Engraved Light

As human beings, we make choices every day. We have preferences for food, clothing, whom to engage with conversation with, whom to take as a friend, when to wake up, when to sleep, what to do with our time in between. The list is endless. Hopefully for those that are not contractually bound by another human being, the choices we make reflect the preferences we hold. But what if the preference we hold do not align with out true goal? It is clear that we choose that which we like and like that which we choose, and are more likely to continue choosing that which we like over that which we do not. I am a strong believer in the idea that knowledge is power and that perhaps a consultation of our preferences would lead to their potential alteration: drastically altering the choices we make.

Festinger argues that humans tend to align their preferences with prior choices to reduce internal conflict as cognitive dissonance is perhaps the most painful experience for the psyche. Our preference for one choice over another manifesting in the social sphere begins receptively as we are given an inheritance of preferences from our societies, parents, and peers. It refines cognitively as we begin to question this inheritance, culminating reflectively as we exercise freewill. This use of freewill to develop our psychological preferences in line with our moral valuation and aesthetic/social taste is how preference becomes taste.

What is taste?

Taste is a preference for an option out of many options that fulfil the same purpose. For example, one person may like a certain style of car compared to something else. The car fulfils the same purpose. One can have more expensive taste, or a taste that is not as expensive. Some people prefer expensive luxury sedans, others seem to be content with a cheaper hatchback. This extends to tastes for food, clothing, and even friends.

Bourdieu argues that taste is a function of class, cultural capital, and ‘habitus’. For example, the choice of clothing by those of a lower socio-economic class would be seen as distasteful or perhaps even ‘improper’ by those of a higher socio-economic status. An interesting artistic representation of this is in the song ‘The Hillbillies’ by Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar where Baby Keem asks his romantic partner ‘do you even know what formal means?’. The enforcement of these rules in the way of dress-codes for gatherings lends strength to Bourdieu’s argument that taste is a function of habitus and nothing personal. This is because formality in wearing black-tie for dinners or balls can be fundamentally reduced to a social costume that members of a specific group wear: the same as a uniform for a soldier or the national dress of a country. It is a function then, of class, cultural capital, and habitus.

The total reduction of taste to habitus, however, is perhaps incomplete. Because people from different socio-economic statuses and countries are still able to appreciate the beauty in the clothing of other ‘tribes’. Though a BMW M5 fanatic may not admit it, he cannot help but to admire an Audi. Participation in cross-cultural events is the outwards expression of this appreciation where different cultures combine to explore how they each display beauty. Though it is clear through the fact that someone chooses to wear a certain item of clothing or purchase a certain car over another that they are not able to fully experience the internal state guiding that choice that the other person is. Otherwise, they would have bought the same car or worn different clothes. Bourdieu is aware of this and posits that the awareness of this social conditioning of beauty allows one to transcend it partially.

Kant observes that when we find something beautiful, we believe others ought to find it beautiful too. He posits the idea of beauty being purposiveness without purpose; that human beings as a whole see beauty, it seems, as an end in itself rather than a means, when compared to animals that seem to pursue beauty as a means of evidence for fitness and health, to the end of the most optimal survival of their offspring. The lack of the end in beauty is a profound contribution to the study of taste. Kant believes that the very existence of our aesthetic judgement demanding agreeable signals the existence of a universality of beauty (even if unmet practically).

A church, though it could be argued evolutionarily, has a role to play in social cohesion, does not have to be pretty. A football stadium is not awe-inducing the same way a church is; it is observably not intricate, nor complex in the same way, even if it serves the same function of social cohesion, it does not activate the emotional affect of an experience of the subliminal and sacred as compared to the picturesque and spectacular.

It would seem then, that people who exhibit higher religious drives in their lives have a different taste which exhibits in their aesthetic taste compared to those who are not as religiously inclined. The pleasure in the free play of imagination and understanding beauty, assuming that it is not mere whim, is perhaps, then an indicator of qualitatively different imagination and understanding. This would mean, then, that non-religious people are either not able to, or choose not to experience beauty in that same way as religious people. It would be foolish to conclude that this is simply a divergence of preference especially given the existence of self-labelled ‘cultural christians’. This group of individuals follow Christian rituals such as attending church but claim not to actually believe in the epistemology or ontology of Christianity either in its traditional form or at all.

