Personal Taste

PERSONAL TASTE

When someone expresses personal taste, it sometimes happens that other people get offended. I might say “I hate toast” (which I do), and someone else will take offence because they really like toast.

This might sound silly with the toast example, but perhaps it’s more believable that when I say “I find Mozart boring” people who like Mozart take it as an insult, or if I say “I don’t like jazz” people who like jazz think I’m criticising them. Or if I say “I don’t want to be fat” and people think I’m fat-shaming.

I think a false equivalence is at work. Someone hears

“I don’t like toast.”

and thinks it is equivalent to

“I don’t like people who like toast.”

This is a false equivalence: the two statements are not logically equivalent. I am perfectly happy for you to like toast, I just happen not to like it myself. This is different from

“I don’t like stealing.”

because in fact I also don’t like people who like stealing. There is also a false equivalence between

I don’t want to be fat.

and

I think people who are fat are bad.

This is not a logical equivalence. We could make an abstract version of this:

I don’t want to be X.

and

I think people who are X are bad.

If X is “a doctor” then it’s obviously a false equivalence: I don’t want to be a doctor, but I don’t think doctors are bad, I just happen not to want to be one. On the other hand if X is “a horrible person” then the second statement actually explains the first one: I think horrible people are bad, so I don’t want to be one. This shows that the error is a form of converse error. We have these statements:

A: I don’t want to be X.

B: I think people who are X are bad.

This implication is not very contentious:

B A

but the people getting upset with me are mistakenly thinking this converse is true:

A B

If the converse were true it would make A and B logically equivalent, but the false converse causes the false equivalence.

A similar form of false equivalence is when I say “I like weighing myself every day” and someone thinks it is equivalent to “I think everyone should weigh themselves every day”, thus they get offended if they don’t do that. Again we can look at

I like doing X every day.

and

I think everyone should do X every day.

For example, what if X is “playing the piano”? I certainly like playing the piano every day but that doesn’t mean I think everyone should do it. On the other hand if X is “brushing my teeth”, I like doing that every day and think everyone should do it every day if they can.

So much for the logic of the situation. It is an example of how I can always be right, by restricting my statement to my own personal taste or aspirations about myself.

However, people do often get upset when I say I don’t want to be fat, and they are rarely placated by my explanation of the logic. Uncovering the false equivalence gives us the logic behind their feeling of offence: they are equating me not wanting to be fat with me criticising people who are fat. A more compassionate thing to do with this piece of logic is to admit that human language is not the same as logic, because it can carry connotations in a way that logic doesn’t. If I am genuinely not criticising fat people, I should perhaps find a different way to express myself. Or I should examine myself carefully to see if a tiny part of myself is criticising them but hiding behind the logical security of making it a statement about myself, like when people express an inflammatory view and claim they are playing devil’s advocate.