LanCog seminar: Giulia Martina on tasting together
Ricardo Santos
SEMINAR SERIES IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
2025-26: Session 4
Tasting Together
Giulia Martina (University of Nottingham)
17 October 2025, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)
Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa
Sala Mattos Romão [C201.J] (Departamento de Filosofia)
Abstract: Experiences such as cooking and eating together or participating in a wine tasting suggest that we can attend together to the flavours of foods and drinks. But is joint attention to flavour really possible? This talk focuses on two challenges from the case of flavour that existing accounts of joint attention do not address. First, the object question. How can we have the same object of attention if, as in most cases of tasting together, we are not literally tasting the same particular object? Second, the attention coordination question. Since the things we taste may not be public objects we can point to and follow with our gaze, how can we monitor and affect how the other attends to the object? I will argue that a form of joint attention can be established independently of vision, and that communication-based accounts of joint attention are especially well-suited to explain this. However, we need to move beyond the visual model and take seriously the distinctive structure of taste and flavour experiences.
All are welcome, in-person!