Your standard (I'd say outdated) definitions do not
account for the mixture of feeling in any judgment,
even to the point of directing it against "reason".
This is the big news in Damasio and other
neurologists' findings. Now it seems we can't be
rational without a heavy dose of irrational feeling.
The reverse is also true. Clinical studies show that
the loss of cognititive function affecting "reasoning"
and/or "feeling" impairs judgment, often severely.
That implies that the neat hierarchical placement of
judgment above taste is probably dissolved. That's
why I can't separate judgement from taste -- they are
two sides of the same coin, to use a metaphor to
embody what can't be objectified otherwise!)
WC
--- Michael Brady <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Apr 12, 2008, at 10:08 AM, William Conger wrote:
>
> > How can opinions be distinct from taste and
> judgment?
> > It seems obvious that an opinion is a judgment.
> If
> > taste does not reflect judgment how is it formed?
> > Taste, opinion, judgment are all aspects of the
> same
> > thing, judgment. Judgment does not require
> reasoning.
> > It may include received opinion and it always
> > includes feelings
>
> Perhaps it's useful to look at the words themselves:
>
> Judgment consists of a conclusion reached from study
> and reflection.
> Opinion is, as you say, a variety of judgment. Taste
> is a sensation,
> or by a slight extension, a reaction to a sensory
> stimulus.
>
> So, on the matter of taste v. judgment: the
> provocation of taste is
> more essentially sensorial. It looks good, it tastes
> terrible, it
> smells funny, it sounds horrible, it feels slimy.
> Judgment is
> distanced from that, remote from the raw sensorial
> experience, and the
> difference is quite succinctly captured in Mark
> Twain's quip,
> "Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
>
> When one speaks of another person's taste in
> something, the "default
> position" for that expression is that the person
> exhibits a
> predilection for X. Taste, moreover, implies liking
> the form or
> physical qualities of X as an object of a sense. If,
> separately, you
> think X is unworthy, unpleasant, unskilled,
> unwholesome, unhealthy,
> ungood, then you deem the other person's taste to be
> bad; and if you,
> separately, think X is good, moral, uplifting,
> skilled, delightful,
> you deem the person's taste to be good.
>
> We refer to our own personal experiences as the
> basis of evaluating
> taste ("I hate mushrooms; I can't see what you find
> tasty about
> them"), which is different from how we judge and
> evaluate judgments.
>
>
> | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
> Michael Brady
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
