The Paradox of Gustatory Taste

2.1. Intuitions regarding “Faultless Disagreement”

When thinking about taste, examples naturally come to mind of taste disagreements that contrast sharply with disagreements about empirical matters of fact. For instance, an episode of Rachael Ray’s daytime talk show featured a couple involved in a culinary debate. Here’s an excerpt from Rachael’s website summing up the conflict:

Stacie and Mark have a disagreement about pasta. He’ll only eat spaghetti, and she wants him to try rigatoni, penne ... anything other than spaghetti all the time! “I want Rachael to show him that there is a reason why you use different pastas with different sauces,” says Stacie, hoping they’ll solve their “noodle war” on the show. But when Rachael blindfolds him for a taste test, he still chooses spaghetti as his favorite! “You’re stuck eating spaghetti the rest of your days,” Rachael tells Stacie, giving her a gift certificate to Lupa, one of Mario Batali’s restaurants.[7]

Most likely, Mark and Stacie’s dispute is about many things. But whatever else it may be, their argument is also a disagreement about taste. We can easily imagine Mark and Stacie standing in their kitchen participating in the following sort of dialogue.

When discussing gustatory matters, we sometimes appeal to the familiar expression “there is no disputing about taste” (or, for those who speak Latin, “de gustibus non disputandum est”).[8] Of course, as the episode from Rachael Ray’s show reveals, people dispute about taste all of the time. Clearly, by reciting the familiar Latin phrase we do not mean to say that we do not argue about matters of taste.[9] Instead, what we seem to mean is that disagreements about taste often appear to be pointless in a way that other kinds of disagreements—disagreements about empirical matters of fact—for example do not.[10] For instance, compare Stacie and Mark’s dispute with the following fictional case of disagreement between Rachael Ray and Bobby Flay.

In (2), at least one person is mistaken in his or her judgment, either in the sense that they have been epistemically irresponsible or in the sense that they have said something false. The disagreement is in principle resolvable. There is some fact of the matter—a fact about the way the world is, in and of itself—that grounds the truth of each judgment. This objective ground determines who is mistaken. Assuming Rachael and Bobby are both rational and epistemically responsible people, the disagreement has a chance of being resolvable in practice as well as in principle. It would be relatively easy to obtain information about the relevant empirical facts in this case, and this information could serve as evidence for or against either claim. If neither Bobby nor Rachael has direct access to the right empirical data, they could always appeal to the testimony of the relevant scientific experts to help settle the dispute.

Imagine Rachael is in possession of strong evidence for her claim. If Bobby considers Rachael to be an epistemically reliable source of information, then assuming he values having true beliefs, he has an epistemic reason to change his mind about the matter. If epistemic value is linked to any sort of epistemic obligation, then not only does Bobby have a reason to change his mind, he ought to change his mind. If Bobby meets his epistemic obligations (and if he does not mind admitting defeat), he may even retract his original claim, admitting he was wrong as in (3).

At first glance, Stacie and Mark’s disagreement looks very different from Rachael and Bobby’s disagreement. To begin with, it is not clear that either Stacie or Mark is mistaken in judgment. Both individuals seem to be “faultless” to some extent, either in the sense that neither of them has done anything epistemically improper, or perhaps even in the sense that neither one of them has said anything false. It seems natural to think part of the explanation for these differences is that matters of taste are grounded in some way in subjective experience, in addition to the way the world is otherwise. Furthermore, matters of taste seem closely connected in some way to personal preference. This is evidenced by the fact that someone involved in a taste disagreement may appeal to his or her own preferences in defense of their claim. This phenomena, called, entrenchment, is demonstrated in (4).

If matters of taste are subjective in this way, then perhaps this explains why we have the intuition that neither Mark nor Stacie is mistaken in their claims. After all, how could it be possible for someone to err in a judgment of taste? Granted, there is some chance that someone could be mistaken about the content of his perceptual experience, or even that he could be mistaken about what he truly prefers. For instance, force of habit or sheer stubbornness could mask someone’s true preferences. Perhaps this is the kind of mistake Rachael is trying to rule out by administering the taste test to Mark. But once it has been established that Mark really does prefer spaghetti to any other pasta, it seems pointless to try to persuade him of the tastiness of other pastas. And of course, the taste test does not prove that Stacie was mistaken in her judgment. Perhaps if Stacie were blindfolded and asked to choose, this test would show she liked all of the pastas equally well. Along the same lines, it is hard to imagine what could count as an epistemic reason in this case—it’s hard to see what could epistemically motivate Mark or Stacie to change their minds. It certainly seems that neither Stacie nor Mark are obligated in any way to change their minds.

Given these observations, it is natural to think Stacie and Mark’s disagreement is not only in practice irresolvable but also in principle irresolvable.[11] After all, if man (or woman) is the measure of truth in matters of taste, and men (or women) differ with regard to their subjective experiences, then there is no external standard to which we can justifiably appeal in order to settle a dispute.

2.2. Contradictory Intuitions

Comparing an example like (1) with an example like (2) appears to vindicate the intuition that disagreements about taste are pointless and inconsequential. After all, the linguistic and epistemic practices of the participants in (1) look very different from the practices of the participants in (2). However, if we were to consider a wider range of examples of taste disagreements, we would find that in many cases the behavior of the participants in a taste disagreement does in some respects resemble the behavior of the participants in an empirical disagreement.

To begin with, there seem to be cases in which the conversational participants are attempting to change one another’s minds about taste. Consider this ongoing debate between Ed and Jim about the taste of beer:

Here, it looks as though both Ed and Jim are attempting to persuade each other to change positions. Furthermore, they seem to be offering some kind of evidence for their positions. We can also find examples in which the conversational participants appear to appeal to gustatory experts, as in (6), or point to a large amount of inter-subjective agreement, as in (7), in order to make their cases.

