RELATIVISM, YOLO, FOOD

Swans, YUM!  Squirrels YUM! Dolphins YUM!  Well “yum” is kind of an imaginative stretch, at least for some of us today. At other times and other places  “yum” made/makes sense.

Can we generalize from this?   Should we, to adopt a philosophical label, embrace “relativism?”  After all, food practices seem to indicate the “yum” reaction has no foothold apart from contingent, changeable cultural conventions.

What might give pause is the radical relativism embraced by the early 21st century “You Only Live Once,” fad. YOLO was (1) encouraged by philosophical

relativism (better and worse are just social constructions) and (2) accompanied by a particular ethic: experience all you can.  The ramifications were problematic: YOLO, so get drunk and drive wildly; YOLO, so, go ahead, urinate and defecate wherever and whenever. Soon came the realization “YOLO is dumb.”

When it comes to food, YOLO can find both defenders and opponents. On the support side: “YOLO, so eat some dolphin ( squirrel, swan).” On the negative side: YOLO, so I’ll just chow down on some fugu, even though the chef is not properly trained.”

A stalemate? Not quite.  A more fine-grained analysis suggests the need for a paradigm shift.  First, eating is interactive. Second, food ingestion exists along a continuum: inedible, somewhat inedible, somewhat edible, culturally approved edible, edible in desperate situations, commonly eaten.   

The relativist position need not adopt the simplistic YOLO pattern.  A better defense is entitled “Morality is a Culturally Conditioned Response.” Despite the nuanced, and thus adequate, title, the article goes on to defend a rather strong relativism.  Here is where interaction and continuum make a difference. One thing even refined relativism assumes: a bi-level backdrop. Humans here; world there. Values here; neutrality there. Reason is neutral/Evaluations are non-rational.

These bifurcations are challenged by stressing interaction and continua. In terms of the food continuum, there is, at one end, the biologically inedible (e.g. soap); then, “inedible” in the “it can kill you sense” (emperor Claudius).

“Inedible” could also mean, it’s ok physiologically, but hard to stomach (see disgust museum).   Then, there is the “inedible now in this form” (cashews which are toxic before being heat treated). We could add   “inedible because of allergies;” and the well known “inedible for cultural/religious reasons.” At any point on the continuum a judgment has been made.  The judgment does not result from bi-level (culture here/nature there) opposition. It results from interaction. Intelligent agents try to to figure out clues and indications.

A medieval phrase is helpful here. It’s  cum fundamento

in re, “with a basis  in reality.” Plants and animals do not come with placards that say “tasty but deadly,”  “healthy and nutritious,” “disgusting in odor, but good in taste.” Nor does the absence of such placards mean that all valuations are subjective constructions.  Humans, as hungry creatures, seek to establish which entities are edible and which not. The resulting judgments emerge from a collaboration between inquiring intelligence and properties operative in the world ( cum fundamento in re).

Living in a post-Medieval era, we could add a partner phrase, one sensitive to  cultural pluralism: judgments cum fundamento in tribu.  Interaction would still rule, but in these cases it would signal the the interplay  of intelligence and the practices of a community (or “tribe,” tribus).  

Even here, though, we move too hastily if we apply the relativist label.  Differences are culturally conditioned. This is not the same as being merely subjective. The fundamento dimension (there are clues) remains. Judgments are recognized and welcomed. They just depend on more than clues from nature. Religious judgments build their warrant by including intangible factors. Food regulations, for example, can encourage solidarity via shared behaviors, equality, since the practices impact everyone, and self-improvement, fostered by discipline.  

The paradigm shift that highlights interaction and continua helps draw attention to concrete practices. The totalizing labels “absolutism” or “relativism” offer a bifurcation that is neat. Lived experience is intricate and complex.  Humans are active participants, involved, willy nilly, in interactions. Judgments neither simply read off what is there, nor impose structures. They pay attention to operative factors, aim at properly reading indications, and hope the resulting assessments are accurate.

This (a) leaves plenty of leeway for variation. Variation is not the same as relativist subjectivism. It also (b) allows for intelligent discussion. But, such discussion, technically, for the relativist (recall the non disputandum, in de gustibus non disputandum est) should represent nothing more than an empty exercise. E.g. Gratitude and greed, why bother discussing their relative merits/defects? Non disputandum rules.

