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.

sketches for my lecture on beauty

INTERPRETATION, reading Chapter 21 (analysis)

Intentionalism

aesthetic works, AW's can be (for the purposes of this course many different things: a painting, good wine, an elegant coreography, a string quartet, a song, a delicious chicken broth, a beautiful building, etc.)

Intentionalism in aesthetics is the view that AW's are expressions of the actual intentions of their creators. Interpretations of art works assert that a work expresses this or that actual intention, and are true only in the event that the intention in question is expressed in the work.

YET... we can look for expressions of intention outside the art work or use background information to help generate more plausible hypotheses about the artist’s intention.

First, expressions of intention are not in general, to be identified with interpretations of one’s own behavior. Second, neither the artist’s interpretation of the work, nor his or her expressions or reports of his or her intentions automatically constitute the correct interpretation of the work.
Third, the artist’s interpretation of the work may be no better, and is often worse, than those of others.  
Expressions of intention can be inaccurate, insincere, or if issued before the work is completed, discarded rather than realized. 

In addition, there is no reason to suppose that a poem, or more generally, a work of art, is a direct expression of what is going on in the artist’s life.  Intentionalism unduly restricts the range of acceptable interpretations so that the proper aim of interpretation cannot be realized.

The monism/pluralism issue 

Monism: there is proper aim in aesthetics, interpretation should aim at satisfying this criteria.

Relativism: there are many equally good interpretations of AW,

Pluralism: there may be different interpretations of a AW, but that doesn't mean they are equally good. 

If art interpretation has a plurality of aims, it is quite possible that there are correct or true interpretations of works arrived in pursuit of some of these other aims that do not make statements about the artist’s intention. 

note: the pluralist idea is not interpretive as much as META-interpretive. i.e., when you interpret you are concerned with your own interpretation. the pluralist is not saying that all interpretations are equally good. what the pluralist is saying is that given a thing to be interpreted there are different ways to interpret, different versions.

Meaning

is there meaning in AWs? there are 3 views:

1- meaning is either something the thing has, 2- something one brings to the thing, 3- a combination of 1- and 2- 

if you believe 1- you are an objectivist, 
if 2- you are a subjectivist, 
if 3- you are a realist, 

Meaning and Intentionalism

Conventionalist meaning: AWs' meanings are determined by conventions. For example, the meaning of a literary work is determined by linguistic conventions, literary conventions, and perhaps other cultural conventions. Conventions are inter-subjective and consensus based. 

Hypothetical intentionalism 

Hypothetical intentionalism is not solely after what the actual artist actually intended, but with what an audience should or would understand to be intended, given certain background assumptions.

The innovative aspect of this view is that work meaning is to be identified with the hypothetical intention the audience is most justified in finding in the work.

So, for example, Picasso's Guernica has a meaning given backgrounds assumptions about the work itself. This is basically CONTEXT.

HW 6: Chapter 2, p. 62-66

1- (regarding consequences) explain the difference between short-term and long-term self-interest. how does this distinction may affect ethical decisions? p. 62

2-  (regarding neutrality) is neutrality desirable in ethical considerations? if so, why? p. 64

3- (empathy) in ethical considerations, does it help imagining oneself being (or as) the victim? explain your view. p. 65

HW 5: Chapter two, p. 45-52

1- once you agree that a person deserve rights, can they be taken back (forfeited)? how so?

2- "... it is possible for a criminal to regain lost self-respect and the respect of others once owed him." do you agree or disagree? explain why.

3- are rights absolute? if so, how about people like charles manson or ted bundy?

4- examine the definition of coercion stated on p. 48-49. granted, we sometimes engage in coercive practies with other people. in light of kant's idea of respect, is this right? why not?

5- does self-respect involves being respected by others?

6- from the ethical standpoint what if someone willingly doesn't care for respect?

7- according to p. 51, what is the difference between prescriptions and proscriptions?

8- what is fairness? p. 52

9- explain principle #3 on p. 52. do you agree with it? (see is this way: would you not like to see the happiness of your neighborhood being increased?)

HW 4: Chapter two

this homework is from p. 40-45

1. what is areté in aristotle's philosophy?

2. can virtue (areté) be achieved without community/political interactions? explain your answer.

3. explain the idea of happiness as an ideal.

4. p. 42: find aristotle's definition for virtue. do you agree?

5. p. 43 why is the community important in achieving virtue and happiness?