Examples such as these give us reason to think some disagreements about taste involve a persuasive aspect. Here it should also interest us that such attempts at persuasion are often successful. For instance, we can think of examples in which individuals appear to have been successfully persuaded to change their minds, sometimes to the point of issuing a retraction as in (8).

It seems that, at least in some of these cases, not only is each participant trying to change his or her interlocutor’s mind, but the participants also think that their interlocutors ought to change their minds. If that is the case, then these examples also give us reason to think some disagreements about taste may have a normative aspect as well.[13]

2.3. The Paradox

At this point we are left with a bit of a paradox, or rather, a puzzle. When we examine cases like (1) and (4), disagreements about taste seem very different from cases of empirical disagreement. In cases like (1), the participants often fail to offer much evidence for their positions or appeal to experts to resolve their disputes. The disputes appear to be faultless in some sense, and it appears as though these debates are irresolvable both in principle and in practice. And if pressed an individual in a taste disagreement may always entrench as in (4). These sorts of cases leave us with the impression that taste disagreements are rather trivial. On the other hand, when we examine other cases of taste disagreements like (5), (6), (7), and (8), we get the impression that some disagreements about taste are more similar to disagreements about empirical matters of fact than we might have thought. In these cases, the conversational participants sometimes do offer evidence for their positions—evidence that seems designed to persuade their interlocutors. They appeal to experts and to inter-subjective agreement to resolve disputes, and they sometimes proceed as if there were normative constraints on the debate. In these cases, it looks as though there is some sense in which at least one of the participants is at fault, though the fault might not be a result of falsity or epistemic irresponsibility. Furthermore, some of these disagreements are resolvable both in principle and in practice. These sorts of cases leave us with the impression that disagreements about taste are not trivial. We can call this puzzle the “Paradox of Gustatory Taste” after the Kantian “Paradox of Aesthetic Taste.”[14] The Paradox of Aesthetic Taste plays a role in Kant’s larger philosophical agenda, and as such, a full explanation of the paradox would require that we situate it within Kant’s epistemological and metaphysical framework. However, we need not do that here. The heart of the paradox is about an issue that arises independently of Kant’s other philosophical projects. The Kantian paradox essentially involves explaining how aesthetic judgments, such as judgments about beauty, can be both objective and subjective—a seemingly impossible task. Likewise, the “Paradox of Gustatory Taste” involves explaining a seemly contradictory set of intuitions regarding taste claims.

Here a note on the paradox itself is in order. To begin with, The Paradox of Taste—be it gustatory or aesthetic—is not a paradox in the formal sense. Rather, it is a problem of how to understand two contradictory data sets. Second, there are several candidates for what counts as data in this discussion. And there are several possibilities for what kind of solution is called for in the explanation. The Kantian version of the paradox refers to judgments of taste, not intuitions regarding linguistic examples. His aim was to articulate how judgments of pure beauty—such as judgments of natural beauty—could be based on “sentiment” and yet demonstrate “universal validity” in the sense of having some kind of normative force. In other words, when we call something beautiful, we do so on the basis of feelings of pleasure, and yet we expect everyone ought to agree with us. Although Kant sometimes used language as a guide to elicit intuitions regarding judgments of taste, his ultimate goal was to offer an analysis of judgments of beauty not judgments of “beauty.” One contemporary interpretation of the paradox of taste is as a puzzle about how judgments of beauty can be grounded. In other words, how judgments of taste can be based on reasons. For instance Roger Scruton characterizes the paradox this way:

Scruton’s claim is that the reasons that support judgments of taste are compelling, but not necessarily rationally compelling. This is because one can reject such reasons without being irrational. The puzzle involves how judgments of beauty can be grounded without appealing exclusively to epistemic norms.

The paradox of gustatory taste can be articulated without reference to linguistic examples, by pointing to our intuitions about judgments of beauty, describing our behavior regarding beautiful items, or even offering a list of philosophical “platitudes” regarding gustatory taste (as Scruton does when he articulates a collection of platitudes regarding beauty). However, I’ve chosen to employ linguistic examples for two reasons. First, as I mentioned in the introduction to this paper, linguistic examples of taste disagreements often play a substantial role in the contemporary debate regarding the semantics of predicates of personal taste such as “tasty.” If I can show that such examples can be accommodated without reference to a semantic theory, than it ought to diminish the role of these examples in semantic theorizing. Second, I assume that one way of discovering what sorts of reasons we offer is to consider our actual or possible linguistic practices in taste disagreements. Granted, it could always be that our linguistic behavior has no connection with the potential grounds of gustatory disagreement. However, it would be psychologically odd if it turned out our linguistic practices had no connection whatsoever with either our implicit or explicit beliefs about the grounds of taste disagreements. For this reason, I take linguistic examples to offer a prima facie guide to what factors drive and potentially adjudicate our taste disagreements.

3.1. Subjectivity and Error

The first step in resolving the Paradox of Gustatory Taste involves rethinking some of our original assumptions about the nature of taste disagreements. At first it may seem natural to explain our intuitions about example (1) by making the following assumptions: taste disagreements are faultless because matters of taste depend on the subjective experiences of the individual—something about which the individual cannot be in error. They are irresolvable because there is no fact of the matter as to who is right in a taste disagreement. Accordingly, there is no such thing as evidence or experts in a taste disagreement. Although this sort of explanation might seem fitting for (1) and (4), it leaves cases like (5), (6), (7), and (8) mysterious. In that case, it may be worth challenging the assumption that the subjectivity of taste claims precludes an individual from being in error about a taste judgment. Likewise, it is worth questioning the assumption that there is never any fact of the matter as to who is right in a disagreement about taste.

