What is your idea of authentic?

A LITTLE CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATION

“It made (sic) wonder, what exactly is their idea of authentic?” The real deal

“authentic, a. reliable, trustworthy; of undisputed origin, genuine.” (The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English)

I found this bitch very interesting. It made me wonder too about their idea of authentic. What, indeed, is to be understood by the term? Clearly, what is required, as we say in philosophy, is a little “conceptual clarification.” But what does that mean? It means addressing the two questions philosophy always asks, “What do you mean?” and “How do you know?” So, what does the term “authentic” mean and how do we know if something is authentic or not?

The first thing to get clear about is to what the term in the present bitch makes reference. The present reference, clearly, is to the use of “authentic” when used on restaurant menus. It does not refer to the actual dish – the dish itself makes no claim to being authentic or otherwise – but rather to the veracity of the management which claims that their food is indeed authentic. So authenticity is a quality of inter-personal relations. That’s the first thing. So where do we go from here?

The second thing we do is to follow the traditional path of conceptual clarification and have a look at what the dictionary has to say. We find, first, that it means to be reliable and trustworthy but – and this is important – authenticity in respect to being reliable and trustworthy can only be assessed over the long run. In other words, one must be familiar with the restaurant management over a period of time to come to any determination of authenticity and the bitcher has not indicated that this is the case. So the first option is off the table. (A little restaurant humour there.) So, what’s next?

Next, the dictionary claims that “authentic” means of undisputed origin or genuine. But, unless the customer has prior knowledge of the ingredients of the dish in question how is he (or, of course, she) to verify this? In the vast majority of cases this will be beyond the customer’s expertise so the second dictionary meaning of “authentic” is off the table. (Another little bit of restaurant humour there.) So what comes next?

What comes next is the authenticity of the bitcher himself (or, of course, herself). How do we know that the bitcher isn’t putting us on? How we do we know he (or, of course, she) is being authentic? In order to determine this we must know who the bitcher is. Who, in other words, is “The real deal” and does he (or, of course, she) regularly engage in spoofing bitches? Who knows? I don’t. So what comes next?

What comes next is assessing whether or not this comment itself is authentic. How do you know? Does its author regularly engage in spoofing comments? Can you give grounds one way or the other for your assessment? Of course not. So what happens next?

Nothing happens next. All possible options are off the table. (Still yet another bit of restaurant humour there.)
So there we are. We have engaged in a little philosophical conceptual clarification but the result has been negligible. But, as the old saying goes, philosophy does not aim to simply solve problems but rather aims at clarifying the criteria in terms of which such problems arise. I think you will agree that I have done this extremely well.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!

DIRTY TRICKS

Just after my exchange with the Dribbling Half-Wit my Hotmail account was hacked with a phony message from one of my contacts reading, “I’ve sent you a confidential message” and instructed to click on that sentence to read it. I clicked on and my Microsoft account was compromised, requiring a new Microsoft number and a new Microsoft code.

I wonder who it could have been. Do you think it was … no, no, it couldn’t be.

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!