I am so sorry of course WC serves shit, and to have the freedom to say that is great. I am going to go and protest against NATO now, love the freedom to do that too, however I wont eat at WC, isn't freedom grand.

Geo wrote:I've published maybe a zillion papers (.... ok, maybe just half a dozen), about the aesthetics of taste, primarily using wine as a model/example. My main task has been to break the almost-universally assumed (frequently unconsciously) equation "I like X" = "X is good" . The equation is in fact false, and shouldn't be allowed in any rational conversation about taste preferences.

Thus, "I like WC" is perfectly compatible with "WC is not an aesthetically fine entity." (This sentence states my own position fairly succinctly. : )

Geo

Geo, glad you jumped in.

Do you think the determination of an "aesthetically fine entity" is a purely subjective exercise?

Do you mean by that that what makes something 'aesthetically fine' is not any of its own properties or features, but is solely a 'property' or feature or reaction or something about the one who experiences that fine thing (e.g., the feeling of pleasure it produces)?

I'm asking because even then, you could mean different things by 'subjective.' The feeling of pleasure is 'purely subjective' in the sense that it is a property of a subject of an experience -- it's the subject's reaction -- and not a property inherent in the object. But this fact could still be 'objective' in a different sense, the sense of not being decided upon arbitrarily by people, but depending on something common to all (appropriately constituted) 'subjects.' What 'appropriately constituted' means, and whether there is any such legitimate notion here, is up for debate, but if there is one, then the fact that aesthetic judgments are 'subjective' does not necessarily stop them from being non-arbitrarily true or false -- which is what most people seem to mean by 'subjective' (just a matter of preference / opinion, nothing we must think in order to think correctly).

The ambiguity of 'subjective' is a huge reason that debates about aesthetic (and moral) judgments go off the rails so fast. I think different people often mean different things by it and end up talking past each other. And taste, in particular, is a concept that's really easy to slide from calling it 'subjective' in the sense of 'having to do with subjective reactions' to 'subjective' in the further sense of 'no definite truth-value.'

I think that i<3pizza raises precisely the right points in response to DH's question. Purely subjective, if I might use the term in such a way, seems to me to imply "there is no empirical fact of the matter." Long ago I published an article in the American Philosophical Quarterly entitled "Are Some Aesthetic Judgments Empirically True?" in which I claimed that aesthetic judgments, such as "This is a fine wine", are inextricably bound up with, and necessarily depend upon, straightforward empirical claims. For example, if "This wine has a pH = 1.2" is true, then "This is a fine wine" is false. That is still my position, although I've developed it a bit since then (see, for example, my chapters in Wine and Philosophy and Beer and Philosophy.). What my thought is, is that the collection of empirically-necessary claims, when taken all together, delimit, or constrain, a space within which the aesthetic judgment must, take place.

In one paper (can't remember which at the moment) I use an example of a game we used to play in Kansas City, when wine was just hitting the town, and a bunch of us in the biz (I owned a vineyard+winery, and was the wine critic for The Kansas City Star, others were wholesalers, importers, and one guy among us has gone on to become what Parker has called "one of the most important wine guys in France") set up a challenge game called "slinging" (after "gunslinging")in which a group of us would show up on a member's doorstep with a couple of bottles in paper bags. "Consider yourself slung" we'd say, and the sling-ee would have to identify grape, provenance, and vintage of the bottle in the bag. Parker's guy was consistently in the 90% range, a couple of other guys were in the 50-60%s, etc. This kind of skill speaks strongly to the empirical aspects of aesthetic judgments. Thus, you can't say "This is a fine Bordeaux" unless it's true that "This is a Bordeaux."

Ultimately, the point I always want to end up making is that pure subjectivity in aesthetics requires that "This is a fine x" means exactly the same thing that "I like this x" means, and that seems to me to be both false and unsupportable. The former judgment must necessarily refer to the properties of the X, while for the latter it is sufficient to refer to the properties of the evaluator, for example, their toilet training.

Whew, sorry to be so academic, but you scratched my itch David, and i<3 just aggravated things more!

