tk

Even as a computer science and mathematics student, I'm sometimes confronted with questions regarding "taste" and "beauty". Is "taste" objective, semi-objective or subjective? What do you think?

My current position is that while taste is semi-objective at best, skill is objective.

MyKell

This is a philosophical discussion rather than a sci/skept one.

Beauty and taste are subjective.

tronvillain

Well, it is subjective in the sense that it depends entirely on individual perspective, but since we are all human we all share a relatively similar perspective. So, given appropriate information about humans one could probably "objectively" determine whether or not something was beautiful, but that would only amount to determining whether or not an average human would label it as beautiful, and nothing more.

excreationist

Well I think we associate things like shapes and colours with other things - like emotions. We start forming those associations since birth. Between people, there are lots of similarities and differences in their life experiences including those as babies.
If certain shapes were present a lot while the baby had a good time - and never when it wasn't having a good time, it would associate those shapes with pleasure. And I think familiarity itself is a pleasureable thing. Perhaps the golden ratio is the average of the most familiar proportion. Or it could be hard-coded in as part of the pattern that describes what an attractive mate looks like. People who are repulsed by traditional views of beauty might have had quite bad situations in which the pattern (golden ratio, etc) was present and this displeasure outweighed the previous pleasure that was associated with the golden ratio.
To me, visual symmetry implies a kind of confrontation - like staring into the eyes of someone or something headed towards you. The golden ratio isn't obviously symmetrical - it involves things being more at rest (not confrontational) - more soothing.
Anyway, I think many things are partly hardcoded (e.g. symmetry probably is - symmetry is a sign of good health/athleticism - and on a TV show babies liked seeing symmetrical faces but not asymmetical ones) and the rest is a result of the pleasure/discomfort patterns we've accumulated over our lifetime (including when we were babies).

repoman

I also saw a tv show long time go about the golden ratio and good looks. They said that actors like tom Cruise and Demi Moore are extremely close in all manners to the ideal ratios in their faces. they also had a plastic surgeon who used the ratios of an ideal face to design operations. It seemed fairly effective.

I recently was wondering why I as a guy with a thin long face and narrow spaced eyes like women with perfect faces like demi moore or wide faced women, but not narrow faced women say like darryl hannah. It may be a latent self hatred, but it may be that I am trying to get my kids to be closer to the golden ratios. Is this a little to far fetched? Does anyone have statistics on this?

While it does make a sort of sense to sek a facially complementary make, maybe the bigger drive is to look for a ideal facail mate. Say my face is an 8 as far thinness (5 being perfect), would I be more likely to pick a woman with a 2 (wide face) than one with a 6? The 6 is actually closer to ideal but the 2 will be more likely to have kids who have a 5 for facial width.



by the way does anyone remember the discover article from a while ago about the computer generated beauties they made through trial and error by having people which one was more pretty at each stage? I remember that some of the end products were reallly hot! One letter the next month said they looked like hollywood hookers.

Feather

If concepts of what is "beautiful and tasteful" have a quantitative basis (i.e. they are objective), then it is also a science/skepticism discussion, though.

I'm not a biologist or a physiologist, so I have no clue how this sort of thing might be measured. My first guess would be that a bunch of electrodes are hooked up to the relevent bits of the skull/brain and responses to various images/concepts recorded.

There was some show or other about human sexual preferences on one of the pop/pseudoscience cable channels. Something about symmetry and so forth seemed to be universally appealing.

As for scientists describing good work as "beautiful," I don't know what to say. I can look at two completely different proofs for the same result and consider one more eloquent/beautiful than the other based on the nuances and subtle shortcuts used (or neglected). It's the scientists' version of what I like to call the Monkey Fecal Toss: whoever tosses best gets all the "ooks" of awe from the rest of us mundanes.

Majestyk

At this point I would say they are semi-objective. Their underlying foundations being biological and their actual manifestations being subject to environment.

Beauty is an absence of imperfection, which, would suggest an absence of disease and indicate a healthy breeding partner.

I suspect that there is also some form of visual aspect of social consideration involved as well considering our natural tendencies towards tribalism.

Taste visual and olfactory might have some relation to potential hazards.

Visually, many species indicate their toxic nature thru the display of brightly colored markings. If such a display were evolved as a defense then, it would seem that a corresponding sensitivity to the display would also have evolved for it to be effective.


Similarly there may be certain olfactory tastes, which we inherently find unpleasant. Fecal matter, rotting vegetation, may be universally ingrained in some genetic memory as a taste to be avoided. Olfactory tastes however, are very open to new associations as new substances are constantly being stored into memory with our body’s condition after ingesting them.

Strawberry

I read about some study that came out saying that humans are most attracted to people who are moderately, but not radically, different from themselves genetically. This might explain why a man with a thin face doesn't like women with thin faces; it's too similar to his own genetic makeup, and breeding with a partner who shares too much genetic material could run the risk of inbreeding.

It also could explain why, even in very liberal societies, there are usually more partners/marriages between people of the same ethnic group than between people of different ethnic groups. Breeding outside your ethnic group means that your partner's genetic makeup will likely be (relatively) quite different from yours, and could disrupt the expression of some of your ethnic group's helpful genetic traits.