As the title states... do you think taste is subjective.

By taste, I mean taste in foods and taste in women.

Do you think men from london prefer different style of women to men in somewhere say spain?

And do you think taste in food (like, what you enjoy) is subject to location as well..

Mere exposure hypothisis

I think alot depends on what you are exposed too, although i dont get why alot of good looking black guys go for really fat white women.

Because culturally in other countries fat women are attractive as it shows they come from abundance and would make a good mother and able to feed their children.
They go for white women because in our society they still feel repressed so feel they have bettered themselves by being with a white woman.

my opinion

I'm just sat at work and was thinking about how good my banana tasted and wondered, why does it taste good to me?

I'm just wondering why I hate so many foods. Vegetables, most fruits with the exception of apples, bananas, strawberrys and oranges, pork chops and most meats cooked like that except steak and chicken, i hate salad cream and mayo and any sauce other than ketchup, i hate MINT, any taste of mint makes me heave (i can just bare with toothepaste..) i hate any type of fish like tuna and salmon unless its in breadcrumbs.. olives, peppers, nuts other than salted peanuts. Its bad

Yes I think so. I know that people perceive colours differently, which is a neurological/biological thing but that's the only in-built one I can think of at the mo.

The very word "taste" implies an individual's weighing up something to see if they like it. I like brunettes, some people prefer blondes or redheads.

As Caveman is hinting at though, it's why we have these tastes that it get's interesting. Why do I like brunettes? Probably because it fits my "identity" as I perceive it. I have a mate who is very old fashioned in his tastes, he was ill as a child and spent a lot of time around his parents, so it rubbed off into his own identity, he likes old fashioned things. It's like you with vegetables, for some reason you don't "like" them, but unravelling what is real and what is learned in that particular behaviour, is interesting.

How much of what we are as people is purely reaction to experience I don't know, but it seems quite a bit.

PS

I would venture to say it's a compromise of nature and nurture.

On the nature side we find that we have evolved with our genes and our tastes so that in colder northern Climes such as we are in we will tend to favor fatty foods that would allow us to weather harsher winters etc. with women men are more inclined to favour women with child-bearing hips and with an athletic body and large breasts so that the women will be able to reproduce and care for offspring.

Then on the nurture side, and I personally think this attributes more for women, we are given certain foods as children, we are exposed to foods and women by the media which cause us to favour other less native foods and women. Thus why we might prefer a more tanned girls due to FHM etc. or deep fried foods.

Just my two-penneth from what I've read and experienced...

There's two sides to this argument.

Firstly there's the factual side, men are more attracted to women with a 1.6-1.7 waist to hip ratio. This indicates she has good health for bearing a child. Similar perfect ratios are also present in men. This ratio is attractive no matter that height or size of a woman.

Smell, we're more attracted to those that are genetically opposite to us and this is indicate by the individual smells we all carry. If you've ever thought someone was traditionally good looking but you were completely unattracted to them then this is likely the cause.

We're more attracted to those with a symmetry. This indicates good genetics. When your cells split they all create perfect copies of themselves but various things cause mutations and imperfections. If every cell in your body perfectly split then you would have a perfect mirror image on both sides of you.

Faces, estrogen caps bone growth in a woman's lower face and chin making them lower and shorter as well as the brow allowing for more prominent eyes. Testosterone does quite the opposite creating a wider lower face and jaw and much more prominent brow. The appearance of these traits indicates strong hormonal health and ability to reproduce.

Another studied area (although controversial) is pheromones, certain pheromones can attract women of a certain gene group while even angering men of a certain gene group. This is disputed though as pheromones don't sit in the air much - they hover around 10 inches off the ground. It is possible to pick these up as someone goes past though before they fall.

Then, on top of the above well studied areas you have the competing issues from social conditioning, prevalent thoughts that are drummed into people and cause clashes with our factual biological attractions because we're told to be attracted to x and we seek to have x because it will make others around us think we're awesome etc.

In terms of food taste, it's not subjective at all. Taste has a factual spectrum made up of bitter, sweet, salty, sour and umami. These 5 things combine to create all tastes. The subjectivity of taste comes from two things, those with high concentrations of tastebuds have been found to have a wider degree of foods that they like, on top of this the body also adjusts perceptions of tastes based on what it craves, receptors for different types of tastes increase and decrease based on what the body desires.

Don't you think the implications of this are a bit, depressing? It's like that thread the other day implying that we are but effects of previous causes. Not to get all existential/spiritual but the logical conclusion of this line of thought, is that our identities don't exist. If I see myself as this and that, but this and that are merely inherent biological drives or environmental adaptations, then what room does that leave for "me", what am "I"?

PS

It's only depressing if you choose to view it as such. You are indeed a product of your environment, genetics and experiences. That's what makes you "you".

We are biological machines, we're born with a certain interpretive software based on our genetics and that software interprets our environment and experiences as we move through life. It'll be slightly different for each person based on whatever unique patterns their software(brain) follows but that is essentially what makes them.

You're still you. But to believe that you're not a product of everything you experience is just wrong. That's not depressing, it's informed and knowledgeable. It merely means you accept that every interaction you have with others has an effect on who "you" are. You are a fluid and ever changing thing, who you are one moment is not who you are the next. You can change very rapidly to adapt to a sudden environmental change or you can change very slowly based on the effects of some mental pattern of thought occurring in your brain. A good example of that last gradual one would be the change of a religious person from being orthodox to atheist, the change is gradual and due to long term battle of thoughts in the mind, possibly triggered by outside influences.

Why would this be depressing though. What would you prefer "you" or the "self" be? Something spiritually unique? The soul?

RLAJay, when you wrote: "You can change very rapidly to adapt to a sudden environmental change or you can change very slowly based on the effects of some mental pattern of thought occurring in your brain."

It made me think immediately of INCEPTION!! Where someone implants a thought into your head by doing the smallest, most subtle thing, and then it manifests and can change your entire ideology and mindframe.

I personally think the idea of a soul would be "nice to have", but I just don't believe it.

I actually have a great example of a simple thing manifesting:

My gf's sister has a house, and somebody casually told her they thought the lights were on in the day when nobody was in. Then the sister began to start testing things, closing all doors before going out, turning lights off etc, and slowly started to delude herself that the house is haunted. She then went on to get psychics to check out the house, (who told her conflicting and completely BOLLOCKS stories), some paid, some free. After wasting time and money, she gets lots of people to do some kind of SCEANCE like asking the "ghosts" questions and shit. Wegie board shit but without a board. Now she has moved in to my gfs mums house, and is completely obsessed that the house is haunted, even after photo and videos have been taken that show nothing. She went as far to say someone got possessed in there, and that a table was hovering (funny how that wasnt on video).

I realise now I have deviated far from "subjective taste" lol. But I was just replying to RLAJay post