I don’t disagree about the utility of the term, I’m just trying to figure out what should be considered a dimension in “thingspace” and what shouldn’t. Obviously our brain’s hormonal environment is a rather important and immediate aspect of the environment, so we tend to lend undue importance to those things which change it.
To continue to play Devil’s Advocate, where does the line get drawn?
If you extend the hypothetical experiment out to a sufficiently sized random sampling of other people, and find that Wigginettes are more likely than default to induce biochemical “attractive” responses in people (despite not occurring with any greater frequency), I assume that that would then then justify the term. Even though it’s still not a word about Wigginettes themselves, but about other people’s reactions to them? Describing things in the real world doesn’t seem as simple as entity.property.
I understand the point here, that using words to create meaningless divisions is either mistaken or malicious. I was just trying to see how an example played out.
And, indeed, we have words or phrases for particular female physical traits that men find attractive. Look how many words there are for different shades of yellow or light brown hair, compared to just “brunette” for darker brown / black.
[Blonde, and the many pat phrases like platinum blonde, golden blonde, dirty blonde, etc]
Why? Because men find blondes more attractive on average.
Similarly, there’s a set of looks that are not particularly well-correlated or particularly common but is known as “English Rose” because men find it attractive.
Sure, there’s not a particular need for a word that is “woman that Ben Jones fancies”, but there’s plenty of value in “woman that has a particular look that lots of men like”
@Ben Jones:
I don’t disagree about the utility of the term, I’m just trying to figure out what should be considered a dimension in “thingspace” and what shouldn’t. Obviously our brain’s hormonal environment is a rather important and immediate aspect of the environment, so we tend to lend undue importance to those things which change it.
To continue to play Devil’s Advocate, where does the line get drawn?
If you extend the hypothetical experiment out to a sufficiently sized random sampling of other people, and find that Wigginettes are more likely than default to induce biochemical “attractive” responses in people (despite not occurring with any greater frequency), I assume that that would then then justify the term. Even though it’s still not a word about Wigginettes themselves, but about other people’s reactions to them? Describing things in the real world doesn’t seem as simple as entity.property.
I understand the point here, that using words to create meaningless divisions is either mistaken or malicious. I was just trying to see how an example played out.
And, indeed, we have words or phrases for particular female physical traits that men find attractive. Look how many words there are for different shades of yellow or light brown hair, compared to just “brunette” for darker brown / black.
[Blonde, and the many pat phrases like platinum blonde, golden blonde, dirty blonde, etc]
Why? Because men find blondes more attractive on average.
Similarly, there’s a set of looks that are not particularly well-correlated or particularly common but is known as “English Rose” because men find it attractive.
Sure, there’s not a particular need for a word that is “woman that Ben Jones fancies”, but there’s plenty of value in “woman that has a particular look that lots of men like”