Geo
PS. If anyone would like a pdf of my papers, I *think* I've got them around here somewhere; if so, then just PM me with your e-mail address.

i<3pizza wrote:… you could mean different things by 'subjective.' The feeling of pleasure is 'purely subjective' in the sense that it is a property of a subject of an experience -- it's the subject's reaction -- and not a property inherent in the object. But this fact could still be 'objective' in a different sense, the sense of not being decided upon arbitrarily by people, but depending on something common to all (appropriately constituted) 'subjects.' What 'appropriately constituted' means, and whether there is any such legitimate notion here, is up for debate, but if there is one, then the fact that aesthetic judgments are 'subjective' does not necessarily stop them from being non-arbitrarily true or false -- which is what most people seem to mean by 'subjective' (just a matter of preference / opinion, nothing we must think in order to think correctly).

I appreciate the refinement of what was a rather crude use of the term “subjective.” Aside from that, I’m intrigued by the idea that an object’s “fineness” (or lack) could be determined by a kind of group or “common to all” decision made by “all (appropriately constituted) ‘subjects.’”

Do determinations of “fineness” have to be a kind of group or democratic process?

Is it possible for one single person’s perception or taste to contain more “truth-value” than another person’s or even the perceptions of a group of other people?

If I am sharing a Bordeaux with Robert Parker and I say it’s delicious and he says it’s dreck, there’s a good chance I will at least reconsider my opinion and ultimately, perhaps, admit that Parker is right and that, in this case, I like dreck. I might even say, as Geo suggested above, “This is not a fine wine; it’s dreck, but I like it.”

Geo, I’d like to receive a pdf of one of your papers (a “beginner’s model,” please; I’ve actually taught college aesthetics, but that was a while ago).

Try this : find twelve (or any number you want to pick) people that have never eaten in a fast food restaurant. Maybe Amish people as they probably do not frequent fast food places. Blindfold them and give them WC sliders and see what they think. If the majority of them like what they have eaten then WC is not as bad as some posters might think. On the other hand if the majority say they are not tasty then that might confirm the "WC is crap" side.

Why go through all that trouble? I think you might be surprised with the outcome of blindfolding 10 proclaimed WC lovers, and giving them some sliders. I know of a similar experiment that was held for a few Johnnie's Beef lovers. The results were pretty funny. I've always contended that Johnnie's beef is seriously nothing special at all until you add one of those glorious, charcoal kissed, meat tubes of delight and make it a combo.

toria wrote:Try this : find twelve (or any number you want to pick) people that have never eaten in a fast food restaurant. Maybe Amish people as they probably do not frequent fast food places. Blindfold them and give them WC sliders and see what they think. If the majority of them like what they have eaten then WC is not as bad as some posters might think. On the other hand if the majority say they are not tasty then that might confirm the "WC is crap" side.

That sounds like a cool experiment. Any Amish people interested in taking part in this, PM me.

cilantro wrote:

toria wrote:Try this : find twelve (or any number you want to pick) people that have never eaten in a fast food restaurant. Maybe Amish people as they probably do not frequent fast food places. Blindfold them and give them WC sliders and see what they think. If the majority of them like what they have eaten then WC is not as bad as some posters might think. On the other hand if the majority say they are not tasty then that might confirm the "WC is crap" side.

That sounds like a cool experiment. Any Amish people interested in taking part in this, PM me.

You make the assumption that Amish people do NOT eat at fast food. From my experiences, they do occasionally. In the Ohio communities, they prefer Burger king over McDonald's as they are bothered less by the other patrons.

Also, there is a good deal of Amish food that is well, as plain as their dress and would be considered as substandard by many of the people on the board.

For a more pure-than-Amish perspective on WC, consider this possible test group:

They might kill us before we could even serve them. On the other hand the music was really cool. I think it would be better to take these guys to the racoon feeds.

It seems to me that it is difficult to extricate the subjective and the objective from each other. I won't attempt to comment on wines, because I have absolutely no expertise (though I know what I like ).

But take a banana, for example. Objectively, it is better ripe, and some bananas have more flavor than others, so, okay, objectively arguably better. But you may like your banana at a different stage of ripeness than I do, or sweeter, etc. I suspect it is the same with most other (and more complex) foods. Some elements are objective, and some are subjective, and you can separate some of the objectivity from some of the subjectivity, but not all of it. You can objectively describe the difference, but can you then always say which is better?

Objectively you could say, this vinaigrette is slightly more acidic than that one, but within a certain range I'm not sure you could say that would always make it better (or worse). Of course, you could say (I suppose, with no actual knowledge of the matter ) that vinaigrette #1 would get you an A+ in cooking class, and vinaigrette #2 a B- -- which only means one has been created more to the current standard than the other.

