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~ W. H. Auden, A Certain World: A Commonplace Book
But no option for "I can see that this is trash and, though at present I like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to discard it."?
For completeness we should also add "I can see that this is good and, though at present I like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to dislike it", along with a few others. Though I think it's obvious why that one was left out.
As for your example; aside from unhealthy addictions, why would one want to discard something they currently like, even if it is trash? Some of my favorite movies are trash. I suppose one could make the argument that life is currently too short to waste on sub-par media, but that would depend on how much one's valuation of watchability depends on the artistic quality of the product. For me, at least, the entertainment value I get from a work of art is only partly related to the artistic merit.
For the same reason that one might want to acquire a taste for something good but presently disliked. Elevating one's taste to spend more time with the good implies spending less time with the bad.
Hmm. I notice I am getting confused about the difference between liking something and judging it to be good. Is there even a difference? If there is, is the goal to consume a higher proportion of good media even if you dislike it, or more media that you like, even if it is not good?
Maybe "good", if it is to mean something different than "liked", just means "liked by other people whose opinions we hold in esteem".
Good/trash = High status/low status. High status is probably correlated with more-or-less-objectively good things (eg it somehow makes you smarter/more empathetic/better informed), but it's also correlated with being unnecessarily obtuse (so that being able to appreciate it has signalling value).
For example, I can "like" junk food without having the slightest notion of it being "good". With media, my general rule of thumb is that "like" is something that happens in the moment, but judging something good requires that it had a positive impact that went beyond passing the time. I find that "good" things usually prompt some kind of reflection after the fact. I've also found that good media holds up on repeat viewings/readings and each time there seems to be something that I hadn't noticed before.
I hate being vague about it, but such is the nature of the beast.
As far as I would use the words, judging is a more active process than liking.
My system II might make an active decision that broccoli is good for me while my system one doesn't like broccoli.
How about "I can see this is trash and, though at present I don't like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to like it"?
Goodness is not an inherent property of the book. The closest you could get is talking about what people in general will like. Once you do that, you can get more specific, and talk about what certain demographics will like.
For those who believe that there is something more objective about aesthetic quality than just likeability, it usually has nothing to do with what people in general like. It's more about such things as exercise of excellence and virtue on the creator's part, and these things are, to some degree, objective.
Exercise of excellence and virtue doesn't seem objective either. I also don't see the value of a book that's not entertaining. Unless it's educational or something.
Well, whether the creator of the work exercised a particular virtue or excellent skill in the creation of the work can be reasonably objective. It is, in particular, objective in a way that the work's being liked is not: it is independent of the observer.
If the virtue or skill is a given, yes. But what virtues and skills are important is subjective. Even the difference between a vice and a virtue is subjective.
Yes, but that's subjectivity one level higher, as it were: is quality X important? That's relative to a subject who makes the value judgment. But when X is "being liked", then quality X in itself is observer-relative, in a way that other things like the skill exercised by the creator are not (and "being liked by most people" also isn't).
The skill exercised by the creator is every bit as subjective as the quality of what he makes. Being skilled just means consistently making things of high quality.
Just... no. I am not talking about some vague thing such as "being skilled at writing", which you might be able to paraphrase as "consistently writing things of high quality". The kind of skill that I have in mind which might confer value on a work of art is basically the ability to do something very non-trivial which need not in any way involve a value judgment. A very simple example would be to paint something with realistic lighting.
How is a painting exercising the creator's skill of painting something with realistic lighting (skill of the creator) any different from a painting having realistic lighting (quality of the creation)? A painting having realistic lighting is not observer-relative, but the importance of realistic lighting is. You can't objectively call the painting "good", you can only say it has realistic lighting. And given how many things there are that you can objectively grade a painting on, it's all too easy to only talk about the good qualities of paintings you like and the bad qualities of paintings you dislike.