Hume, another major voice in the philosophy of aesthetics, claims that beauty exists merely as a subjective experience in the mind. That anything can be found to be beautiful. However, due to the implications of this being that truly ‘anything’ could be beautiful has two issues. On the practical side, it is very difficult for one to view excrement as beautiful. On the epistemological side, if beauty exists only as a subjective experience then it lacks all objectivity and therefore meaning as a category. In short, if everything is beautiful, nothing is. Hume realises this, and adds the example of the ideal judge. That a person with a strong taste practiced upon ‘delicate sentiment’ is able to distinguish between beauties. This, clearly, cannot exist with the earlier philosophy as it necessitates the existence of categories within beauty that divide it.

The ontology of taste from a holistic standpoint

Now, the ontology of this taste must be further examined. Where does taste come from? It is clear that a variety of factors are at play here. For example, to continue the line of preference for some cars rather than others, a person may have a taste for an imposing mode of transport birthed from the drive to appear dominant, hinting at a more emotional basis for the choice. This idea can be expanded to even the choice of transport itself. With those people opting for motorcycles rather than cars exhibiting more ‘rogue’ and ‘rebellious’ characteristics. Note that these labels are simply a popular societal opinion of these people rather than an objective reality: akin to the disdain that car drivers have for cyclists, for example. It then leads on that groups that exhibit similar tastes seem to form ‘tribes’ around those tastes. These tribes usually share emotional bonds with each other like participating in social events and assuming acquaintance with one another. The in-group/out-group bias they exhibit is also usually with emotionally charged language such as car-drivers getting angry with cyclists. This would also explain the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism if religion does pay a part in taste. 

If then, fundamental basis of taste is emotional rather than intellectual, an individual’s decision to exchange a token of value (money) for an asset such as a car, a motorcycle or a bicycle can be thought of as a mirror of that person’s psychology. This is greatly intuitive as we can usually see an internal coherence of people who are, for example clean and groomed, that they place psychological importance on this state. It would be awfully unusual if a person that doesn’t care about cleanliness to be in any way clean and groomed: there is no motivator. 

Taste is not just confined to the realm of transport. A preference for a level of hygiene, or a specific temperament of friends, or an inclination towards a certain profession are all choices that reveal taste and underlying psychology.  Eerily, perhaps, taste governs most of our life, sometimes without us realising it. Unless we examine it and do something about it of course.

The idea of incorporating one’s ‘shadow’ (as pioneered by Carl Jung) is the examination of one’s unconscious biases (tastes) and their alteration. It is perhaps virtuous then, to refine one’s taste based off of a variety of cognitive and emotional factors. It is perhaps virtuous in itself to refine that taste with the end of making it more virtuous. Which would paradoxically mean that true virtue is in seeking virtue itself.

Now, where does that virtue come from? It definitely has an innate component. Moral non-absolutists would argue that, for example, murder is not inherently ‘bad’, just distasteful. Alex O’Connor (CosmicSkeptic) explored the logical end of this reasoning, which ends in the idea that when we have a distaste or moral apprehension towards murder, we are simply exclaiming “Boo, murder”. If that is not a satisfying explanation for our aversion to murder, then virtue must to have an epistemological grounding. If beauty is purposiveness without purpose, it implies teleology without utility. Though one cannot logically negate it being due to random chance, the grounding for the majority of human history has been God. The ultimate source of beauty and its inventor. The anchoring point for beauty itself. God is beautiful and he has created beauty. 

An ultimate standard for beauty must be posited to avoid reducing it to mere subjectivity and chaos, unless one believes that this universe is pure entropy with no objectivity. Beauty must emanate from this being whose essence is beauty otherwise beauty has no source. This is of course meaningless to those who truly believe that beauty is non-existent.

The mechanism by which a convergent taste could be achieved is the fitrah. The innate disposition towards that which is good and beautiful that has been placed by God into humankind (rejecting the idea of a tabula rasa). This innate disposition would exhibit in a human being or group of human beings aligned with their form of creation. This can be refined through tazkiya (the purification of one’s soul) via practiced virtue and adherence to that which is True.

