Re:Is there such a thing as good taste?
by hardwaregeek on Monday November 15, 2021 @02:01PM
(#29231186)
Uhh I can't really understand this argument frankly. You're making a value judgement of grilled cheese as a commodity food but still, if someone put a grilled cheese in front of you that used plain white bread and one that used sourdough, you'd notice the difference, right? Sure you could argue that the sourdough grilled cheese is not a real grilled cheese but in doing so, you are inherently distinguishing the two items, therefore demonstrating taste to a degree.
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The argument is that I can distinguish them, but not rank them, because I distinguish them with respect to their essential character. Grilled cheese's essential character is something I view with derision, and its rank increases only by shedding that essential character. Grilled cheese with sourdough bread, or with veggies and barbecued meat, would rank as "better food" precisely because they rank as "worse grilled cheese."
So, you've embraced the 'no true scottsman' fallacy as the primary arbiter of your taste.
But in "no true Scotsman" there's an assumption that there's an external definition of the Scotsman category that is invariant from the fallacious clause, whereas here the definition of the grilled cheese category is the system under question. Otherwise, I could say "yes, I like grilled cheese, especially when it isn't grilled and contains neither cheese nor bread."