By the way, if you gave 12 Amish people some very delicious Thai food, or roquefort cheese, I'm not sure they would like that either (in the world where we are assuming that Amish people have a very limited range of food which they encounter, which may actually be a figment of our imaginations). Point being, I don't think their opinion of the sliders would be determinative one way or the other.

Judy H wrote:But take a banana, for example. Objectively, it is better ripe, and some bananas have more flavor than others, so, okay, objectively arguably better. But you may like your banana at a different stage of ripeness than I do, or sweeter, etc.

You may have a great point here. I think I understand. You're saying that if I leave a slider on my kitchen counter for a week, it might taste better. I can only agree, as it couldn't possibly taste any damn worse.

toria wrote:Try this : find twelve (or any number you want to pick) people that have never eaten in a fast food restaurant. Maybe Amish people as they probably do not frequent fast food places. Blindfold them and give them WC sliders and see what they think. If the majority of them like what they have eaten then WC is not as bad as some posters might think. On the other hand if the majority say they are not tasty then that might confirm the "WC is crap" side.

Of course this wouldn't prove anything one way or another. Taste will still be relative to that culture and their experiences. (And I suspect it actually would do well in such a taste test.)

Geo wrote:I've published maybe a zillion papers (.... ok, maybe just half a dozen), about the aesthetics of taste, primarily using wine as a model/example. Geo

I wonder what wine would go best with sliders. In case someone wants to impress a date.

Pl*****ki

I'd also like to know what this means, as I can't think of any naughty words that end in ki.

Pie Lady wrote:

Geo wrote:I've published maybe a zillion papers (.... ok, maybe just half a dozen), about the aesthetics of taste, primarily using wine as a model/example. Geo

I wonder what wine would go best with sliders. In case someone wants to impress a date.

Well, the White Castle in Lafayette offers a fine selection of Barefoot Cellars wines (Merlot, Moscato, Chardonnay, and a sweet red blend), so I'd start with those. Although, if you really want to impress a date, you need to wait until Valentine's Day, of course, when White Castle offers a candlelit dinner and tableside service.

Pie Lady wrote:

Pl*****ki

I'd also like to know what this means, as I can't think of any naughty words that end in ki.

Plotnicki...

Geo wrote:... I claimed that aesthetic judgments, such as "This is a fine wine", are inextricably bound up with, and necessarily depend upon, straightforward empirical claims. For example, if "This wine has a pH = 1.2" is true, then "This is a fine wine" is false.

... What my thought is, is that the collection of empirically-necessary claims, when taken all together, delimit, or constrain, a space within which the aesthetic judgment must, take place.

Ultimately, the point I always want to end up making is that pure subjectivity in aesthetics requires that "This is a fine x" means exactly the same thing that "I like this x" means, and that seems to me to be both false and unsupportable. The former judgment must necessarily refer to the properties of the X, while for the latter it is sufficient to refer to the properties of the evaluator, for example, their toilet training.

The reason Hume and Kant are so interesting, though, is the way in which their views differ from yours. They both want to say that, while picking out features of the object might be a way towards arriving an an aesthetic judgment about the object, the judgment itself should be understood as based upon something 'subjective' and not 'objective' in these senses, namely, the subject's reaction to the object, specifically a certain kind of pleasure taken in the experience of the object. While I'm not sure if I agree with this fully, I like that they are trying to find an intermediate position on which, on the one hand, our aesthetic judgments have to make some kind of reference or have something to do with the objects we're judging about; but on the other hand, we can't justify our aesthetic judgments simply by appealing to features of the object alone, implying that 'aesthetic properties,' to the extent that there are any, are not like 'has a pH of 1.2' or 'is gold' in that they would be true independently of our experiencing and reacting to them in a particularly human way (or a way that involves perceptual experience). This is what I want to understand better -- the extent to which that view is defensible or insightful in application specifically to judgments about food.

This leads into the next point:

David Hammond wrote:Do determinations of “fineness” have to be a kind of group or democratic process? Is it possible for one single person’s perception or taste to contain more “truth-value” than another person’s or even the perceptions of a group of other people? If I am sharing a Bordeaux with Robert Parker and I say it’s delicious and he says it’s dreck, there’s a good chance I will at least reconsider my opinion and ultimately, perhaps, admit that Parker is right and that, in this case, I like dreck. I might even say, as Geo suggested above, “This is not a fine wine; it’s dreck, but I like it.”

