On Apr 12, 2008, at 11:03 AM, William Conger wrote:
Your standard (I'd say outdated) definitions do not account for the mixture of feeling in any judgment, even to the point of directing it against "reason".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.
Come on, William, I didn't counter "reason" and "irrational feeling." And I do not have a dispute or quarrel with Damasio's thesis, which I find persuasive.
I said that using the term "taste" reflects (evokes, conjures up the notion of) a basis in a sensorial experience.
Why have three synonyms, unless there's a difference among them? "Opinion," for example, connotes a personal judgment that may or may not be well-founded and tends to be expressed in the midst of a controversy. (Few would say that I have an opinion about banana pudding, unless that culinary delight was being debated--as is the case with Renee, a Noo Yawker, who doesn't understand it.) "Judgment" connotes a conclusion reached after a duration of reflection and evaluation. So what does "taste" connote: a choice, a preference, even a judgment that is based in--and even expressed in terms of--a sensory experience. Tastes, as the term is typically used, embraces such things as fashion, decor, the various arts, fine food and wine, and the like. When "taste" is used outside these fields, it usually connotes or suggests an appetitive reaction: He has a taste for blood sports [a double entendre, no less]. Her taste in men is exotic [and, implicitly, erotic].
Note, moreover, that we don't use "taste" in this analogical way when we speak of animals. We don't say, Fido has a taste for retrieving the newspaper. Or, Kitty has a taste for yarn. Nor do we use "taste" with inanimate objects: an up-quark doesn't reveal a taste for or against a down-quark, nor an electron for a proton, nor rock for scissors or paper.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady [EMAIL PROTECTED]
