Did ya'll see this? Kind of interesting.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/05/08/le ... index.html
Faizi
Boys and Girls
Sounds about right. You can look at experience with real people or, if you are young, you can simply look at American pop culture to see these reflections.Heterosexual women found the male and female pheromones about equally pleasant, while straight men and lesbians liked the female pheromone more than the male one. Men and lesbians also found the male hormone more irritating than the female one, while straight women were more likely to be irritated by the female hormone than the male one.
- Diebert van Rhijn
- Posts: 6469
- Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm
The problem I have with the underlying ideas in the article is that it hasn't been proven yet if ideas about sexuality shape the brain into having certain reactions, or that it's the other way around: that our genes determine the crucial preference (if any).
The brain, and the hormonal system, appears quite 'plastic' from what I understood, it can be shaped and moulded, adapted over time when the need arises. To a certain extent. So a strong desire or despise of men could trigger the brain to react on pheromones and other stimulants in a certain way.
We might be born with certain dispositions but there's a lot of wiggle room left which makes it hard to draw conclusion about how much is really 'hard wired' in ourselves.
And since experimenting on 'tabula rasa' babies is not done yet, what we measure are brain reactions that are already quite 'settled' on their path.
The brain, and the hormonal system, appears quite 'plastic' from what I understood, it can be shaped and moulded, adapted over time when the need arises. To a certain extent. So a strong desire or despise of men could trigger the brain to react on pheromones and other stimulants in a certain way.
We might be born with certain dispositions but there's a lot of wiggle room left which makes it hard to draw conclusion about how much is really 'hard wired' in ourselves.
And since experimenting on 'tabula rasa' babies is not done yet, what we measure are brain reactions that are already quite 'settled' on their path.
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This is just to say that Diebert's are exactly the sort of questions and reservations I have about all these sorts of sex-brain studies. Existential conditions have had always to take a back seat in consideration to Essential natures. Whereas we can't find even the ass of the latter with both hands and the lights on, we also ignore the plentiful evidence of our formation by the former.
Philosophical existentialists have said it this way: there is no human nature; there is only human condition. In this way, an unfathomable amount of our sexual behaviour is learned/modeled for us; an unfathomable amount of all of our behaviour. This understanding of the ruling contribution of conditions is the way of seeing and changing, if we want, those [human] conditions over which we have some sway. One has to have their eye on existence to see the way we are (unconsciously) modeling it for one another; taking it on. Otherwise we have our heads up our dark hineys dreaming like Plato of out-of-this-world Forms; i.e. measuring adult brains having already undergone unfathomable amounts of [unrecognized as] conditioning in an effort to look for their essential "Nature."
Nietzsche was correct in pointing out how many things in us bespeak of a poor relationship with, and downgrade of, physical existence, in all of our considerations.
.
This is just to say that Diebert's are exactly the sort of questions and reservations I have about all these sorts of sex-brain studies. Existential conditions have had always to take a back seat in consideration to Essential natures. Whereas we can't find even the ass of the latter with both hands and the lights on, we also ignore the plentiful evidence of our formation by the former.
Philosophical existentialists have said it this way: there is no human nature; there is only human condition. In this way, an unfathomable amount of our sexual behaviour is learned/modeled for us; an unfathomable amount of all of our behaviour. This understanding of the ruling contribution of conditions is the way of seeing and changing, if we want, those [human] conditions over which we have some sway. One has to have their eye on existence to see the way we are (unconsciously) modeling it for one another; taking it on. Otherwise we have our heads up our dark hineys dreaming like Plato of out-of-this-world Forms; i.e. measuring adult brains having already undergone unfathomable amounts of [unrecognized as] conditioning in an effort to look for their essential "Nature."
Nietzsche was correct in pointing out how many things in us bespeak of a poor relationship with, and downgrade of, physical existence, in all of our considerations.
.