This is a good point, and helps me clarify what I meant (or, what I was suggesting that Hume meant): Hume denies that we determine the truth or falsity of aesthetic judgments democratically, as if by putting them to a vote. Rather, he thinks there are certain standards by which we can identify critics whose judgments are, if not absolutely true or false, at least 'better or worse' with respect to other judges, and thus apt to be treated as more authoritative over what is 'right' to believe about an aesthetic object. He writes, "Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to this valuable character" (SOT, 278). Which is exactly what you are suggesting with your Hammond v. Parker scenario, and seems to go in line with many of our ordinary intuitions about aesthetic judgments -- you trust the music critic who has listened to a ton of music, can describe detailed features in, and differences among, various songs and styles; and who is trying to speak of a pleasure she takes in the music in a 'disinterested' way, for 'the general listener,' rather than trying to speak to her own particular, personal, nostalgic or guilty pleasures.

Which is what belies the blindspot in this thought experiment:

toria wrote:Try this : find twelve (or any number you want to pick) people that have never eaten in a fast food restaurant. Maybe Amish people as they probably do not frequent fast food places. Blindfold them and give them WC sliders and see what they think. If the majority of them like what they have eaten then WC is not as bad as some posters might think. On the other hand if the majority say they are not tasty then that might confirm the "WC is crap" side.

This would be like taking 12 bluegrass musicians who grew up with no records in the house, and playing them Skrillex and seeing what they think. I think Binko is right that this wouldn't prove anything one way or another. This subforum is, at least on Hume's view, precisely the place to get to the bottom of the aesthetic value of WC sliders, through a discussion among many food lovers with 'strong sense, united to delicate sentiment,' etc.

i lost track - have there been consideration of people who like WC sometimes and dislike them sometimes?
As it relates to subjectivity, the state (of mind, inebriation, whatever) does (or could) play a role in 'liking' - so that they same person could potentially like something, given the right set of conditions but without changing the item, that is otherwise abhorrent.

I appreciate the explanations Geo, because I am involved in a study about quantification of wine (I can't disclose details due to IP issues - not mine) but I think it may not be possible to quantify taste (likes/dislike) as it varies within the same person... [but doesn't mean I will stop trying]

Hey, if Netflix can do it ...

WTF is going on here?!?!?!?!?!? How dare people talk this long about food/taste on a food related forum! 7+ page threads are reserved for talk about 'Next' and "farm to table" meals. If you disagree, you're wrong...

Whats wrong with you people?

We're just killin' time, waiting for the next epic report from you, Da!!


Geo

CrazyC, I think this where we hold hands and run off the end the Chicago Harbor Lock, shouting "we love Panda Express, the world be damned!"

Binko wrote:I don't want to be TOO relativist, but, no, I wouldn't compare Kraft and Pleasant Ridge. The former, as you say, is not a cheese. Kraft is fine as a prepared cheese product, and I will not accept anything else (except maybe Velveeta) when I'm making a grilled cheese sandwich. And, no, I would never have the gall to tell somebody that the only reason they like Kraft Singles is some bit of nostalgia. That's condescending as hell..

Yep... and also false. I grew up in India, for example, and didnt eat it growing up - nostalgia thus has nothing to do with anything with me in this regard. And I *like* Kraft Singles - sometimes even just by themselves. On a burger I'll accept little else - I know everyone else here goes to Paradise Pup and thinks theyre good because of "Merkts Cheddar".. me, I have the American-cheeseburger, not the Cheddarburger - at Paradise Pup, at Poochie's, at WASC (and Ive tried the Merkts-cheddar-burger, just usually prefer the 'merigain-cheeseburger).

(And Iam not the only one, BTW.. when the mater visits India, she usually takes a few of the 24-6-pack Kraft-Singles with her - because cousins, friends etc all love em. I have a friend who spends his year between Netherlands and Germany... he takes his mother original Gouda, the best European cheeses etc, and she and the family like them all - but the 60-year-old Indian mom, who grew up with *none* of the above, still usually prefers Kraft-Singles to the rest).

c8w

ucjames wrote:

Pie Lady wrote:

Pl*****ki

I'd also like to know what this means, as I can't think of any naughty words that end in ki.

Plotnicki...

Shhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

(If you say his name three times...)

I wonder what wine would go best with sliders. In case someone wants to impress a date.

Boone's Farm Snowberry Creek