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 PHIL 100-971 - Introduction to Philosophy
 What Turns People On?		  New Topic  Reply to Topic
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Richard Mikel
Apprentice

32 Posts
Posted - Aug 04 2010 :  12:25:31 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
First of all, kudos to Tom for clearing up the confusion of my post a few days ago. He hit the nail on the head. I was traveling and unable to respond.

Aaron is still making use of the "variables" that exist in these questions. The idea of the colors on a bird seems to be a pretty good representation, but it's tough to argue it's validity since we can't, dare I say it, "know for certain" the reasons that a female finds the male's colors attractive. Could it be because the bright colors are, through the "logical" thought a bird goes though when looking for a make, what makes a bird a good bird?

Some species of males fight the other males in their gathering in order to "win the hearts" of females in the group. For the winner, the fight is a representation of good qualities, not necessarily beautiful qualities.

[Very lightly edited to enhance readability -TT]
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Cassie Vrooman
Apprentice

32 Posts
Posted - Aug 08 2010 :  7:52:00 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Have we come to a consensus as to what it is that turns people on? I know initially I was thinking that it depends on what kind of "turned on" we were talking about. But I've been corrected about this, and now know that we're just talking about being turned on in general.

In light of Diotima's ladder of love, I am beginning to think that what turns a person on depends on where he or she is on the ladder. For example, someone lower on the ladder is only turned on by beautiful bodies whereas someone who has moved up on the ladder can look beyond beautiful bodies and may be turned on by a beautiful soul.

[Lightly edited to enhance readability -TT]
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Eliott Dimond
Fledgling

19 Posts
Posted - Aug 08 2010 :  7:58:06 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Posting.
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John Koban
Apprentice

40 Posts
Posted - Aug 08 2010 :  10:10:49 PM  Show Profile  Click to see John Koban's MSN Messenger address  Send John Koban a Yahoo! Message  Reply with Quote
I think we have pretty much reached a consensus. At least according to the Symposium, the answer as to what turns people on is pretty straightforward. It seems that is the approach we have been using here. I do not know for sure if there are any other major philosophical works that have another opinion as to what turns people on, but I would certainly be glad to take up some of that reading if there is anything else out there worth reading. I have read a lot of scientific explanations of what turns people on from a purely sexual perspective, and some of those answers appear fairly convincing. I would like to think that the scientific answers would apply to other things aside from sexual stuff, and applied to something like a painting, but I cannot imagine why arousal from a painting would make sense from a biological perspective. But if we stick with Diotima, sexual desire is the driving force even behind the arousal from a non-human beautiful object.

[Very lightly edited to enhance readability -TT]
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Jenna Stimac
Apprentice

28 Posts
Posted - Aug 08 2010 :  11:59:48 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin

1368 Posts
Posted - Aug 09 2010 :  06:37:28 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
John, I think that the next person for you to read on this is Freud. He was in general a big fan of Plato's, and he often has Platonic ideas in mind in his own discussions of the psychological constitution of human beings. Actually, your reading of Plato (Diotima) in your most recent post (sexual desire is the driving force even behind the arousal from a non-human beautiful object) comes really close to capturing Freud's point of view -- closer to capturing it, I think, than it comes to capturing Diotima's. Freud thinks that our being drawn to works of art and such always involves sublimated sexual desire. For Freud, the rock-bottom reality concerning ''eros'' is that it is the sex drive, and all "higher" forms of attraction are to be understood in terms of the concept of sublimation. For Plato -- or anyway Plato's Diotima -- the real truth concerning ''eros'' is that it's the desire to give birth to the truly good upon the truly beautiful, and all "lower" forms of attraction are to be understood in terms of comparative ignorance as to what is truly good and what is truly beautiful. In other words, they operate with much the same hierarchy, but for Freud, what's "really" going on everywhere in the hierarchy is what goes on at the bottom, whereas for Diotima, what's "really" going on everywhere in the hierarchy is what goes on at the top.

Freud has also had a really significant impact on many twentieth-century literary critics and theorists, so reading Freud would be well worth doing both in connection with the philosophical topics we've been talking about here and in connection with your interests in literature.
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