Before I proceed, I want to take a moment to discuss what it means to say that matters of taste are subjective and to discuss why one might think the subjectivity of taste precludes error in taste claims. I will then argue that the real worry about the subjectivity of taste comes from the assumption that evaluative uses of taste claims are not connected to an objective set of gustatory norms.

3.2. Subjectivity and Sensations

Much debate occurs about the nature of subjectivity and about how to distinguish objective matters from “merely” subjective matters. One way of defining objectivity is to say objective matters are those that depend somehow on the way the world is. As we have seen, it is natural, though not uncontroversial, to think that disagreements about empirical matters of fact, such as the one depicted in (2), are objective in this way. How should we characterize subjectivity? Since our goal is to make sense of a variety of taste disagreements, we should start out by characterizing subjectivity as neutrally as possible. At a minimum, it seems our intuitions about the subjectivity of taste require that matters of taste depend somehow on the individual. Here our characterization of subjectivity ought to allow for the possibility that matters of taste also depend somehow on the way the world is outside of the individual. For now, we can adopt the following characterization of subjectivity:

We can think of a variety of ways in which matters of taste might “depend on the individual.” At the very least, we might think the properties involved in taste depend on the individual in the sense that these properties are response-dependent. Very roughly, response-dependent properties are powers of the object to reliably produce (under the right conditions) certain kinds of responses in individuals who are sensitive to them.[15] If the properties involved in taste are response-dependent, then we might want to make the following assumption:

By “taste sensations” I have in mind physiological sensations such as sweet, bitter, and so on, that arise when an individual’s taste receptors are excited by substances like sucrose, quinine, and the like.[17] I will also use “taste sensations” more broadly to cover experiences of flavor, which results from things like post-nasal olfaction in addition to literal taste;[18] and to cover mouth feel, which is the result of an item’s texture.

Is response-dependence responsible for the intuition that one cannot be in error about matters of taste? One could argue there is no fact of the matter as to whether something is truly bitter because sensations of bitterness may vary depending on the physiological makeup of the individual perceiving them. However, I think intuitions about the faultlessness of taste disagreements are not primarily generated from the fact that taste sensations can vary from person to person. After all, human beings have similar enough taste sensations that we usually judge bitterness, sweetness, and the like on the basis of an inter-subjectively determined standard. Although the status of properties like bitterness is controversial, we can set it aside for now. The real worry about the subjectivity of taste comes from something deeper than worries about the response-dependence of taste sensations.

3.3. The Real Worry about Subjectivity

The subjective experience of taste involves more than just taste sensations. We have a whole host of responses and reactions to those sensations, and to the items that give rise to the sensations. We can think of the relationship between the sensations caused by gustatory items and the responses and reactions that we have to those items and sensations as underlying a sort of gustatory point of view, what I will call a taste perspective.

Among the responses and reactions involved in a taste perspective are things like taste preferences: likes and dislikes with regard to taste. They may also include things like taste evaluations: beliefs or attitudes about which gustatory items or experiences are better or worse than others. The real worry about the subjectivity of taste comes from the fact that matters of taste are somehow grounded in taste perspectives. One version of that worry begins with the idea that evaluative judgments about taste are grounded in our taste preferences. It is then assumed that it is impossible for an individual to be mistaken about her preferences because individuals have perfect access to information about their own likes and dislikes. In that case, it is impossible to be in error about our preferences. Furthermore, it is assumed there are no further grounds for what preferences we ought to have. If this is true, then it is impossible to be in error about which preferences we ought to have.

There is reason to think an individual could be mistaken about which gustatory items he truly prefers. For instance, it might be that Jim thinks he likes the taste of Guinness for itself when really he likes to be seen drinking a more expensive beer.[19] In that case, perhaps the purpose of some taste disagreements is to discover what an individual’s true preferences are—to separate out preferences that are based on the way the object tastes from the preferences that are based on things like social pressures or advertising appeal. However, the worry remains that, once a person’s true preferences have been established, no right or wrong answer exists as to which preferences she ought to have and no substantive reason exists for her to change her mind about her preferences. In other words, there do not exist gustatory norms that govern gustatory disagreements in the way that there exist epistemic norms that govern empirical disagreements.

3.4. Beyond Descriptions: The Persuasive and Normative Aspect of Disagreement

If we assume that matters of taste are subjective in the sense that there is no right answer as to what tastes one ought to have, then it is natural to assume that the purpose of disagreements could only be to express or describe ones preferences (or the preferences of one’s conversational group.) Certainly, expressing or describing our preferences or mapping out a common preferential ground must be part of the reason for engaging in taste disagreements. And perhaps in many cases of taste disagreement it is the sole purpose. After all, there will be many cases in which it is not clear to the conversational participants what preferences they have in common, and there are many practical decisions that rely on commonality. However, if discovering the tastes of the conversational participants were the sole purpose of a disagreement about taste, we would expect these disagreements to terminate once the conversational participants knew where each of them stood with regard to their tastes. And yet, it is not difficult to imagine cases of ongoing disagreement such as (9) in which the disagreement continues long after the participants have fully cataloged the tastes of the group.

