I’ve been escaping the Melbournian summer in the European winter for the last four weeks. One thing I love doing when travelling is eating. Experiencing a culture’s food is a great way to understand a culture. Another way to gain a feel for another culture is through art. While travelling around, trying foods and admiring artwork, I began to ask myself what makes an artwork “good”. I also realised, this question also applies to food, which could, of course, be classified as a subset of art. Thus, I’ll use food as an example to explore the idea of what makes inherently subjective things, objectively “good”, over the course of two posts.
The Subjective Nature of Food
The subjectivity of food is conspicuous. Anything from “what’s your favourite food?” being a standard get-to-know-you question, to waiters and waitresses asking how you’d like your steak cooked exemplifies this. However, there are several levels to this subjectivity. There are fewer people who like eating dog shit than there are those who like eating marble cake (my personal favourite). There are many people who like burgers, though they may disagree on whether the chicken burger with aioli or the beef burger with smoky barbecue sauce is better. The levels of subjectivity are what allow artistic fields to have semi-objective answers.
Human Nature
Everyone who expresses an opinion has a human brain. If you’re expressing an opinion and don’t have one, congratulations. Any human brain, by the fact it is classified as such, will be similar to all other human brains in structure and function. Brains are wired for survival. Eating dog shit is not going to help us survive. Most, if not all, human brains agree that dog shit tastes bad for this reason. Our bodies do not need, nor want, the excretory material of another animal. However, an apple, our bodies can use. So, many people like apples. However, not all human brains (or any species’ brains) are the same. Some of us were brought up eating apples, and we live in an area apples have grown naturally for 1000s of years. This will naturally have effects on the way our DNA is passed down. Living in an area with a lot of apples means that those who like apples are more likely to survive than those who don’t, thus passing on their apple-loving DNA.
The above is a simplification. The complexity is far too great to cover in a blog post, but all that matters is you grasp the idea that a major contributor to what we like and don’t like is our evolutionary biology. The other major contributor is our psychology.
Coca-cola has advertisements with sexy people on beaches. We would like to be a sexy person on a beach. Thus, ironically, when at the beach, we drink a bottle of Coke. When it comes to more visual art forms, such as drawings or paintings, our psychology is naturally going to play a larger role in whether we like something. Association, such as in the Coke example, acts at higher level of subjectivity than our taste buds. People who don’t see the Coke advertisement will like Coke less, but probably not by a lot.
A lower level psychological influence is that which has come from our evolutionary past. Faces that display more genetic diversity are considered more beautiful than those with less. Faces that are more symmetrical are considered more beautiful. It’s important to note that “more beautiful” here is defined by more dopamine being released by the brain. However, this release can also be influenced by more higher level, cultural factors. Many film villains have facial deformities. This is intentional. The production team does not want us associating the villain with happiness. However, this negatively affects people with facial (and other physical) deformities. The more we associate deformity with bad, the less likely we are to respond pro-socially to people with deformities, despite there being no evidence that people with physical deformities are less kind or clever. The opposite effect also applies to beautiful people, as they are perceived as kinder and smarter. This psychological bias is known as the Halo effect.
What is Objectively “Good”?
“Good” is “delicious” when talking of grilled salmon and “beautiful” when speaking of a Van Gogh. But that’s not really the question. How are we to ever come to conclusion of who is a better cook: Gordon fucking Ramsey, or the guy next door? There is certainly a level of objectivity that’s difficult to put a finger on. It seems obvious, statistically speaking, that it’s Gordon Ramsey for fuck’s sake. Yet, perhaps the guy next door’s homemade apple pie is the best you’ve ever had. That is where opinions, popularity and averaging make their mark.
See you in the next post.
