Chris, you wrote:
" I would assert -- the best (or only?) true evidence for taste is the
product thereof."
You then accepted "preferences" as a "product" of "taste", and went on to
say, "Everyone has personal preferences."
Since everyone has preferences, it follows that, with your usage of 'taste',
everyone has "taste".
I then listed numerous preferences of mine that most people would say have
nothing to do with the their notion of taste. -- e.g. I prefer zippers and
velcro to buttons because I have an arthritic thumb.
You reply: "yes -- I am using the word 'taste' much more broadly than you
might -- because I don't want to categorically exclude any kind of relationship
from consideration -- especially when discussing preferences in the imaginative
arts."
You can do that, Chris, but I claim you have stretched the coverage of the
word 'taste' so broadly most literate wouldn't recognize it. I myself hold
little brief for the word 'taste' because I've noticed such a wildly disparate
and
fuzzy array of notion behind various people's usages, many of which are
mutually exclusive. (And, of course, I don't believe there is any "THE meaning
of"
'taste.) But let's examine those notions because they almost universally
contain an element that your usage leaves out. Thus your personal stipulative
definition of 'taste' -- i.e. your description of your notion -- is unlikely to
be
adopted by your readers, so every time you use the word you will not be
"understood".
The notion most people have in mind when they use the word 'taste' contains
an element of JUDGMENT: Almost anyone who might say, "Ellen has taste," would
have in mind not just that Ellen has preferences, but that they are APPROVABLE
preferences.
Example: With your usage, it's nonsense to say, "Ellen has taste. Her husband
has none at all." By you, it's illogical to say someone has "no taste",
because everyone has preferences. But of course someone who says that "means"
her
husband has no approvable preferences. And, by you, to assert that Ellen has
taste is not to say anything favorable about Ellen, since everyone has taste.
In truth, one of the reasons I recoil a bit from the common usage of 'taste'
is its suppressed but undeniable assumption that there are, in some sort of
"fact of the matter" way, right and wrong preferences.
I'd say you were backed into a bootless position by your original assertion
about what art school teachers teach. You said they "teach taste", period. If
you'd said, "They teach preferences," I myself could have no quarrel with it.
(However, you also said they teach ONLY taste, which I feel is patently
wrong. Teaching what's the best solvent to use in cleaning brushes and your
hands
is not a matter of taste under anyone's notion -- though WANTING to clean up
might by some be thought a matter of "taste". And in fact you also say
something
that suggests you also think they might teach such stuff though it isn't a
matter of "taste": "only taste is important -- since whatever technical stuff
is
required can be self-taught or picked up along the way.")
Footnote: The common, fuzzy notion of "taste" has a flaw that's more
grievously displayed in the common, fuzzy notion of "art". Both words are
commonly
used with a built-in element of approval. "Now that's art! The other thing is
rubbish."
And yet in the next breath the same person is liable to use the phrase 'bad
art'. It exposes a confused, inconsistent, fuzzy notion behind the word.
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