6. what does it mean to respect according to kantian ethics?

7. the author proposes the following implication:

respect -----> ethical action

meaning that one cannot have meaningful ethical action without respect. do you agree? if so why?

8. once we presuppose that we have the obligation to treat others with respect can we say that people deserve respect?  

9. if so, can one conclude that persons have rights? could you come up with one right that people deserve? 

Aesthetic experience and aesthetic attitude

Aesthetic properties (APs) is what, if anything, all these AP properties have in common that leads us to classify them all as aesthetic and to distinguish them from other kinds of properties.

1- APs require taste on the part of the subject to pick them out, unlike properties like redness or rectangularity, which require only functioning eyesight. So, APs have an objective component. 

2- Aesthetic properties are to be analyzed in terms of the shared responses of competent subjects with particular tastes (this is what we call CONSENSUS). 

3- So, aesthetic properties is inter-subjective.

Aesthetic experience

Dewey/Beardsely: Aesthetic properties emerge from the object and the individual's own taste. When these experiences are shared we obtain consensus on aesthetic properties. This seems to explain stuff such as wine, paintings, etc.

Beardsley and Dewey talk of aesthetic experience as unified or coherent, and complete.

Eddy Zemach adds that we also experience negative aesthetic properties as well – ugliness, dreariness and so on – so their characterization is both too narrow and has the wrong logical priority between aesthetic experience and aesthetic properties.

Goldman: the difference between properties of experience caused by objective properties, and objective properties themselves. The movement from the dominant to the tonic chord in tonal music is typically experienced as expectation or tension, and its satisfaction or resolution. Although the tension is not literally in the tones but in our response to them, even a formal description of the work must note the tension.  

Zemach is nevertheless also correct in saying that we think of aesthetic properties as those which contribute to the positive or negative values of art works.

Aesthetic attitude

From the beginning the hallmark of the aesthetic attitude was held to be disinterest. This notion has been defined variously. We are to attend to the object as an object of contemplation only, to its phenomenal properties simply for the sake of perceiving them. We are to savor the perceptual experience for its own sake, instead of seeking to put it to further use in our practical affairs.

Jerome Stolnitz (1960) Aesthetic perception, by contrast, is once more disinterested. It aims at the enjoyment of the experience itself, grasping its object in isolation from other things,

Edward Bullough (1912) adds emotional detachment. To appreciate a tragic play properly, we must be sufficiently detached not to be tempted to interfere in the action ongoing on stage; to appreciate a storm at sea aesthetically, we must be detached from the fear that prompts precautionary action.

Triff: Not always. Lessing, following Aristotle speaks of emotional attachment as catharsis, and he believes is to be important, as if "we come to the tragic drama (unconsciously, if you will) as patients to be cured, relieved, restored to psychic health."

Zemach (1997) argues that an aesthetic interest in objects is simply one interest among other possible ones, and a self-centered interest at that, aiming at one’s own enjoyment.

Goldman's conclusion: Despite these criticisms, there are once again grains of truth in the traditional account of the aesthetic attitude. It remains the case that ordinary perception is absorbed in and functions in the service of practical action, which normally prompts attention only to aspects of objects insufficient for aesthetic appreciation of them.

HW 3: for next Tuesday pp. 8-22

1. What are ethical claims about?

2. "Unfortunately there are limits of tolerance ... and there are things that most people if not all would agree are simply wrong."  Agree? Disagree? If so, why?

3."Brutus was wrong to have killed Cesar." Provide a relativist and an objectivist reason.

4. How can we provide grounds for justification? (take a look at p. 13-15)

5. Do you agree with the author that there are critical thinking benefits in adopting objectivist judgments?

HW 2: (Chapter 1) Is it all a matter of opinion?

To properly understand chapter one, we need to have these definitions ready:

Opinion: A belief or conclusion held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof:

Belief: A mental state of acceptance.

Subjectivism: The truth of moral judgments is dependent upon people's beliefs.

Objectivism: The truth of moral judgments is independent of people's beliefs.

Relativism: Truth is relative to point of view (subjectivism), culture (cultural relativism).

Moral relativism: same as above, but now concerning moral judgments. So, moral judgments are not true independent of people's point of view or culture.  

Justification: something, such as facts or reasons given to hold a belief.

Knowledge: Justified true belief.

p. 13: Ethics involves non relative claims, that is, claims that are either reasonable or unreasonable.

