Meskin, AR and Robson, J (2015) Taste and Acquaintance. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 73 (2). pp. 127-139. ISSN 0021-8529
Abstract
The analogy between gustatory taste and critical or aesthetic taste plays a recurring role in the history of aesthetics. Our interest in this article is in a particular way in which gustatory judgments are frequently thought to be analogous to critical judgments. It appears obvious to many that to know how a particular object tastes we must have tasted it for ourselves; the proof of the pudding, we are all told, is in the eating. And it has seemed just as obvious to many philosophers that aesthetic judgment requires first-person experience. In this article we argue that, despite its initial appeal, the claim that gustatory and critical judgments are analogous in this way is mistaken. The two sorts of judgments are, as a matter of fact, similar in their epistemology, but earlier theorists have got things entirely backward—neither gustatory judgment nor aesthetic judgment requires first-hand acquaintance with their objects. Our particular focus in this article is on arguing that first-person experience is not required to know how an item of food or drink tastes. In fact, there are a wide variety of ways in which we can acquire this knowledge.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015 The American Society for Aesthetics. This is the peer reviewed version of an article published in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, which has been published in final form at https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jaac.12167. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 May 2016 12:55 |
Last Modified: | 19 Nov 2020 10:34 |
Published Version: | https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jaac.12167 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/jaac.12167 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:93615 |