Furthermore, claiming the goal of taste disagreements is merely descriptive or expressive will not help us explain taste disagreements in which it appears the conversational participants are attempting to change one another’s minds. Call this the persuasive aspect of taste disagreement in order to distinguish it from the expressive or descriptive aspect. If the point of taste disagreements were for the participants to give each other information about their own tastes or to discover what tastes the participants had in common, there would be no call for the participants to offer evidence in defense of their tastes. Likewise, there would be no need to call upon experts to settle the dispute, because each person is more or less an expert with regard to how things taste to him or her at any given moment. Finally, if the goal is merely to describe or express, then we would not expect to see a normative aspect to disagreements—cases such as (10) and (11) in which it looks like the conversational participants think their interlocutor ought to change his or her mind.[20]

Cases such as these make it clear that while part of the point of disagreeing about taste may be to express or describe taste experiences, sometimes there is more to it than that. There is sometimes a persuasive and even a normative aspect to taste disagreements as well.

4.1. Taste Disagreements and Coordination

What else could we be doing in a taste disagreement besides describing and expressing our tastes (or the tastes of the conversational participants)? One suggestion is that in some cases we are also trying to coordinate our tastes. More specifically, I think we are trying to coordinate our taste perspectives, either by attempting to make our dispositions more similar to those of our interlocutors or by trying to convince our interlocutors to cultivate dispositions that are more similar to our own. The process of coordination is something disagreements about taste have in common with disagreements about empirical matters of fact. Often, part of what the individuals in empirical disagreements are trying to do is to coordinate their epistemic perspectives.[21]

When I say that part of what we are trying to do in taste disagreements is to coordinate our taste perspectives, I do not mean to say that coordination itself is the ultimate goal of taste disagreements. Perhaps coordination has some value in and of itself. If this is so, then there will be cases of taste disagreements and empirical disagreements in which coordination is the sole purpose of disagreement. However, in most cases some reason must exist for coordination, even if it is purely pragmatic. In these cases, coordination is a means to obtaining some further value, and not itself the ultimate goal of the disagreement.

4.2. Is Taste Coordination Possible?

Before we discuss the value of taste coordination, we should ask whether taste coordination is even possible. Assuming that taste perspectives involve dispositions, we need to ask whether it is possible for us to alter our responses or reactions to a gustatory item. I am assuming that our responses and reactions to a gustatory item include not only experiences but beliefs and evaluations as well. So, although I have used the phrase “change of mind,” we should take this phrase to include changes in experiences as well as changes in beliefs or judgments.

There are a variety of ways to influence a person’s taste perspective. To begin with, our reactions and responses depend in part on our taste sensations. Given the sensation assumption, taste sensations depend on a number of things, including the properties of the item being tasted, native physical and psychological makeup (what I will call natural sensitivity), the conditions under which an item is tasted (what I will call the taste conditions), and palate development (what I will call gustatory training or gustatory education). We have limited, if any, control over the properties of an item or over our natural sensitivity. Our natural sensitivity can change over time, but not usually in ways that are under our control.[22] For instance, we often become less sensitive as we grow older. However, we have some degree of control over taste conditions and over gustatory training. For instance, with regard to environmental control, the temperature of an item can affect our taste sensations. We may experience more flavor when an item is brought to room temperature than we would have if it were chilled. Items we have tasted immediately before tasting that particular item can also affect our taste sensations. With regard to gustatory training, there is no shortage of books and articles that explain how to develop our palates.[23] These texts encourage us to heighten our sensitivity or awareness by paying attention to what we taste, tasting often, tasting broadly, and so on.

Of course, there are many other ways to influence someone’s responses or reactions to an item that do not necessarily involve changing her taste sensations. For instance, each person has an experiential and doxastic background relating to taste. Your gustatory background, as I’ll call it, includes things such as experiences relating to gustatory items, memories or feelings you have associated with a gustatory item, beliefs about the quality or origin of the item, your contextual relation to a gustatory item, and so on. Your gustatory background affects your reactions and responses to a gustatory item. For instance, positive associations with an item, such as a happy childhood memory, might enhance your enjoyment of the item. On the other hand, negative associations with an item, such as a memory of sickness after eating this item, might decrease your enjoyment of the item or even foster disgust. Likewise, in a context in which someone has a limited selection of gustatory items or is especially hungry, an item might give more pleasure than it would if it were tasted in a context in which someone had a large selection available or was sufficiently sated. The beliefs we have about an item can also affect our reactions and responses. For instance, discovering a dish was made of rat intestines might alter a person’s responses.

It is also possible that simply hearing about other people’s preferences or evaluations could cause you to alter your own preferences or evaluations to some extent. For example, a study by Plassmann, O’Doherty, Shiv, and Rangel (2008) appears to show that information regarding marketing factors, such as price, can affect neural representations of perceived pleasantness in wine drinkers. When participants were told, contrary to fact, that the wine they were drinking was more expensive (a factor most wine drinkers associate with higher quality), they reported having a more positive subjective experience of the wine. More interestingly, MRI scans of the participants showed an increase in the blood-oxygen-level-dependent activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex—the area thought to be responsible for encoding experienced pleasure during experiential tasks. Although the study does not actually prove that information regarding the price of wine affects how much pleasure a wine drinker experiences, it does suggest external information can affect our subjective experiences of an object. If that is the case, than not only could the testimony of gustatory experts provide a reason to alter our preferences; simply hearing such testimony might itself alter our preferences to some extent.

Linguistically, there are many ways to persuade someone to change their tastes. Sometimes we may try to change a person’s tastes directly by changing the way things taste to them. For instance, sometimes someone can get you to change your mind about the way something tastes by getting you to notice certain properties of an item or experience you hadn’t noticed before. The next time you taste the item, you may have a different taste experience. On the basis of this new experience, you may change your position on the tastiness of the item. This seems to be what is going on in (12).