Thinking about food can serve as a good source of examples for an epistemology of cum fundamento. How? First by replacing bifurcation with a continuum. Second, by emphasizing how eating is inherently interactive.  Both of those factors help overcome the great human temptation toward the hasty generalization: it’s all objective or it’s all subjective.

WHEN SWILL IS SWELL

“Swell” and “swill.” One letter separates them. But what a meaning difference it makes.  

“Swill,” I remember as a term of my youth. It was common when people lived on farms.  There, the family’s pigs received, as feed, the “swill,” what was leftover from the kitchen. Naturally, a negative connotation followed. After all “swill’ was that which was rejected.  

“Swell,” by contrast, carries a positive connotation.   Initially it was a neutral term, it indicated a natural formation, something like a hill, or a gentle ocean wave. Today, the term’s more common use is in line with expressions of satisfaction and affirmation.  Two examples: the expression “that’s swell;” the 1937 song “Gee, but you’re swell.” In Easter Parade, Judy Garland

and Fred Astaire, dressed as hobos, got ironic mileage with their song “A bunch of swells.”

Could hobos be “swells”?  No and yes. If to be a “swell” meant well-dressed, then hobos would never fit the bill.  If, though, “swell” meant lovable, as in the song “Gee, but you’re swell,” then character would supersede clothing. Hobos could indeed be “swells.”

“Swill” is more uniformly derisive. Some of what accompanies the preparation of a meal is excluded, set apart, tossed out.  It is appropriately named “refuse.” Yet, even “swill” can undergo a valuational shift.

Take potato peelings. At one time, they fell into the category of that- which-is-to-be-discarded, i.e. “swill.” Today, we are

advised, for health reasons, to to eat our potatoes with their peels. What was once swill is now swell.  

It would be hard to find a human community that did not distinguish swell from swill, better from worse.  There is a lingering temptation, though, to reify the distinction. This results in the creation of an irrevocable, non-revisable, two-column list.  One side is labelled “good,” the other “bad.” We here come face to face with a lingering temptation: create a neat, oppositional, good/evil list. The temptation even has an official, historically-informed, name: Manichaeism.  This was a movement, based on a 3d century Babylonian prophet named Mani. It taught that creation had two sources, two ultimate powers, one good, the other evil. The two- value, double column list was little more than the practical application of this cosmic battleground.  

Any neat division equipped with  unquestionable valuations is bound to occasion a backlash (especially among the groups who fall on the negative side of things).  That reaction, quite understandable, can, nonetheless, be overdone. The excess lies in a proclamation that appraisals are nothing more than subjective impositions. Rather than leave neat bifurcations behind, this position simply creates another one: subjective vs objective. The Manichean assumes that existing value judgments are rooted in objective data.  The subjectivist claims that all evaluations are arbitrary, historically conditioned, contrivances. Either/or is not overcome. It is just reformulated.

“Swell” and “swill” help draw us into a more nuanced, more genuinely human, position.   “He’s a swell” was a way of identifying a spiffy dresser. Objective conditions, the kind of clothing worn, were readily identifiable. Then, as with “you’re swell,” the positive valuation was extended to character.

At this point the evaluation becomes a bit trickier. Without the obvious markers of expensive, stylish clothing,  mistakes are possible. Still the value determination is not just “subjective.” It’s a judgment. This means that although it has a subjective dimension (someone is doing the judging), it also has an objective one (the assessment is based on evidence, behavior, indications of character).

Similarly, what we judge to be “swill” can be up for for revision.  Potato peels, as mentioned above, can move from “swill” to “fit for our diet.”  This is not a purely subjective construction. It arises from information about the nutritional properties of potato skins and the physiological needs of mammals like ourselves.

Could we be wrong? Sure, that’s always a possibility. Future research may once again move potato skins from

“swell for humans” to “swill for pigs” The possibility of error is telling. It’s a sign of human inquiry.  Absolutists and relativists seek an escape from human limitations. One proclaims a perfect, already established, vision of truth. The other dismisses the human struggle to discover more fully accurate truths. Humans, it says, do not establish what is the case, but rather impose values.

