Evolution's Greatest Gift

Gifts can arrive carefully concealed or straight out of the box. Either way their consequences can only be envisaged but never seen from the outset.

I recently had a discussion with a philosopher in which he brought up the Wollheimian concept of "seeing-in." He claimed that an expert talent-scout working for a modelling agency would be able to see - literally perceive - potential in the face of a prospective model. Sadly the discussion was interrupted and I didn't get a chance to explore his view further.

It may be the case that he was using the term "perception" figuratively as an equivalent of "appreciation", "evaluation" or "inference". Potential in this sense is a projective notion, specifically a notion about a possible or even likely future. It's an anticipatory account, image or expectation. If I say that someone has potential, I don't mean that I literally see anything. If the person in question leaves the room, the potential I see doesn't walk out of the door with them. So to see something in this sense is not to perceive it in anything like the sense in which we might readily see the shape or size of objects around us.

Expertise may sometimes involve a degree heightened perceptual awareness developed through practice and experience. But to see indications, signs, suggestions, evidence etc. involves skills beyond those of mere perception. Even when we see dark clouds looming and say "It looks like it's going to rain" we can only say this because we know from past experience that dark clouds often precede rain and we can use this knowledge to inform our judgements about the future.

Expertise is thus at least partly a condition of being acquainted with certain causal regularities. Experience and education about these regularities furnishes experts with exemplars that allow them to make more accurate predictions. But these predictions are not properties of the world. This is why even experts are often wrong, especially about long-term events.

So, to say that we see potential in a student is to hedge a bet based upon their previous achievements. It is certainly not a kind of mysterious emanation that only experts can sense. It is not a perceptible thing or energy of any kind. It is a supposition, based upon evidence and supported by experience without which the determination of potential would be impossible.

If beauty were a perceptible property of a prospective model then every perceiver - other life forms included - would have to be capable of perceiving it. I don't think anyone would be confident of that view. Beauty and meaning etc. are socially negotiated attributions. They are ideas we closely associate with certain kinds and configurations of perceptible attributes and objects.

When we give gifts we often try to conceal their identity by wrapping them. It is never the point of gift giving that the recipient should be able to predict the contents. Such a skill would render the ritual of wrapping meaningless. One of the great pleasures of wrapped gifts is the expectation they elicit, an expectation that is often most pronounced in childhood. This has two important consequences. Firstly, it encourages self control; a vital life-skill. Secondly, it encourages powers of imagination that are of inestimable value to us as a species.

-------------------

Thanks to Brian for his contributions to a previous discussion on the subject of talent that was an important prompt for this post. Major revisions, July 2021.

Sense and Sensibilities (distinguishing and discriminating)

When discussing such things as taste, discrimination and discernment, there is always a risk of sounding elitist.  It's an occupational hazard in the arts. But, as I hope to show, this is due to two quite different ways in which we are capable of responding to experiences, one of which we all have access to, whilst the other has to be learned.

"But though there be naturally a wide difference in point of delicacy between one person and another, nothing tends further to increase and improve this talent, than practice in a particular art, and the frequent survey or contemplation of a particular species of beauty." —David Hume (1757)

It could be said that an art school education is largely directed towards the cultivation of sensibilities, to the sharpening and refinement of tastes and to the subtleties and nuances of method, media and process. In order for us to become conversant with and to develop our appreciation of the fine details and qualities of experience it is often necessary to attend closely to the minutiae of sensations and to form distinctions between subtly different materials, gestures, expressions etc. But does this skill emerge through sensory experience alone or do language, and the distinctions that language enables, play a vital part in what Hume called "the delicacy of taste"? He writes: "Where the organs are so fine, as to allow nothing to escape them; and at the same time so exact, as to perceive every ingredient in the composition: This we call delicacy of taste."

Hume observes that our first experiences of things are often "obscure and confused; and the mind is, in a great measure, incapable of pronouncing concerning their merits or defects." But as experience increases, "The organ [of taste] acquires greater perfection in its operations; and can pronounce, without danger or mistake, concerning the merits of every performance." But if it is the case that experience and exacting discrimination are sufficient to explain this skill then we are left with an unsettled question: do animals develop a delicacy of taste through experience also? And if experience and fine discriminatory capacities are fundamental to a delicacy of taste then old dogs and innumerable other mature animals must possess sensibilities that far exceed our own.

In the late 1980’s and early 90’s Timothy D. Wilson and colleagues published the results of several frequently cited studies which explored the relationships between feelingful or “affective” judgements and verbal criteria. In the most famous of these studies test-subjects were asked to rank a selection of 5 jams in order of quality. The average rankings determined by these novice jam tasters turned out to be fairly closely correlated with rankings determined by expert jam tasters. Another group of novice jam tasters were also asked to take the test but in this case they were asked to make a note of the reasons for their judgements before ranking each jam. In this case the average rankings were significantly unlike those of the expert tasters.

Wilson et al conclude that what differentiates novices from experts is that novices have not yet integrated their affective states into a conceptual system, with the consequence that their attempts to verbalise their feelings fail to do them justice. Experts, on the other hand, have a much more stable grasp of their conceptual system and the ways this describes and frames their underlying affective states.

What this research reveals is that experience alone is insufficient for the development of our sensibilities. No matter how many jams I try - and I like jam a lot - I'll never become an expert simply by triggering my affective states, by tasting my way. What makes the crucial difference is my capacity to structure and articulate my feelings through language. 

Savouring a sensation then, can be thought of in two quite different ways. We can prolong an experience by deliberately lingering over it - sustaining and consolidating the associated feelings. Or we can contemplate an experience by carefully distinguishing between its component parts. This would be impossible if not for the categories and concepts of language. The ability to discriminate, on the other hand, is enabled by our sensory capacities, capacities that we share, though obviously to differing degrees of resolution and acuity, with other animals. 

Sensibilities, it turns out, are what language enables us to derive from the affective responses of sensory discrimination - from our senses. Without language we might still be able to savour our sensations but we would be unable to contemplate them. Not only is contemplation linguistically derived, it is also inherently social, precisely because of these linguistic roots. Perhaps this is why much of the most memorable and pleasurable savouring is that which is shared.

"No pleasure has any savor for me without communication." —Michel de Montaigne