Sometimes we may try to change someone’s tastes indirectly by changing the person’s beliefs about what his or her taste experience ought to be.[24] Individuals will retract their previous claim even without acquiring a new taste experience. For instance, sometimes it seems appropriate for someone to retract a claim on the basis of testimony alone. In (13), Helen and Jeff are at a wine tasting put on by the local wine-and-spirits emporium. Helen is a connoisseur, while Jeff has very little experience with wine.

If someone is an expert, then merely hearing that this person disagrees with you can give you reason to change your mind or to retract what you said. This can be true even in cases in which your own taste experience of the world has not changed.[25] In certain cases, testimonial evidence can be made even stronger if a number of testifiers agree on a subject. This explains why, in (14), Donovan should refer to the opinions of people outside the conversation when he argues with Jeff.

4.3. Why Coordinate?

Now that we have explored whether it is possible to coordinate our taste perspectives, we can return to inquiring about the purpose of coordination.[26] What kind of value might we be trying to achieve by coordinating our taste perspectives? It may help to start by considering the purpose of epistemic coordination, and asking whether gustatory coordination has a similar end. John MacFarlane offers the following suggestion regarding disagreements involving epistemic modality—epistemic uses of “might” and “must”:

Whose epistemic picture of the world is it in our interest to share? The answer depends on what our interests are. For instance, it might be in our interest to share a picture of the world because it would help us to get along better, to integrate with a social group, to achieve financial gain, and so on. In these cases, pragmatic value determines whose picture of the world it is in our interest to adopt. In some cases where pragmatic value is at issue, it may not even matter whose picture of the world we adopt so long as we share a picture of the world. Consider a case like (15), in which Paul and Meghan are utterly exhausted from arguing about football.

It may be of great pragmatic value for Paul to concede to Meghan, even to the point of changing his belief. However, provided that it would be just as easy for Meghan to change her mind, then this pragmatic goal might be accomplished just as well if Meghan coordinated her beliefs with Paul’s—regardless of the facts. In this case, marital harmony is motivating coordination—pursuing the truth might even get in the way of achieving that goal. It is clear, then, that pragmatic value can offer us some reason to change our minds in certain cases of empirical disagreement. However, as MacFarlane seems to suggest, a more objective reason exists for epistemic coordination. In many cases, it is only in our interest to coordinate our picture of the world with that of our interlocutor, so long as our interlocutor has a more accurate view of the world than we do. Consider (16), in which Stacie and Mark coordinate their beliefs about the direction of the finish line during an orienteering competition.

Assume the finish is actually to the south. If Stacie and Mark want to finish the race, then it is not in either of their interests to share Stacie’s picture of the world. This is because in this case, although there is a pragmatic value involved (i.e. , finishing the race) obtaining it depends on obtaining a kind of epistemic: having true beliefs about the location of the finish line. Appealing to certain kinds of pragmatic value might help explain our behavior in certain kinds of disagreements about empirical matters of fact—cases such as (16), for instance. However, it is the pursuit of epistemic value that best explains the persuasive and normative aspects of certain disagreements. If empirical disagreements are most often driven by the pursuit of truth, then it makes sense we would use epistemic norms to determine what counts as evidence in a disagreement, who counts as an expert, and who is right.

5.1. Questions about the Value of Taste Coordination

Is gustatory coordination driven by the same sorts of values as empirical disagreements, and hence regulated by the same sets of norms? So as not to assume too much, we can call the kind of value that could motivate taste coordination gustatory value, to distinguish it for now from other kinds of value. Part of our project will be to discover the nature of gustatory value and how it relates to other kinds of values.[27]

The value of taste coordination does not seem to be just about gaining knowledge of the world outside of our taste perspectives—though it may be about that too. Nor does gustatory value seem reducible to gaining knowledge of our own perspectives. Granted, we may want to have true beliefs about the world and about ourselves, even when it comes to taste. However, there seems to be some further reason in gustatory disagreements why we are motivated to have accurate beliefs of the world and ourselves. This is evidenced by the fact that disagreements about taste persist long after the disputants are clear on the relevant empirical and subjective facts. In (10) for instance, not only is Mac interested in presenting Robert with “the facts” about the tastiness of a real Philly Cheese Steak, he won’t be content until Robert learns to appreciate it as well. In a case like this, Mac hopes that a change in Robert’s belief will be action guiding—that a change in belief will lead to a change in perspective.

In that case, gustatory value does not seem to be reducible to epistemic value, although we can leave it open as to whether having more true beliefs about the world could be a means for obtaining gustatory value. Nonetheless, we still make use of epistemic norms in gustatory coordination—we appeal to experts, cite evidence, and so on. Could it be then that gustatory value is connected with a kind of prudential value and prudential norms determine rightness, evidence, and expertise? Certainly. There are all sorts of practical reasons we could have for coordinating our tastes. Here are just a few: it could save arguing over what to have for dinner, it could help us fit in culturally or socially with certain groups, it could even help us learn to tolerate a loved one’s cooking! While these are all legitimate and compelling reasons to coordinate tastes, appealing to these sorts of reasons won’t help us explain why, in many cases, one way of coordinating a taste perspective seems better than another way of coordinating. Consider (17) and (18).

