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.
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) 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.