A Tiny Fruit That Tricks the Tongue

Title: A Tiny Fruit That Tricks the Tongue
Author: Patrick Farrell and Kassie Bracken
Date: May 28^th, 2008
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In Class

daleysfruit.com.au

            According to the article, this fruit that originated in West Africa had the capability to alter our gustatory perceptions of acidic flavors into sweet flavors. Some examples that were given were of lemon sorbet mixed with Guinness which altered the perceived taste to a chocolate shake, and Tabasco which was perceived as hot doughnut glaze. The fruit had deteriorated the boundaries for what we considered to be edible and not edible. With this miracle fruit, people were able to eat or drink what they could not have before by itself, such as Tabasco. According to the article, this miracle fruit could almost be a substitute for sugar as it did not seem to have any health disadvantages when experimented by Dr. Bartoshuk. However, the miracle fruit did not always work to our advantage. In some cases, the miracle fruit would cause a reaction such as a person exclaiming “What did you do to my mouth?” The reactions to this fruit were tested at Mr. Aliquo’s “flavor tripping event”. Because people were attending this party, did they have expectations about this fruit changing the way they perceived what they ate? If so, would this have influenced them into believing that their gustatory perceptions had changed when in reality it hadn’t? Since only one person is able to experience this change in perception and this change is different for every person, how do we know what the people claim is true? Do we have to experience it to believe it? But even then, we would have expectations that would influence the way we perceive and think about its effects. Is it then, the miracle fruit that is altering our gustatory perception or is it our minds itself?

Sometimes, people had difficulty trusting Mr. Aliquo as they did not have a close connection if a connection at all. The people who were coming to these events had gotten invites on the internet and had never met Mr. Aliquo before. One woman asked him to eat the miracle fruit first before she dared to try one because she faced such difficulty in trusting him. Another person at the party was able to convince her that it was safe to trust him because she “met him on the internet, so it’s safe”. This statement to me seems illogical. It seems to imply that all people on the internet are trustworthy yet how do we know this? In fact, in many cases, people are attacked through cyber bullying, deceit, interference to privacy etc. by people they meet on the internet. To this person who claims this to be true, he is using inductive reasoning if he has never met anyone who had harmed him through the internet, but how much does this claim correspond to the events that happen in reality? How reliable is his inductive reasoning? How much experience does this person have to support his claim?