Setting aside pragmatic reasons like social acceptance or financial concerns, we can ask, does the connoisseur have just as much reason to change her tastes as the student has to change his? Will Phil benefit just as much from changing his tastes, as Ed will from changing his? If the answer to these questions is “no,” then this points to there being a more objective source of gustatory value than the situation-based values I listed earlier. Of course, gustatory reasons and pragmatic reasons may come into conflict with one another. In claiming that there exists a more objective source of gustatory value that can guide coordination, I am not ruling out that there can be cases in which pragmatic reasons “trump” the more objective reasons. For instance, if Phil loses his job and can only afford campus food, it may be in his interest to develop a taste for fish sticks. Likewise, if the student is worried about being made fun of by his fellow undergraduates for drinking a “snooty” wine, then perhaps he has reason not to develop a taste for it. However, the real question is whether there are reasons for coordinating one way or the other that do not rely on idiosyncratically determined types of pragmatic value. If there are, then although we can still make use of prudential values in explaining part of the motivation for taste coordination, adding a more objective source of value will give us a more unified explanation of the normative dimension of these cases.[28] In the following sections I will present a theory of the purpose of disagreement that relies on a more objective source of gustatory value. I will then briefly articulate how this theory helps resolve the Paradox of Gustatory Taste.

5.2. Aesthetic Value

Drawing on Hume’s essay On the Standard of Taste (1875), Peter Railton (1998) offers a theory of the grounds of evaluative aesthetic judgments that can help us discover a more objective source of gustatory value. Railton speaks mainly about aesthetic taste—he focuses on beauty rather than tastiness—but his views about the nature of aesthetic value are easily applicable to gustatory taste.[29] Railton argues there are real, objective properties of certain objects in the world that reliably cause certain kinds of aesthetic experiences in us. He calls the properties that cause these experiences in us the beauty-making characteristics, and he calls the kinds of objects that have these properties beautiful objects. What kinds of experiences do beauty-making characteristics give rise to in the individuals who are sensitive to them? Railton thinks the answer is intrinsically sought-after experiences.

Which experiences are intrinsically sought after? Assuming that a more basic reason exists as to why some experiences are intrinsically sought after, a likely candidate for the source of their desirability is pleasure. Of course, it is debatable whether there is such a thing as an intrinsically sought-after experience, and also whether all and only intrinsically sought-after things are pleasurable. For our purposes, we will make use of the notion of pleasure while keeping in mind that, in the end, we may want to appeal to something broader. In addition, we ought to think of pleasure or intrinsic desirability as a source (or partial source) of aesthetic value while remaining neutral on whether it is the only (or complete) source of gustatory value.[30]

Railton, borrowing again from Hume, claims that some objects naturally fit with our faculties in such a way as to cause us pleasure. He calls this relation a match (1998: 67). Although pleasure is a subjective experience of the individual, the relation between the object and the individual is objective. According to Railton’s view, there is a fact of the matter as to whether an object matches human sentiment. At this point it seems natural to ask, “If aesthetic value is grounded in a certain match between the properties of objects and human experience, then why are matters of taste debatable? After all, isn’t each of us an expert when it comes to knowing what pleases us?” According to Railton, having expertise in what pleases us, as individuals, may not be enough to qualify any of us as aesthetic experts. This is because aesthetic value is not grounded in what is pleasurable for the individual alone. It is grounded in matches for human beings in general. Not only is aesthetic value grounded in something broader than individual pleasure, it is also grounded in something more substantial than momentary pleasure. Railton elaborates on what he calls a field of aesthetic value:

According to Railton, the items that make for excellent matches are the sort of things that can act as reliable sources of pleasure. These are pleasures that are common across time and culture, pleasures we do not outgrow as we develop and refine our sensibilities. Speaking of beauty-making characteristics, Railton explains, “These features engage our sensory and cognitive capacities and our sentiments in ways we find intrinsically enjoyable, the more deeply and intensely so upon greater familiarity and broader experience” (1998: 76).

Railton thinks any of us, or even many of us, could be misled about what things robustly or durably match our sensibilities.[31] This kind of error has a variety of causes. For instance, we may lack a natural sensitivity, we may be overly influenced by aesthetic trends, or we may lack experience or understanding. However, some people are less likely to err in these ways. These expert judges, as Railton calls them, are especially good at judging which things will be robust and durable sources of pleasure. How does one become an expert judge? In part, expertise has to do with how naturally sensitive one is to beauty-making characteristics. But it is also a matter of developing one’s sensibilities by undergoing a kind of aesthetic training. Those who are aesthetically well trained have had extensive practice with aesthetic items; they have built a comparative base by experiencing a wide range of items. Finally, being an aesthetic expert involves diligence in following certain epistemic principles. For instance, being an expert judge means that you utilize your natural sensitivity and training when making evaluative aesthetic judgments. Furthermore, because aesthetic value is grounded in something broader than what is pleasing for an individual or a culture, Railton thinks that the judgments of aesthetic experts must be free from personal, cultural, and sociological biases.

Although experts are more likely to be in tune with what is robustly and durably pleasurable to human beings, they are not infallible. However, when experts coordinate their beliefs, they increase their reliability. Perhaps it is because of this phenomenon that Railton follows Hume (1875) in saying the “joint verdict” of expert judges determines an independent standard of aesthetic goodness, or standard of aesthetic taste. However, rather than interpreting Hume as saying that a standard of taste is determined by the joint verdict of expert judges, Railton takes Hume to be arguing that the joint verdict of expert judges serves as a guide to or evidence of an objective standard of taste.[32]

While some things make for better matches than others, in some cases it is metaphysically indeterminate whether one item is a better match than another. This is in part because matches are, according to Railton, genre-specific to some extent. So while the music of Coltrane and the music of Beethoven are both beautiful, it could be that neither one of them provides a better overall fit with human faculties.

5.3. Gustatory Value: A Major Motivation for Coordination

We can straightforwardly apply much of Railton’s theory of aesthetic value to help understand the nature of gustatory value. In order to fully explain our behavior in taste disagreements, we will need to rethink some of Railton’s account. I will discuss modifications momentarily, but for now we will look at how Railton’s account can help us begin to answer questions about the purpose of coordinating our taste perspectives.

