Why We Like What We Like

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by Alva Noë

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Can we really taste the difference, or is it all just down to context?

Can you tell the difference between gourmet liver paté and dog food?

I mean, can you tell the difference by taste?

Many of you are probably pretty sure that you could, and also that you could tell the difference between a $100 bottle of a splendid vintage and some $5 schlock, right? But can you really? In a blind taste test?

Scientists have looked into these questions and the findings are, well, they're disgusting. It turns out most people won't notice the difference between paté and dog food, so long as the latter is suitably presented with the right sort of garnish. And as for our ability to discriminate wine, even experts may confuse a white wine with a red when it is served at room temperature in a dark glass. And we'll enjoy soggy old potato chips, it turns out, if our chewing is accompanied (over head phones) by the satisfying sound of crunching.

What are we to make of this?

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Seeing What You Mean

by Alva Noë

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Readers of 13.7 may have noticed headlines this past week trumpeting the latest "brain reading" breakthroughs coming out of UC Berkeley's neuroscience laboratories. I've written about related work before, here, here, and here. This latest research is dazzling. Direct measurement of neural activity in higher areas of auditory cortex allows scientists to determine what continuous speech sounds (words, sentences) a person is currently hearing. It's hard to overstate the daunting character of this achievement.

The relation of speech to its physical substrate is mysterious at best. One and the same acoustic event can be experienced as different speech sounds, and different acoustic events can be experienced as the same speech sound. The perception of speech, such a commonplace event in our lives, is surely one of our most impressive and, from a scientific perspective, baffling cognitive achievments.

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Faces And Masks

by Alva Noë

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A statue of Euripides (480-406 B.C.), Greek philosopher and dramatist, holding a "tragic" mask.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

A statue of Euripides (480-406 B.C.), Greek philosopher and dramatist, holding a "tragic" mask.

Portraiture fascinates because faces do, and faces matter to us because they are bound up with what it is to be a person.

I went to see Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera with my 7-year-old son not that long ago. It was his first opera, and he had a great time. I was struck by the fact that he found it perfectly comprehensible that Don Giovanni and his manservant Leporello could switch identities and evade their pursuers simply by exchanging their hats and cloaks

It's implausible and psychologically unrealistic to think that the Don's lovers and enemies wouldn't recognize him in the hat and cloak of his servant. Doesn't this undercut the plot? Why didn't my son think that the whole story was just silly?

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