On the other hand, ethical claims are not easy. They involve personal bias, prejudice and emotional commitments.   

HW 1: a dialogue

Let's read the assignment p. 1-7.

"dialogue" goes back to Plato's dialogues. dia = two, logue = logos (reasoning, using language)

see that the point here is to show philosophy "in action."

Rick and Nina are discussing (a "discussion" in philosophy means just a serious conversation).

Let's pay special attention to these terms. Go here and enter each term and write down these definitions in your notebook. In order to discuss, we need to be in command of the terms' definitions: 

human rights

right & wrong, and for whom?

culture, subculture

reasons and "good reasons"

"correct view" 

claims

opinion

culture-blind

What do we learn here?
Who is Nina? Who is Rick?
Whom do you agree with? Who wins the discussion? Why?

BEAUTY chapter 20

click here for my sketches on beauty,

Mothersill's causal theory of beauty

Genuine judgements of beauty presuppose aesthetic theory and aesthetic theory presupposes principles of taste (this is called redundancy). 

The causal relation between the beautiful object and the pleasure it evokes in the subject might be identifiable and illuminating without resulting in laws and hence principles of taste.

An aesthetic theory has to explain the difference between the pleasure evoked by beauty and other kinds of pleasure. 

Now, is this implying that "I like Picasso's Guernica"? is very different from "I love Zak's the Baker's baguettes?"

AW's evoke pleasure in the observer by virtue of its aesthetic properties: this is the basis of a genuine judgement of beauty.

All that is required of a subject is that there be something he takes to be beautiful and further that at least one such taking be allowed by him to be an aesthetic conviction. He can then concur in the claim that some judgements of taste are genuine judgements.

Is she saying that the strength of my belief that "Picasso's Guernica is a masterpiece" is genuine and the reason is IN Guernica's aesthetic properties?  

According to Mothersill, aesthetic properties are those qualities of objects that have no simple names and are revealed only by acquaintance. 

Disinterested pleasure 

For Aquinas (thirteenth century), the pleasure aroused by beauty is distinct from biological pleasures associated with physical desires and satisfactions.

Shaftesbury (eighteenth century) recognizes in the pleasurable response to beauty an impartiality, a lack of self-interest. He adopts the term "disinterested" from ethics to describe the pleasure recognized as associated with beauty.

Kant (1987) The pleasure of beauty according to this tradition is a pleasure caused by an object which is not accompanied by desire for the object. It should not be confused with the pleasure taken in the sensuous for its own sake; such as that which sparks that poignant sensation of our physical being in the world. Neither should it be confused with un-interest. Disinterest does not mean disengaged.

The pleasure of beauty is like perceiving a solution to a problem, and enjoying it for its own sake, rather than because personal rewards are anticipated.

The pleasure-principle tradition 

Beauty evokes a pleasurable response. If while perceiving an object you do not experience pleasure, you are not perceiving beauty.


Sircello's theory (1975), an object is beautiful when it contains a Property of Qualitative Degree to a very high degree. 

A Property of Qualitative Degree (henceforth a PQD) is a property that cannot be measured in a quantitative sense, such as can temperature or weight. Sircello further delineates a PQD by excluding those qualities that are experienced as deficiencies. 

So there is no PQD in deficiency. It seems that if a fundamental quality of the object cannot become a deficiency. Example: the sliminess of a slug and the sourness of a lemon are not deficiencies in the context of a slug’s and a lemon’s nature. As it stands, this would mean that the slug’s sliminess and the lemon’s sourness are beautiful. 

Sircello says that only those with sufficient experience of the particular quality involved can judge whether it exists in the object to a qualitatively high degree, and hence whether it is beautiful.

This would mean that according to Sircello’s theory, the sourness of the lemon is beautiful. 

Sircello speculates that the reason the experience of PQDs pleases us is because we only experience PQDs when we are seeing clearly.

Perhaps no theory of beauty can offer non-contradictory conditions. The role of an aesthetic theory is to offer plausible approximations.

Perceptual principles in beauty: are there perceptual principles in beauty?

1- Perhaps there are perceptual principles of beauty that constitute a part of the architecture of the mind of HOMO SAPIENS... as such, they are not themselves represented explicitly and unequivocally in language (could not be matched with language schemata).

2- Hence, although there are no principles of beauty as such, there would be a physical basis (a rational basis) for genuine judgements of beauty. 

