“Fortune, do people with better hearing that can distinguish closer tones or fainter sounds thereby feel more pleasure from hearing?”

Much like good wine running down an untutored palate, I think numerous fine distinctions are getting lost in this thread!

To answer Robin’s question, yes, increased *sensory resolving power* increases your capacity for pleasure. But although this might be due partly to the mere pleasure of sensation, that is unlikely to be the main effect. Rather it’s because — in the cases of music, painting, wine, etc. — we are applying that increased resolving power to artefacts that have been designed with an aesthetic structure that requires high sensory resolution to appreciate. For instance, if we reduced a piece of music to a sequence of loud/soft, high/low tones, then obviously we would be stripping away all of the aesthetic structure that lies in the distinction between loud, very loud, soft, very soft, etc..

Second, there is also a matter of taste. Even if the senses detect a distinction, the mind must be able to detect its aesthetic implications. And just as one can train oneself to an increased sensory resolving power (training the ‘limbic system’ as frelkins puts it), so to can one train onself to appreciate and experience difference in aesthetic quality. This is just called taste. (You might call it, *aesthetic resolving power*, and say it supervenes on sensory qualities.) Taste is obviously in part subjective, since two people can have extremely refined taste that is nevertheless defined in different ways, and is in disagreement. Alan points this out. But taste is still objective, in the sense that there is still a clear distinction between refined taste and unrefined taste. For instance, I can hear the differences between Eminem and Jay-Z, but it means nothing to me aesthetically since I have never studied hiphop and don’t know anything about it.

But I think the most interesting question here is on a third point, what I would call *the returns to connoisseurship*. For instance, learning more about wine lets you enjoy good wine more, but it makes you enjoy poor wine less. Since most wine served will be poor wine, learning about wine will reduce your expected future enjoyment. That is, there are negative returns to increased connoisseurship in wine, as Robin suggests.

What’s interesting is then to ask, what areas have the best returns to connoisseurship? In what areas of perception is it profitable to refine one’s taste? Is it taste in food? taste in clothes? taste in ideas? taste in people? taste in places? taste in images? The returns of connoisseurship depend both on the availability of quality and on the pleasure premium earned by quality. So my thinking is that you should cultivate your taste in things that are easily available and where small quality differences produce large pleasure differences.

I’d guess good candidates are ideas (freely available, widely variable), the visual world (freely available — just open your eyes), human beings (good ones are scarce, but incomparable), and common foodstuffs (bread, cheese, etc..). Ironically, I’d say good objects to avoid are product like wine, which are the object of a widespread status competition in connoisseurship itself. That competition will have driven up the average quality level sufficiently that the superiority of the maximum quality items will be marginal and the price of the maximum quality items will be prohibitive.

(Of course this ignores the pleasure of the connoisseurship status competition itself, which is a separate issue.)

“But this would all undergird my almost embarassingly obvious argument, namely, that taste is inherently subjective”

People often say this, but I dispute this common error. Think of evolution. Evolution has given us all the ability to discern – with greater or lesser untrained clarity depending – certain key flavors, probably so we don’t kill ourselves by eating bad stuff. All normal human beings share the taste receptors for the common tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami. This is basic direct chemoreception.

No normal human being puts salt on their tongue and says “um, sweet!” Normal humans all easily detect and identify vanilla in the parts-per-billion range. No normal person has even put a drop of real vanilla on their tongue and said “pepper!” Our tongues have adapted to actually receive the underlying chemicals in these substances.

Whether you like or dislike the sensation of this chemoreception is indeed subjective – thus the real meaning of the old saw you mention – but the process of it, and its ability to be trained is not in doubt.

You may mock me for “belief” if you wish, but I have taught hundreds of people in several countries basic coffee cupping. That’s it: at the next OB meetup, I’m serving the coffee and giving everyone a copy of the SCAA Flavor Wheel.

In the non-sensual world, now OB has similarly spoiled me for Slashdot. At least they don’t go around announcing there will be no more good wine!

“finer gradations of temperature on their skin”

The sensual world. Finally something I understand! Yes, Robin, as someone with good hearing still on one side, I love listening to my Bose headphones – to detect the small sounds of the music, to hear and catch a quick, soft grace note – yes, my delight in the music is enhanced. I feel more pleasure thereby.

When viewing a landscape with new, sharper contact lenses, I take great joy in being able to discern that small distant dot is a hawk whirling over the Gordon River in Tasmania. I feel more pleasure thereby.

When feeling the finest touch of friend, his smooth hands, the way different parts of his hand – say perhaps, fingers cooler, palm warmer – feel in mine – the fading trail of warmth and pressure as he ran his fingers up the inside of my forearm – oh yes, I derive great joy. I feel more pleasure thereby.

If those “effects” seem “weak” to anyone, I encourage re-engaging with senses. I think of Blade Runner, Rutger Hauer’s “tears in rain” speech. Is it not precisely attention to these moments that give life meaning?

“I truly believe that everyone can learn with practice to improve their appreciation of the most passionate and romantic beverage, coffee.”

Ah, back to the glories of belief. One could make an equally compelling case advocating consumption of the most contemplative and mentally clarifying drink, imported shincha sencha green tea, or a bowl of matcha frothed at just the right temperature. There really is a noticeable difference between, for instance, daily sencha, gyokyro, kabusecha, matcha, etc. in terms of green teas, as there are gradations of quality and taste attributes among robusta and arabica beans, dark roasts, etc. in terms of coffees. (N.B. We are not even considering other preparations of tea plant camellia sinensis). But this would all undergird my almost embarassingly obvious argument, namely, that taste is inherently subjective.

At the risk of going even further far afield on the topic of potent potables, readers here may enjoy “A History of the World in Six Glasses.” I don’t disagree with your statement concerning the utility of the rhinencephalon in evolution, or even one’s ability to consciously train the limbic system to some limited extent. But your belief in the rapturous quality of coffee is really (almost reminiscent of J.S. Bach’s Kaffee Kantate) may be be not qualitatively different from my subjective proclivity for green tea, or someone else’s predilection for a certain vintage wine. There may be a price signal correlation pertaining to quality of all three beverages, but I submit that disentangling subjective preferences above some low threshold is in the end, a quixotic endeavor.