Culture as shared taste. Subjective is not the same thing as individual. Taste is subjective, but not unique. In other words, taste is a property of the subject—the person doing the judging—but it is not necessarily unique to that subject, given that: 1) we share more than we differ on, not only biologically, but culturally, and 2) we can agree on the things we like—i.e. we discuss and develop taste collaboratively, not just in isolation. What someone deems good will be their judgement, but not only theirs. Shared taste—i.e. shared values—is what we call culture.

January 2016