3- For example, we can look at Indian sculptures, Japanese tea ceremonies and Gothic cathedrals, and while we can enjoy their perceptual beauty, we may not be able to experience their intellectual beauty in the way that someone could whose world view was saturated with the outlook exemplified in these works. 

4- So, the apprehension of intellectual beauty, from scientific to moral beauty, would demand a shared background of knowledge or a shared world view. It would be possible for an art work to arouse a response to beauty through its perceptual form without providing the phenomenologically more total beauty experience, which is a combination of relations emerging within and between its perceptual form and conceptual content. It may be that the work simply does not provide the opportunity for the latter, or it may be that the viewer does not share the same world view (metaphysical/religious) as the artist, which makes the intellectual component of the work inaccessible to the viewer.

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions

Necessary conditions:

X is a necessary condition for Y means, 

if we don't have X, then we don't have Y, or without X, you won't have Y

To say that X is a necessary condition for Y does not mean that X guarantees Y

Having gasoline in my car (I have a gasoline engine) is a necessary condition for my car to start. Without gasoline (x) my car (y) will not start. Of course, having gasoline in the car does not guarantee that my car will start. There are many other conditions needed for my car to start.

Having oxygen in the earth's atmosphere is a necessary condition for human life. However, having oxygen will not guarantee human life. There are many other conditions needed for human life other than oxygen in the atmosphere.

Being 18 years of age is a necessary condition for being able to buy cigarettes legally in North Carolina. Yet, being 18 years of age does not guarantee that a person will buy cigarettes. There are many other conditions that lead to a person buying cigarettes than being 18 years of age.

Sufficient conditions:

X is a sufficient condition for Y means,

if there is X, then Y happens (X guarantees Y)

Rain pouring from the sky is a sufficient condition for the ground to be wet.

click here for a nice video explaining these concepts.
______

Test yourself: 

* Is sunlight a necessary or sufficient condition for the flowers to bloom?

* Is earning a final grade of a C a necessary or sufficient condition for passing the course?

* Is being a male a necessary or sufficient condition for being a father?

* Is having AIDS a necessary or sufficient condition for having the HIV virus?

* Is studying for a test a necessary or sufficient condition for passing a test?

* Is being a bachelor a necessary or a sufficient condition for being single?

definitions for chapter 2 (ethical and cultural relativism)

MORAL NORMS: they happen to be fundamental rules for human welfare.

ETIQUETTE: important rules but not fundamental to human welfare.

LEGAL NORMS: are commands or rules dealing with specific present issues of importance to human welfare (a legal system is a closed, logical system in which correct decisions are deduced from predetermined legal rules without reference to social considerations, they are called "precedent").

LEGAL ≠  MORAL

example: "in 1819 slavery was legal but immoral" 

moral disagreements are inevitable. disagreements and difference is part and parcel of the moral landscape.

moral theories analyze and normativize moral disagreements.

the existence of disagreements doesn't rule out ethical consensus and best consensus.

note: don't confuse tolerance or understanding with relativism. you can understand a person and yet realize that what she does is wrong. see that tolerate and defend are different things. you may tolerate what you disagree and defend its right to exist, but the tolerance stops once you realize that someone is exploiting or abusing another human being. why? because that action is wrong. you don't tolerate or defend wrong doing.  

descriptive ethical relativism: different people have different moral values that are right to them. here you are merely stating a fact, not morally evaluating it.

ethical relativism: what makes an action right is that someone approves of it.

counterarguments to ethical relativism:  

1- an action cannot be both right and wrong at the same time.
2- it makes the ethical relativist infallible, and there's no point in discussing the disagreement. no one will ever win.
3- if you were an ethical relativist you don't have any way to convince someone that disagrees with you other than saying: "the action is wrong because I disapprove of it". 
 
cultural relativism: what makes an action right is that it's approved by that culture. 

cultural relativity of behavior: different people express different behaviors. that's culturally obvious. note: you may disagree with costumes of your culture. I do, and having said that I add: I love my culture. THEY ARE NOT EXCLUSIVE. i.e., values that are not fundamental, manners, eating, hygiene, dressing, mating, family, etc. these are called cultural peripheral values.
counterarguments to ethical relativism:

