Ethics as Educated Taste

It would be hard to find a culture which did not distinguish better from worse. There are differences, of course, in how to construe better and worse. One culture might place commercial values at the center. Another might make respect for the elderly a centerpiece. Some may deal with the dead via burial, others via cremation.

What strikes outsiders immediately are the differences.  They are, after all, real. So real that people often overlook the

similarities.  

Donald Brown, an anthropologist, did as much as anyone to explore either outright similarities or overlapping and analogous patterns across cultures. Some of what he identified: communication via language, joke telling, crying; the presence of rituals, song, dance, jealousy, feasting, cosmetics; copulation taking place in private, privileged ways of caring for children, cooking.

Indeed cooking can serve as a kind of model. Actual cuisines, it is true, vary widely (differences are real).  At the same time, cooking along with its accompaniments (efforts made toward good taste, predictable meal times, manners). In other words, similarities are also real.

Differences and Overlaps.  General patterns and plenty of flexibility within them.  Hanging on to both is a challenge. People prefer a nice neat either/or: either ONE and only one correct way, or, admit that standards of better and worse simply cannot be discussed apart from what each culture has established.  

The neat either-or opposition works well when dealing with conceptual abstractions.  

Rigid either-or thinking depends on staying within conceptual purity (i.e. the idea "black" and the idea "white") while disregarding the more varied, and, yes, murky components of lived experience.

The dilemma-driven approach although satisfying for those who like neatness, is disastrous for thinking. After all, one side accepts that the proper answers are already there. The other thinks that whatever local groups decide should be the final word.  In either case, we are relieved from the hard work associated with intelligence: thinking seriously about ways to make things better in our own communities. With cooking as our paradigm we could rephrase this as thinking seriously about how to educate our tastes.

To be human is to be, as Linnaeus labelled us, homo sapiens, “man the taster.”  Okay, Linnaeus may have thought he was saying “man the wise one.”  

Still the term he chose, sapiens, from the Latin verb sapere, definitely connotes tasting, savoring. In addition, the tasting/wisdom overlap is considerable. Wisdom suggests the proper orientation in living. Another way of saying this: the proper arrangement and prioritization of tastes.

Those who think that it’s all subjective, don’t put much stock in the educability of taste. Why bother? There are no standards beyond individual predilections.   It is true that there are some strange combinations that will be embraced by somebody somewhere. Take the donut burger, AKA the Luther Vandross burger: patties of meat, cheese, bacon, and, here is the unique dimension, buns made from a doughnut, usually from Krispy Kreme. There is enough of a demand for these that Walmart sells a frozen version. Maybe somewhere, someone loves grapes dunked in

ketchup, or rhubarb soaked in vinegar.  Despite such outliers, certain patterns of acceptability emerge when it comes to tastes. Thinking in terms of ranges is probably a better way to go. Tastes will never converge toward a single pole. But this does not mean that, in general, anything goes.  “Thinking” should begin from this combination.

As a general rule there should be a few guidelines associated with thinking: avoid oversimplification, avoid short-cuts. Thinking aims at coming up with formulations that articulate the concrete situation in which we find ourselves. This aim can be frustrated by an ever present simplification which becomes a short-cut to avoid thinking, the two bin approach: either “there is only one objective model” or “it’s all subjective.”   

If de gustibus non disputandum were common practice, rather than a popular

slogan, then the two-bin approach might actually make sense. In fact, tastes can be and often are disputed. Picture two friends discussing the merits of various beers.  Tastes can also be educated. My first taste of lobster went badly (and I’m from Maine). As a youngster I much preferred a hamburger and fries. (Not the Luther Vandross burger, although previously frozen fries were just fine--always doused with plenty of ketchup.)

In general, thinking in terms of ranges rather than fixed alternatives allows a better take on what it means to differentiate in terms of values.  Most importantly, don’t buy into simplifications that encourage the avoidance of thinking. Most prominent excuse-making techniques to avoid: (1) the answer is already objectively there; (2) there are no real answers, it’s all up to the individual.