[oopsyDoodl]

At the end there you highlight the issue that makes me think good taste is still hand wave-y subjectivity.

Since you say early on good taste is the difference between “I have” and “I do” good taste can’t be anything we possess, so how can anyone “have” good taste. Round n round we go.

This continues to highlight for me the shortcomings of human languages. Chomsky calls them random noise formalized and controlled by political powers. It makes sense, they only show up 5,000 years ago and we had glyphs for process and ideas before then. Given our legal system is normalized to matters of object possession, so goes our discourse. Given your measure it’s about “I do” versus “I have” can anyone “have” good taste since it comes down to advertising and accepting one is possessed of certain character traits? Isn’t it still gaudy self promotion and idolatry?

I’m still leaning towards peoples social power being due to their relative closeness to social power. Not that they’re uniquely beyond human. Why accept that in a system politically and academically normalized abstraction “good taste” is a useful language object itself?

[motohagiography]

I'd say taste can be more like musical talent. Someone can play well or poorly, and if they are good, we say they "have" talent, even though what we mean is we've observed them "doing" the music, and it is the effect of competence.

The metonymy itself clouds the concept as well. You can have an ear for music or an eye for design, a nose for a story or a conflict, a tact with others, but taste for...everything? My framing implies one would have a taste for power, even if it bends the lexical rule.

Everyone can have "good taste," by becoming competent at the things they do, and therefore have knowledge of which signals are meaingful and powerful in their domain, and which are not. They will not be equally reliable, as some people will have more experience, talent, or commitment.

The next big question is what power is, as in where is it located or come from, what are its sufficient and necessary conditions, is it real, and if it is what else must be real, and if it isn't, what else can't be, must something be conscious to be subject to it, and is power over unconscious objects or being/things real if they don't experience it, is political power anything other than stored potential energy in the form of violence, etc. I don't have answers, and I think the po-mo's were quite into that (Foucalt, Marcuse I think?). I'm sure someone here knows this stuff for real.

If you are sitting in a meeting with someone who has obviously tuned out and is typing into their laptop, consider the possibility this is what they're thinking about, and I find it makes them more likeable.

[simiones]

> Since you say early on good taste is the difference between “I have” and “I do” good taste can’t be anything we possess, so how can anyone “have” good taste. Round n round we go.

There is no contradiction and no circularity here. You are mixing levels of meaning. The concept of possession in "I have lots of gold" is different from the concept in "I have good taste". One refers to property ("I own lots of gold"), while the other refers to an attribute ("I am well-tasting"). The fact that they happen to use the same word is mostly a coincidence, and in no way makes anything circular.

[oopsyDoodl]

Sure if you dissect the language syntax; no circles. If I try to consider what this means to my agency, we’re saying I have to accept others are possessed by good taste or act in good taste, so I should emulate them. Conformity is good taste.

So, IMO, this self fulfilling meta-nonsense to generate self fulfilling meta-nonsense.