Taste and Acquaintance

The analogy between gustatory taste and critical or aesthetic taste plays a recurring role in the history of aesthetics. Our interest in this article is in a particular way in which gustatory judgments are frequently thought to be analogous to critical judgments. It appears obvious to many that to know how a particular object tastes we must have tasted it for ourselves; the proof of the pudding, we are all told, is in the eating. And it has seemed just as obvious to many philosophers that aesthetic judgment requires first‐person experience. In this article we argue that, despite its initial appeal, the claim that gustatory and critical judgments are analogous in this way is mistaken. The two sorts of judgments are, as a matter of fact, similar in their epistemology, but earlier theorists have got things entirely backward—neither gustatory judgment nor aesthetic judgment requires first‐hand acquaintance with their objects. Our particular focus in this article is on arguing that first‐person experience is not required to know how an item of food or drink tastes. In fact, there are a wide variety of ways in which we can acquire this knowledge.     

Video Games as Self‐Involving Interactive Fictions

This article explores the nature and theoretical import of a hitherto neglected class of fictions which we term ‘self‐involving interactive fictions’ (SIIFs). SIIFs are interactive fictions, but they differ from standard examples of interactive fictions by being, in some important sense, about those who consume them. In order to better understand the nature of SIIFs, and the ways in which they differ from other fictions, we focus primarily on the most prominent example of the category: video‐game fictions. We argue that appreciating the self‐involving nature of video‐game fictions is key to understanding various otherwise puzzling phenomena concerning the ways in which consumers respond to them. Video‐game fictions are, however, far from being the only extant example of this class; and we suggest that the recent philosophical interest in video games would be better focused on the wider class of self‐involving interactive fictions.     

The Unbiased Mind: A Possible Resource for Medical Problems

The purpose of this pilot study was to explore the problem solving abilities of school‐aged children. The study took place at the summer day camp program at Howard Public School, in Etobicoke, Ontario. There were 15 children (6 boys, 9 girls) with a mean age at the time of testing of 5.1 years. A medical problem with a known solution (concept of a flow‐directed device to determine pulmonary wedge pressure) was presented to 15 children in the form of a children's story. The children were then asked to solve the problem by completing the story. A successful answer was taken to be any that suggested a flow‐directed device. The results showed that of the 15 children who read the story, four suggested flow‐directed methodologies. Other non‐practical, but creative, solutions were suggested. The findings suggest that by translating a previously solved medical problem into a simplistic children's story, preschoolers may provide a conceptual solution.     

Evaluations of Employment Suitability: Does Accent Always Matter?

This “matched‐guise” study provides data regarding attitudes toward (Mandarin) Chinese speakers by eliciting non‐Asian Americans' reactions to Chinese speaker using 2 varieties of English (standard American and Mandarin Chinese‐accented) and introduced in the context of an employment interview with either an Anglo‐American or ethnic Chinese name. Results indicate that speakers in all conditions were rated equally suitable for 3 types of employment. Despite the fact that language attitudes research has consistently demonstrated that individuals with nonstandard accents are judged to be less suitable for high‐status jobs and more suitable for low‐status jobs, the present results contradict this generalization.     

Understanding Creativity Judgments of Invented Alien Creatures: The Roles of Invariants and Other Predictors*

Participants imagined, drew, and wrote about novel alien creatures (cf. Ward, 1994). Judges rated the creativity of the drawings alone, paragraphs alone, or drawings and paragraphs together. Much prior research has examined how participants rely on available exemplars and categorical knowledge in this task; here we focus on understanding why some creatures are judged as more creative than others. We hypothesized that judges would assess creativity reliably, that instructions to avoid common invariants (two eyes, four limbs, and bilateral symmetry) would increase creativity, and that some common attributes coded from the drawings and paragraphs would emerge as reliable predictors of creativity. Hypotheses were largely supported, though the effect of instructions was rather mild. Numerous drawing and paragraph attributes were significantly correlated with creativity; these varied depending on the dependent measure of creativity. Finally, participants' own evaluations of their creatures were reliably correlated with other raters' judgments.