For ordinary humans, though, enhanced intelligent awareness can mean that “swill” becomes “swell” and vice versa.

ANOREXIA INTELLECTUALIS

The Righteous Brothers had a hit song with a line that highlighted an important stomach-related word.  “I’ve hungered” it went, then, repeating the word, “hungered for your touch”.  It’s a lovely song, but it has nothing do do with eating. Still, that doesn’t matter.  Listeners know that “hunger” and “hungered,” when the context is human beings, can mean more than filling an empty stomach.

Take Aristotle. One of his most cited

lines reads like this: “all men, by nature, desire to know.”

What he says is that we have an "orexis" for knowledge. The term translated “desire” can mean reach for, yearn for, or hunger for. But why can “hunger” a biologically-derived term, apply in contexts of affection and intelligence?  Humans are biological creatures and they are more than that. The metaphorical use of “hunger”  offers one level of support for such continuity with difference.   Aristotle’s entire philosophy was friendly to biology. This did not mean he reduced "human" to the merely biological.  There are continuities and differences. He insisted that all ideals had a natural basis and all natural tendencies had an ideal culmination (to paraphrase George Santayana).

Philosophers are often accused of playing with words. Sometimes this is true.  Sometimes, recognizing distinctions is meaningful. In his book.

Hunger, Raymond Tallis suggests that “hunger” and “appetite” should be distinguished.  The former, along with the non food-centered term, “desire,” is more indicative of all-embracing humanity than is “appetite.”  The difference? Narrative time. “A desire is an appetite that has a story--albeit unfolding, evolving, fragmented, at its heart.”  It is a hunger that narrates itself and tries to make sense of itself.”

Appetites are raw, instinctual, sated in a stimulus-response  way. Desires/hungers are multi-layered. They are often occasioned, not by an object but by a relationship. That’s certainly the case in both the Unchained Melody of the Righteous Brothers and in Aristotle’s claim about human hunger for knowledge. What is yearned for is ongoing (time-factored) actualizing: making love real in one case and satisfying curiosity in the other.

The culminations of such hungers occur only within spans of time. Unfolding within spans of time means not only that they are ongoing, but that they require effort, and, instead of unimprovable perfection, often result in culminations with loose ends.  They are thus precarious, subject to contingency, require that we make ourselves vulnerable, and can be frustrating.

For those reasons, there is a general tendency to an-orexia, the suppression of hunger. This is not just the pathology associated with physiological appetite.

 There is also intellectual an-orexia: the longing for absolutely secure, contingency-free, doubt-free existence. One impediment to such security: thinking. After all, thinking is bothersome, annoying, discomforting.  If only the yearning, the hunger for knowing could be suppressed, if only intellectual anorexia could become the rule, then a sense of comfort, and security could be established. The paths to intellectual anorexia are well-paved and multiple.  Two came to special prominence during the Modern (roughly 1600-1900) era: logical deduction and calculative rationality. Using formal logic to deduce conclusions that are certain has little to do with thinking. The latter always engages complicated situations and arrives at resolutions that are only secure within varying degrees of probability.  Instrumental rationality, which starts with a pre-ordained end and then calculates the most efficient means of getting there, offers a poor substitute for thinking which puts ends themselves into play. Other strategies have been around forever: absolutism and skepticism.

But wait, readers may be thinking, aren’t these opposed to one another.  Well, yes, they are. One says, “the answers pre-exist, all you have to do is accept them.” The other says “there are no answers.”

Despite their differences, and like logic and instrumental rationality, both offer a particular and attractive invitation: stop thinking. It might be “stop thinking because the answers are already at hand.”  It could be “stop thinking because there are no answers anyway.” In each case, the result is the same: peace of mind occasioned by sidestepping the annoying practice of thinking.

For the physiological anorexic, the body’s constant demands for edibles is felt as an oppressive demand. For the philosophical anorexic it is the demands of the mind that are annoying. Thinking involves “trials,” literally the processes of sifting out, of trying one path and then another. Such processes are  are also “trying” in the sense of being annoying, bothersome. Like hunger, thinking never leads to stasis. The practice is unending. How to eliminate such discomfort? Go intellectually an-orexic. Hide behind pure logic. Transform thinking into calculating. Pretend the answers are already obvious. Insist that finding answers is not possible. In other words, suppress a basic human orexis, stop thinking.

