On naturalistic theories of taste

Abstract

Taste plays a key substantive and normative role in the experience of artworks. As such it has been a topic of long-standing interest to philosophers and other theorists of the arts. Recently, some scientists and philosophers have begun to approach aesthetic issues from the vantage point of evolutionary theory, most commonly by attempting to explain the evolutionary function of art. While often speculative and conceptually difficult, these theories have the potential to enrich or even transform a number of traditional issues in philosophical aesthetics. One might wonder whether it is possible to provide a similar naturalised conception of taste, placing taste in an explanative framework that not only conceptually integrates it with cognitive and perceptual psychology, but provides some sort of biological function for the trait. Such naturalistic theories of taste will face significant difficulties, however. I set out what I see as the major problems facing the naturalising of taste, and suggest what resources there are to solve these problems.