The failure of stoics, hedonists, materialists in being able to anchor beauty is testament to the necessity of The Divine. I leave it to the reader to examine if any of these philosophies cannot have their moral reasoning boiled down to anything other than “Boo, murder”.

A question that arises naturally would be: ‘can this taste change or be developed in any way?’. Carl Jung believes so, and I believe so too. This is because I believe that human beings have true agency. There is a category of things that we cannot change no matter how hard we try such as our biological parents or our siblings. However, developing one’s character towards that which one believes to be good creates an internal coherence, through which their decisions made would truly reflect. If one believes their social standing to be of utmost importance, they would find certain conversations tasteful and distasteful. If one believes that their physical beauty is of utmost importance they will develop a taste that reflects that in their being and clothing. If one believes their religion is important they will, in accordance with that, find many things tasteful and distasteful. It is for each individual to decide what ‘good’ is for them both epistemologically and ontologically. This depends on the state of one’s psyche/soul: integrating the ideas of the differential states of the nafs (self) with maladaptive pathologies that exhibit as unrefined taste in Western psychology such as attentional style and intolerance for uncertainty.

Conclusion

What is clear is that taste is not a trivial preference. It is emotional in that it is post-hoc affectively attuned; ad-hoc intellectualised through imagination; psychological before it is rational; personal before it is social (at the age of maturation). It is influenced by class and culture, yet transcends both through imagination and reflection

Taste begins socially, refines cognitively, and culminates contemplatively.

To refine one’s taste, then, would be a form of hygiene- to keep oneself pure. For believers, this is the end to which they strive.

‘And by the soul and ˹the One˺ Who fashioned it,

then with ˹the knowledge of˺ right and wrong inspired it!

Successful indeed is the one who purifies their soul,

and doomed is the one who corrupts it!’

(Quran 91:7-9)

NB For the Philosophically-Minded

Premise 1: Preferences self-stabilize via dissonance reduction, reinforcement, and social learning.

Premise 2: Habitus canalizes early preferences; reflexivity enables partial transcendence.

Premise 3: Aesthetic judgment claims universal assent (Kant) and is cultivable (Hume).

Premise 4: Cognitive mechanisms (predictive processing) naturalise the “free play” without collapsing normativity.

Premise 5: Fitrah + tazkiyah provide the meta-ethical ground and moral psychology for convergence toward a standard of beauty grounded in the Divine.

Conclusion: Taste is the soul’s cultivated, socially situated orientation to beauty: beginning socially, refined cognitively, culminating contemplatively.

Or:

P₁. (∀x)(Preference(x) → Stabilises(x))

  where Stabilises(x) is achieved via {DissonanceReduction(x) ∧ Reinforcement(x) ∧ SocialLearning(x)}.

  ∴ Preference → (Disposition ∧ Self-Consistency)

P₂. (∀x)(Habitus(x) → Canalises(Preference₀(x)))

  Reflexivity(x) → ¬Determinism(Habitus(x))

  ∴ (Habitus ∧ Reflexivity) → PartialTranscendence(x)

P₃. AestheticJudgment(x) → (ClaimsUniversalAssent(x) ∧ ¬ObjectiveConcept(x))  [Kant]

  Cultivation(Sentiment(x)) → RefinedJudgment(x)  [Hume]

  ∴ (AestheticJudgment ∧ Cultivation) → NormativeUniversality(x)

P₄. PredictiveProcessing(x) → Naturalises(FreePlay(Imagination,Understanding))

  ¬(Naturalisation → Elimination(Normativity))

  ∴ CognitiveMechanism(x) → (Naturalisation ∧ Preservation(Normativity))

P₅. (Fitrah(x) ∧ Tazkiyah(x)) → (MetaEthicalGround(x) ∧ MoralPsychology(x))

  (MetaEthicalGround ∧ MoralPsychology) → Convergence(Taste(x), StandardOfBeauty(Divine))

∴ C. Taste(x) ≡ Orientation(Soul(x), Beauty)

  where Origin(Taste) = Social,

  Refinement(Taste) = Cognitive,

  Telos(Taste) = ContemplativeAlignment(Real).