Appetite-Taste/Nature-Culture

Immanuel Kant once disparaged an Iroquois visitor to Paris for appreciating nothing other than “the eating houses.”  Kant wished to sort out humans guided by appetite from others guided by superior tastes.    A recent article in Aeon magazine deals with food metaphors relative to reading. It charts the trajectory from appetite to taste, suggesting how “In the 18th century, writers began to distinguish between appetite (the connection between reading and the body) and taste (connection between reading and the mind).”

“Appetite” is immediate and indiscriminate.  “Taste,” is selective, refined and mediated.  Appetite and taste may, in ordinary minds, be intermingled.  This would not do for Kant. Aided by free-standing substantives like “body” and “mind” his ideal was not proper integration of the bodily and the mental. It was the segregation of body and mind.  Physiological taste relating to food was suspicious because it remained intertwined with mere appetite.    The more elevated tastes would have little to do with food.  

The pattern here is familiar: (a)  a need to sort out better and worse; (b) mapping better and worse isomorphically with mind and body; (c) thinking that humanity, as the  Aeon writer put it, represents little more than a  “cesspit of ungoverned appetite;” and (d) subsequently, celebrating a power of domination, self-control, as the only hope for keeping appetites in check.

On the other side, there have always been philosophers championing  “natural” tendencies. They warned against substituting impositions of artificiality and convention.  The Stoics and Epicureans moved in this direction.  Their “follow nature” mantra was resurrected by a thinker like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, by Romanticism, and by various communal living experiments in the 1960s.

Both tendencies, the superior-taste crowd and the follow-nature crowd, share one commonality: they are autoreferential. This allows them an escape from risk and responsibility. The superior-taste position says says it’s all about the cultural conventions we have imposed.  End of story. The follow-nature school says, I am just following my own true nature. End of story.

What is absent? Risk and responsibility. These emerge with dependence,  hetero-referentiality. The latter asks of us that we respond to signs and signals coming from outside of us.   

The appetite/taste contrast is one version of the wider nature/culture opposition.  Are there ways to rethink this opposition? To break with autoreferentiality?  To embrace, rather than escape, vulnerability and dependence?  To emphasize the unending need for exploration, questioning, dialogue?  

The answer is yes, but the approach may be surprising--taking taste, this time actual physiological taste, seriously.   Such a taste is unavoidably hetero-referential.  It involves responsiveness, i.e. responding to signs and signals coming from outside of us. Some results: natural appetite and taste are not two contrasting forces. They are correlative.  Second, the “taste” that fosters well-being is neither a “construction,” an artificial, merely subjective imposition, nor is it merely hardwired. It is appetite cultivated, channelled,  informed by experience, experiment and tradition.   

“Taste” serves as a good model for hetero-referential responsibility because it cannot use either culture or nature as a final determining factor. Rather than calling on a single foundation, it always involves election among alternatives. This election, in turn, emerges from clues, indications, signs that are present in a world we have not made but on which we depend.   Taste  not only depends on factors apart from us, but is also, as scientists put it, “multi-modal” involving, as it does, taste buds, smell, tactility, family and cultural practices, visual clues, temperature and even sounds.

What does all this mean?  First of all, we have to reintegrate appetite and taste (also nature/culture).   Appetite requires taste, and by nature we require culture.  Second, when using “taste” metaphorically, we should not stray too far from its physiological, food-related associations.  Wanting to get beyond responsibility defined as election among alternatives, we tend to ignore the irreducibility of the multiple and seek some single criterion. This criterion then is utilized as a simple, straightforward guide which mandates a particular behavior.

When, by contrast, we remain close to the multi-modal understanding of taste, we are always (i) dealing with a multiplicity of factors, (ii) many of those factors involve an inseparable blend of nature/culture, (iii) our response is a melange which seeks a proper balance of factors, (iv) we must always take an active role in adjusting the balance, revising  and polishing it, engaging in an experimental back and forth that moves from worse to better, (v) all the while realizing that a perfect unity or un-revisable blend will never be achieved.  

Kant was right to emphasize, taste, just not in the way he envisioned it.