Between Subjectivity and Science: Rethinking Objectivity in Wine Tasting (Dwight Furrow, March 23, 2025, 3Quarks)
The notion of objectivity, as it was forged in the smithy of modern science, is a curious thing. It assumes the world is composed only of discrete entities endowed with properties that exist independently of how they are observed. This account of objectivity works reasonably well when applied to the movement of planets or an analysis of the chemical constituents of wine but falters with phenomena whose existence depends on being perceived. The taste or smell of a wine is not given in isolation but unfolds as an interplay between the liquid, our sensory mechanisms, and the mind.
When we taste wine, we don’t taste attributes that are patiently waiting to be discovered. We participate in a process in which a wine’s latent capacities are coaxed into sensory actualizations. To capture this process, we need an ontology not of discrete entities but of dispositions that exist in the wine, in the taster, and within the environment in which tasting takes place.
A disposition is a capacity or tendency for something to behave in a certain way under specific conditions. Dispositions are unlike categorical properties, which describe what something is like independently of any conditions. Unlike static entities, dispositions exist in a state of readiness, awaiting the right conditions for them to be revealed. A glass is fragile even as it sits safely on the table. A good Pinot Noir is aromatic even as it rests in the unopened bottle. Acidity is not simply a measurement of ph; it’s a latent tendency to soften or sharpen depending on such factors as temperature, aeration, or the molecular interplay with the taster’s saliva. Tannins in a wine can be objectively measured. But that is only one dimension of them. They are relational potentials that can be described as astringent only when proteins and polyphenols interact in the mouth. A dispositional ontology grants that wine has real objective properties but also asserts that among those real properties are relational, dispositional properties that are actualized only when particular environmental, physiological, and cultural conditions converge.
It’s dispositions all the way down.