is, the aesthetic property of being delicate depends upon the presence of non-aesthetic properties such as thin or gently curving. If one praises a vase or bowl as delicate, one might well point to those properties in explanation of the aesthetic predicate. At the same time, the presence of the non-aesthetic properties does not guarantee the aesthetic; they do not constitute sufficient conditions.

True, not sufficient, but necessary!

Some philosophers take a realist stance and argue 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.

WELL SAID!

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. Someone with good artistic taste is more able to discern the subtle points of style that distinguish a genuine painting of an old master from a modern forgery; he or she is perhaps able immediately to tell Vivaldi from Bach without looking at the disk label...

If you listen to a jazz phrase and you don't know music, or even jazz for that matter, your aesthetic understanding is lesser. I'm not prepared to say less intense, or less fitting (since you may be perceiving other COLORS that I, a jazz amateur miss. However the jazz amateur has an edge to her favor. I guss what I'm saying is that the experience is more COMPLETE.   

To accuse a person of bad taste is a severe criticism that may invoke failings aesthetic, moral, and social. Especially if one is at the receiving end of such a charge, one may resentfully scoff at the position of the judge and the soundness of the criteria used to distinguish good from bad taste.

We are judgmental animals. It's Ok. Just don't get offended. Always strive to explain your taste and you'll be fine.

The very popularity of certain types of art (some kinds of movies and music, for example – sometimes called ‘mass’ art) may seem to be evidence for the absence of aesthetic quality. This ironically splits actual aesthetic pleasure from the idea of the best aesthetic taste.

Well, let's not be PC here. There are forms of rap, rock, pop, even jazz music that lack the richness of better samples of the form. And yes, generally mass produced is less

Suspicions leading in this direction have led some theorists to the conclusion that the very idea of taste is more of a social than an aesthetic category, that the elite of any society more or less impose their mandarin tastes on the public, which dutifully acknowledges the superiority of the objects of elite preference while pursuing their own more swinish and amusing tastes.

Never give up the facts and the bottom! A social category without facts contributing to it's a poor start, the reason being that it's dictated from above. Rather, social norms are caused by social facts which are caused by social interactions. Take manners. Good manners is a form of social cohesion. Societies engage in rules of etiquette because it works! It's a process from the bottom up, which is why there's a notable difference between protocols across cultures.

Perhaps the most well-known of such approaches is represented by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1979), who argues that aesthetic preferences are the product of class distinctions rather than the recognition of standards of quality.

So be it, class distinctions are important. THEY EXIST FOR A REASON. This is not a cabal of courtesans deciding which manners they will employ. THEY ARE BORN INTO MANNERS! No one in particular designs that. 

Bourdieu argues the converse: different eating habits, which divide people by class and occupation, in fact represent the only manifestation of real taste. The idea of aesthetic taste is social imposition in disguise.

Is the French Enlightenment a form of social imposition? What a silly hypothesis.

There are different kinds of aesthetic pleasure, some of which are so taxing that the use of that particular term seems almost perverse. Bernard Bosanquet (1915) distinguished ‘easy’ from ‘difficult’ beauty, and similarly one may consider some pleasures more difficult to achieve than others, albeit more rewarding in the long run. This is only a superficial paradox.

What is interesting about Bosanquet is that he believes beauty is more than what is aesthetically pleasing. And here comes the "easy part. He argues that while beauty is sometimes "easy," e.g., accessible to and recognizable by all—the excellence of certain beautiful items may be evident only to those possessing "aesthetic insight." And so, one may be fooled that X is ugly, when in fact one has not learned to appreciate it. It happens with food all the time. I'll share my experience with Thai shrimp paste of kapi. Kapi has a very strong odor. The same happens with the cheese vieux-boulogne  ("old" boulogne is the translation so you get an idea). A discussion of the merits of vieux boulogne here.  On the other hand, "ugliness" for Bosanquet, is really a failure in expression. Ugliness in art must not be confused with “difficult art”—i.e., art that is beautiful, though many may fail to appreciate it.