To begin with, the idea of a match between human sentiment and certain items in the world is just as plausible for gustatory taste, if not more so, as it is for beauty.

Here we might recognize gustatory parallels for beauty-making characteristics and beautiful objects: tasty-making characteristics and tasty objects.[33] By possessing tasty-making characteristics, tasty objects fit with our faculties in such a way as to cause us gustatory pleasure.[34] The suggestion that the source of aesthetic value has something to do with intrinsically sought-after experiences carries over well to the gustatory case. If gustatory value is linked to intrinsically sought-after experiences, in particular to gustatory pleasure, this helps explain the intuition that tastiness is closely connected with our gustatory preferences and evaluations. If there were a standard of gustatory taste that mirrored Railton’s standard of aesthetic taste, this could help us explain why it sometimes seems that one way of coordinating a taste perspective is better than another. If there is an independent standard of gustatory taste, then it makes sense to defer to those whose tastes are more in line with this standard—those with more gustatory expertise. Of course, some people could care less about following expert advice. Is there something incoherent or irrational about the behavior of such people? Railton thinks there is not. He explains that their mistake is more like a missed opportunity than an epistemic error.

Putting all of this together, we see how Railton’s framework can help us begin to understand why it is sometimes in our interest to change our tastes. One very broad reason is that, in certain cases, failing to do so could cause us to miss out on an important source of gustatory value: gustatory pleasure.[35]^, [36]

6.1. General versus Local Matches

As Railton acknowledges, we might be skeptical that there is, in fact, enough similarity between human beings, even among those with similar sensibilities and training, to allow for an actual field of aesthetic, or for our purposes gustatory, value. But even if there is enough similarity to underlie the existence of general matches, as I will call them, they play at most only a partial role in motivating taste coordination. There seem to be many cases of persuasive disagreement in which one or more of the participants are aware that their preferences are both idiosyncratic and in conflict with the standards set by expert judges. Consider (19), for example.

If disagreements about taste were merely attempts to put someone in touch with items that could serve as robust and durable sources of pleasure to human beings in general, then Jacob’s claim would be odd because he knows his tastes are in conflict with those of the general experts. To account for these kinds of cases, it will be useful to recognize matches grounded in individual sentiment as opposed to general human sentiment. This is the type of sentiment Hume (1875) called peculiar sentiment. We can call these sorts of matches, local matches to distinguish them from the general matches of Railton’s account.[37]

Along the same lines, we should distinguish general gustatory experts from local gustatory experts.[38]

General gustatory matches determine a general gustatory standard of taste, and it is the general experts who are most knowledgeable about or sensitive to that standard. However, local matches determine a local standard of gustatory taste, and local experts are most knowledgeable about or sensitive to that standard. Which standard of taste it is appropriate to appeal to in order to settle a dispute will depend on which kind of match, if any, the disagreement aims at.

6.2. The Relativity of Matches

The second set of modifications to Railton’s account concerns the relativity of matches. As we have already discussed, Railton considers matches to be relative to a species and to a genre.[42] However, we may also want to recognize additional relativizing factors such as contextual features. Things that make for a good match in one context might not make for a good match in another context.[43] I will leave open for now what sort of contextual features matter for matches while mentioning two possibilities. One is location. For example, in the context of a picnic lunch, Kool-Aid might be a reasonably good match, whereas in the context of a chic restaurant, Kool-Aid might not be as good a match. Another contextual feature is availability. In the context of a gastro pub in which there are a large number of beers on tap, Budweiser might not be a very good match. However, at a local pizza joint with only a few beers on tap, Budweiser might be a relatively good match. Much more needs to be said about relativity with regard to context, but these examples give us an idea of the role contextual factors might play in determining the goodness of matches. If it turns out that either local or general matches are relative to a variety of factors, we should require that tasters, especially gustatory experts, take these factors into account when making their judgments.

6.3. Determining the Goodness of a Match

The final set of modifications to Railton’s view concerns what determines the goodness of matches. The way I have interpreted Railton, good matches are determined by the robustness and durability of the pleasure connected to them. Robust and durable pleasures are those that become more intense the more familiar we are with an item and the more experience we have with gustatory items in general.[44] In the gustatory case, it is tempting to interpret robustness and durability as meaning we would never reach a point of satiety with regard to an item. It is hard to believe there could be any items, no matter how pleasant, that we would not grow tired of if we experienced them in excess. However, this is not the way we ought to think about robustness and durability. To make things easier, we can withdraw the requirement that pleasure increase in intensity. The idea behind robustness and durability seems to be this: as time goes by, we inevitably gain more gustatory experience and, as a result, some items lose their luster as we expand our horizons. On the other hand, some items (provided we have not gone beyond the point of satiation) continue to please us, and may even please us more as time goes by. Let's call these items reliable sources of pleasure. The way I have characterized reliability it is a property of the object tasted and not of the match between the object and the individual. Reliable sources of pleasure are those that can be relied upon to yield consistent (or increasing) pleasures the more familiarity we have with that particular item and with gustatory items in general. They are sources of pleasures that are unaffected by passing fad or fancy.