1- an action cannot be both right and wrong at the same time for different cultures. it's contradictory. we need to further investigate the issue.
2- moral norms express deeper values. and moral values (or norms) seem to be trans-cultural. many different cultures surprisingly agree with core values: do not kill your own, incest is wrong, respect the elders, do not cheat, worship your gods, etc.
3- cultural relativism happens not because people have different views o morality but because they have different views of reality.  
 4- it doesn't tell us how to act when cultures overlap. if you're a haitian-american you know that you are different than a haitian from the island (my haitian students confide me all the time of the shock they have when visiting the island for the first time). how to explain that hybrid that agrees and simultaneously disagree with her culture? she's between two cultures! who is right?  2-  cultural relativism doesn't say WHY we should act in a certain manner. all it says is "it's right to act in this manner because we believe it."  (cultural relativism lacks moral reasons).

beauty from facts

sketch for my lecture on interpretation

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.

The facts in the chicken bouillon

chicken broth = chicken + water

and in the long evolution of the production of the stock (we call it CULINARY SCIENCE) we get the right method. it's right because it tastes better, it tastes better because of the facts of the matter of the preparation. 

YES, SLOW IS MUCH BETTER. 

why? MORE COLLAGEN EXTRACTED FROM THE BONES. this is a chemical property, which translates into TASTE.

this is a CULINARY FACT.

flavor vs. emotion

cultural 

1. pumpkin spice: happy, calm
and so, candy cane and gingerbread: happy childhood memories,
2. flavor is defined as sensory impression of substances expressed by smell, taste, texture and emotion,
3.  we use adjectives associated to favors: sweet, sour, bitter,

psycho-somatic

4. (from ene vainik paper)

connecting sweetness to love and bitterness to anger is a quite abstract kind of decision and not truly related to any bodily sensation or imagination of respective tasting experience. The evaluative dichotomy pleasant vs unpleasant functions as a grounding in our knowledge, which reinforces if not causes us to see emotions and taste similar or analogous to each other. Why to choose the taste of bitter rather than salty or sour to be the opposite of sweet in the domain of emotions seems to rely on the inherent negativity or displeasing quality of how the bitter taste was culturally conceptualized. In a traditional rural economy both salty and sour taste accompanied the processes of food conservation and made sense as the by-products of the survival techniques. The taste of bitter, however, had no such excuse and could be evaluated not only as displeasing but also as “useless” from the viewpoint of survival. 

paper by edmund t. rolls, from oxford neurophysiology dpt. here's the abstract.

There are five types of taste receptor cell, sweet, salt, bitter, sour, and umami (protein taste). There are 1000 olfactory receptor genes each specifying a different type of receptor each for a set of odors. Tastes are primary, unlearned, rewards and punishers, and are important in emotion. Pheromones and some other olfactory stimuli are primary reinforcers, but for many odors the reward value is learned by stimulus–reinforcer association learning. The primary taste cortex in the anterior insula provides separate and combined representations of the taste, temperature, and texture (including fat texture) of food in the mouth independently of hunger and thus of reward value and pleasantness. One synapse on, in the orbito-frontal cortex, these sensory inputs are for some neurons combined by learning with olfactory and visual inputs, and these neurons encode food reward value in that they only respond to food when hungry, and in that activations correlate with subjective pleasantness. Cognitive factors, including word-level descriptions, and attention, modulate the representation of the reward value of taste, odor, and flavor in the orbito-frontal cortex and a region to which it projects, the anterior cingulate cortex. Further, there are individual differences in the representation of the reward value of food in the orbito-frontal cortex. Overeating and obesity are related in many cases to an increased reward value of the sensory inputs produced by foods, and their modulation by cognition and attention that override existing satiety signals.

in other words, emotions, as states elicited by instrumental reinforcers (e.g., a warm pleasant feeling produced by a soft caressing touch), can be seen to provide an evolutionary adaptive value account of why genes, for example, taste receptor genes, code for the reward or punisher value of some stimuli.

paper by shrikant patil addressing pheromones as sex scent signals,

take this with you: reward-punisher, taste receptor genes, evolutionary adaptative behavior,

evolutive

5. primary reinforcers: pheromones, (odors such as ripe fruit, and the smell of rotting food).
6. inter-species odors: odors of individuals may be pleasant because of major histo-compatibility complex genes, (e.g. same tribe, cultural region, etc). people smell like the foods they use. which specify olfactory receptors that signal reward produced be the smell of another individual with different immune system. 
6. The adaptive value is that offspring produced with an individual with a different immune system may have more diverse immune systems, and thereby greater resistance to disease. However,many odors only become reinforcers by a learned, stimulus–reinforcer association.
7. the odor of the cheese brie may be initially unpleasant, but may become pleasant after learned association with its taste and fatty texture (fatty texture is a primary reinforcer because of a high-energy value food).

wine and its rich associations  

                                                      above a eno-vino-pedia chart, very useful

Phi 2801 review topics for exam#1

AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE

The monism/pluralism issue:

Monism: there is proper aim in aesthetics, interpretation should aim at satisfying this criteria.

