hedonics – Skywritings https://generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk/skywritings Stevan Harnad Wed, 10 Mar 2021 12:09:49 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk/skywritings/wp-content/uploads/sites/287/2018/07/cropped-orang1-1-32x32.jpg hedonics – Skywritings https://generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk/skywritings 32 32 Taste https://generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk/skywritings/2021/03/10/taste/ https://generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk/skywritings/2021/03/10/taste/#respond Wed, 10 Mar 2021 12:09:49 +0000 http://generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk/skywritings/?p=1452 Continue reading "Taste"

]]>
Re: Delicious: The Evolution of Flavor and How It Made Us Human (R Dunn & M Sanchez)

My (shamefully late) moral awakening has made me unable to read most of what I used to consider our classical literature. The flagrant and unquestioned abuse of animals is everywhere. 

I feel the same way about the historical and biological past of human (gustatory) taste. In broad strokes, I know the story, but the details are not titillating. 

In fact I think that in a much broader sense I have renounced most “taste” of  all sorts, both gustatory and aesthetic/cultural. It’s so imbued with pleasure at the expense of the suffering of others, human and animal.

Of course there’s no rejecting Darwinian facts – but there’s no pleasure in rehearsing, replicating or revering them.

tasteYes, this does superficially resemble some sort of ascetic, killjoy puritanical cult. But although it would take a while to explain it, I don’t think it’s that at all — and in some fundamental ways the opposite: the enemy is not pleasure itself, but pleasure at the expense of the suffering of others.

]]>
https://generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk/skywritings/2021/03/10/taste/feed/ 0