7.1. Faultlessness Revisited

Before I offer my solution to the paradox of gustatory taste, I would like to take a moment to clarify the notion of faultlessness in a taste disagreement. As a start, the term “fault” can be confusing as it can refer either to being in error or to being responsible for making that error (blameworthiness). As I will demonstrate shortly, either sense of fault may surface in a taste disagreement, sometimes in ways that make it difficult to differentiate between the two. Furthermore, in any sort of disagreement—taste or otherwise—a variety of errors or normative violations might be in play at any given time. For instance, in disagreements of any kind we often employ the notion of factual error. A person makes a factual error when they believe something false and a semantic error when they say something false.[45] Depending on what the norms of assertion are, an individual might be assertorically blameworthy for uttering something false. Additionally, she may have come to have the false belief and to utter a false statement because at one point she committed an epistemic error. A person could make an epistemic error by forming an epistemically unwarranted judgment—for instance by forming her belief on the basis of inadequate evidence or by disregarding evidence such as expert testimony. Depending on which epistemic norms are true, the individual might then also be epistemically blameworthy for her belief. There may even be kinds of pragmatic errors—errors one makes when one violates a relevant prudential norm (providing there are such things). Disagreements might also involve moral errors, and depending on what constitutes moral norms, individuals involved in a disagreement may be morally blameworthy for their actions, beliefs, or even their statements.[46] And most importantly for our purposes, we can now add the notion of gustatory error and gustatory blameworthiness—notions that are grounded in the violation of gustatory norms.[47]

Any or all of these notions of error or blame might be involved in a taste disagreement. A person may violate an epistemic norm by unwarrantedly gathering information about what her true tastes are or should be. This may lead to a gustatory error when she fails to change her tastes in light of expert recommendation. However, in doing so she might escape making a pragmatic error if her failing to change her tastes is socially valuable in some way.[48] Which notion of fault and blame is the “correct” one in taste disagreements? It depends. It is my view that context usually determines which notion of error or blame is relevant in each situation by determining the topic of conversation (though I will not argue that here). The fact the conversational topic can change the sense of fault at issue in a taste disagreement (or even whether someone is “at fault” at all), should make us question whether there really is a unified sense of “faultlessness” in play in the linguistic examples that trouble many relativists and contextualists. Nonetheless, I do believe there exists one particular kind of situation that is the main cause of the intuitions of faultlessness of the sort many relativists and contextualists feel compelled to explain. These are situations in which taste disagreements are irresolvable. I call these gustatory standoffs, which I define as follows:

In disagreements that are in-principle irresolvable, there is no fact of the matter as to who is right. In these cases it is metaphysically indeterminate which of the conversational participants is in error. In other disagreements there is a fact of the matter as to who is right, but for various reasons the conversational participants cannot come to a consensus. These reasons may include stubbornness, ignorance, epistemic peerhood, and the like.[49] Such disagreements, though resolvable in principle are irresolvable in practice.

As we will see, focusing on resolvability rather than faultlessness offers us a clearer route to explaining the Paradox of Gustatory taste. It is my view that by invoking the various motivations for taste coordination—including gustatory value—we can explain both resolvability and irresolvability in taste disagreements. Additionally, we can do this without an appeal to any particular semantic theory, as I will now demonstrate.

7.2. Resolvable Taste Disagreement Explained

Many substantive taste disagreements—disagreements in which the participants appeal to evidence and cite expertise—are in principle resolvable. Furthermore, many substantive taste disagreements are resolvable in practice as well.[50] It is because of this that retraction in taste disagreements is sometimes appropriate. Both descriptive and normative taste disagreements can be substantive. The kind of value at issue in the disagreement determines what sort of evidence is offered, who are the experts, and whether retraction is appropriate. Since gustatory value is the least familiar kind of value, I will mostly focus on showing how this sort of value can explain evidence, expertise, and retraction in the following section. And along the way, I will mention the role other kinds of value—epistemic value, for instance—can play in explaining these phenomena in taste disagreements.

7.3. Irresolvable Taste Disagreement Explained

If there are gustatory experts, and we have a reason to defer to these experts, then why are some disagreements irresolvable either in principle or in practice? I have tried to demonstrate several ways in which disagreements about taste can have a purpose, even if matters of taste are subjective. However, not all disagreements about taste do have a purpose. What makes some disagreements about taste worthwhile while others are pointless? Again, the answer to this question takes us back to issues pertaining to the notion of resolvability—in particular to gustatory standoffs.

7.4. Offering Evidence as a Way to Determine Resolvability

So far, I’ve explained purposeful and pointless cases of taste disagreements by dividing them into disagreements that are either resolvable or irresolvable. But, can taste disagreements, which are irresolvable in principle, ever be substantive? In other words, do the participants in irresolvable taste disagreements ever offer evidence, appeal to experts, and so on? The answer is yes. One major reason for offering evidence in a disagreement about taste is to establish whether the disagreement is in principle resolvable. Because there are so many reasons a taste disagreement can be irresolvable, determining resolvability can itself be a substantive task. Consider, for example, a case in which the participants in a taste disagreement offer evidence to help them determine whether there is a unique local expert. To do this, they must determine whether the conditions for local expertise have been met, and this process can be difficult. For instance, the participants must discover how similarly they are built to one another, and how similar are their gustatory backgrounds. Once these preliminaries (among others) have been established, the participants can work to establish who is in a better position to detect local matches. Likewise, there may be cases in which the participants are trying to determine whether other conditions for resolvability have been met, such as the specificity of species, genre, or context.

Other examples in which individuals offer evidence to determine resolvability include cases in which it isn’t clear whether both participants have the same conversational aims. For instance, one individual may have a descriptive aim while the other has a normative aim. Likewise, one person may have pragmatic norms in mind while the other is guided by gustatory norms. Similarly, one individual could be trying to establish the tastes of the group while the other is interested in the taste of a particular individual.[59] In that case, even the irresolvable cases of disagreement can be substantive. Perhaps, then, the only cases that truly deserve the label “simple” are ones in which the sole purpose of the disagreement is for the participants to express their preferences, or to engage in some sort of social game. Certainly such cases exist, but I think it’s better to say such activities only resemble disagreements, since there is nothing that the participants are debating about.