Relativism: there are many equally good interpretations of AW,

Pluralism: there may be different interpretations of a AW, but that doesn't mean they are equally good. 

If art interpretation has a plurality of aims, it is quite possible that there are correct or true interpretations of works arrived in pursuit of some of these other aims that do not make statements about the artist’s intention. 

the pluralist is not saying that all interpretations are equally good. what the pluralist is saying is that given a thing to be interpreted there are different ways to interpret, different versions.

AESTHETICS

click this link for my explanation of aesthetic facts (please, read the info-consensus-best-consensus part).

Meaning in aesthetics:

is there meaning in AWs? there are 3 views:

Objectivism: meaning is something the thing has,
Subjectivism: something one brings to the thing,
Intersubjectivism: meaning is both objective and subjective, thus it's intersubjective. 

Intentionalism: in aesthetics is the view that AW's are expressions of the actual intentions of their creators. Interpretations of art works assert that a work expresses this or that actual intention, and are true only in the event that the intention in question is expressed in the work.

Aesthetic experience: Dewey and Beardsely believe that aesthetic properties emerge from the object and the individual's own taste. When these experiences are shared we obtain consensus on aesthetic properties. This seems to explain stuff such as wine, paintings, etc.

Beardsley and Dewey talk of aesthetic experience as unified or coherent, and complete.

Eddy Zemach adds that we also experience negative aesthetic properties as well – ugliness, dreariness and so on – so their characterization is both too narrow and has the wrong logical priority between aesthetic experience and aesthetic properties.

BEAUTY/PLEASURE

Disinterested pleasure:  Shaftesbury (eighteenth century) recognizes in the pleasurable response to beauty an impartiality, a lack of self-interest. He adopts the term "disinterested" from ethics to describe the pleasure recognized as associated with beauty.

For Kant desinterested means that the pleasure of beauty is like perceiving a solution to a problem, and enjoying it for its own sake, rather than because personal rewards are anticipated.

The pleasure-principle tradition:  Beauty evokes a pleasurable response. If while perceiving an object you do not experience pleasure, you are not perceiving beauty.

TASTE

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 inter-subjective: one has it, but in addition, one learns about it through exchange of information with others, aesthetic notes can be learned.

4- 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.

Topics for review Exam #1 Spring 2019

click here for the link on fallacies,

click here for the link on necessary and sufficient conditions,

1. Moral vs. non-moral standards standards: Human behavior of fundamental consequence for human welfare.

2. Morality and etiquette (etiquette are codes of polite behavior in different societies).

3. Morality and Law (not everything that is legal is moral (slavery was legal and is not moral).

4. Are there moral standards? Where do they come from? Click here for more my lecture on moral knowledge,

5. Ethical relativism, Cultural Relativism. Relativism is the view that the rightness (or wrongness) of an action is relative to the individual, culture, perspective, etc. 

Subjective relativism: what makes an action right for that person is that they approve of it.

Cultural relativism: what makes an action right for the members of a culture is that it's approved by the culture. 

Counterarguments to subjective and cultural relativism: 1- both theories are self-contradictory, an action cannot be both right and right at the same time. 2- moral disagreements cannot be absorbed since the relativist is always right.

6. Difference between fundamental, deep (moral values) and peripheral values (fashion, etiquette, marrying customs, eating, rituals, etc). Most cultures share similar fundamental values (such as killing your own, stealing from the group, adultery, respecting the elders, incest, etc).

7. Defensible Moral Judgments: Moral judgments = Moral norms + facts (what this means is that we want our moral judgements to be defensible. We want to be able to give reasons for why we believe what we believe. 

Inevitability of moral disagreements: we constantly makes decisions that affect other people, just as their decisions affect us, and in both cases we need to make moral judgments about the acceptability of such decisions.

8. Are there universal moral principles? The best answer seems to be YES. And one can point to two important principles. Principle of justice: Treat people fairly. Principle of mercy: Avoid unnecessary suffering.