Your senses

Ok now I don't normally post threads in this forum, but another poster and I got into a discussion on an unrelated topic about the different senses. It was developing into a decent conversation, but sadly was offtopic. I am now posting this thread to discuss our senses and which ones we have and don't have.

Now to begin with, everyone is familiar with the 5 basic senses. However that is a very basic description of what our senses are. Before I start discussing more senses, here is an article to read.

science.howstuffworks.com...

For instance, the article talks about the different senses in your skin: hot, cold, itch, and pressure. That is four different feelings or sensations you experience through your skin. Now at this point you are probably thinking, well yes but all those sensations are touching something. But the key here is that the sensations are different. You can experience one sensation in your skin without feeling another. You don't press your finger against your skin and immediately feel pain.

Let's move to another sensory organ, the ear. The ear is normally attributed to hearing things. However, your sense of balance is also located in the ear. The sense of balance has little if anything to do with interpreting external sound waves entering your ear. One thing that does effect your balance however is a sharp blow to your ear. You knock the liquids that maintain your balance askew and end up getting dizzy. So here we have two entirely different sensations located in your ear, yet one talks about the senses they only attribute hearing to the ear.

You can do similar things with your other sensory organs. The tongue has different sensory receptors for different tastes, your eyes have two different receptors as well. But instead of focusing on those, there are more internal senses that we can discuss as well.

Before we discuss the internal senses, I'd like to mention that there are two types of senses. Senses that you are conscious of while they are active and senses that you are unaware of. Most of the internal senses are the latter.

Your body keeps fairly accurate time without your knowledge. You are generally tired at the same time each night and generally wake up around the same time. Your body can even be trained to wake up a few minutes before your alarm goes off. I do it all the time. You get hungry as well around the same times each day. But just like other senses, you can disrupt your sense of timing by having many erratic days. Wake up at 6 am one day then 10 am the next. Stay up to 4 am that night only to wake up 4 hours later. Your sense of timing will very shortly become out of sync and won't know what to feel.

One can even make an argument for a sense of conscience. A feeling of right and wrong. When you do something dishonest or think something dishonest, there is always that nagging feeling in the back of your head that tells you that this is wrong and you shouldn't do it. Also just like other senses, people can be born without this one. Blind people are born without sight, deaf people are born with out hearing (sense of balance still works though), and sociopaths are born without a conscience.

So in conclusion, you can see that the common description of our senses is very basic. From senses that go unmentioned to just describing many different senses with a broad brush, it does our senses disservice to just claim that there are only 5 of them. What say you ATS?

Our senses are very useful indeed. We often go throughout our days not even thinking anything about them.

I find myself recalling many fond memories most often tied to my sense of smell. Sometimes i'll walk past a restaurant and smell grilled cheese.... It brings back so many happy childhood memories of going to this little corner restaurant with my grandpa.
After my mom passed my dad let me take some things....I took her white shoulders perfume. It's funny because I use to hate that smell.....she really used a lot of it lol. But now I take it out of the cupboard every now and again just to smell it, and it floods me with memories and emotions.

Our senses are like little gifts to us.

I read an article not long ago about humans ability to see with a ecosystem similar to a bat has. It takes training but most people have this sense. Seeing through your ears. Most people don't know they have this sense but the article I read said that we do. It stated the research that was done and backup research that verified it.

So is this another sense we have? It is Echo location so some sound must be made I guess, the article did not specify exactly what sound was used but maybe it is a sound we can make. I think this was on Science Daily about three to four weeks ago.

Here is one article about it. en.wikipedia.org... Not the scientific article I read though.

How is it possible to know what senses you don't have? All of the senses you KNOW you have are only the ones you are aware of. It's not possible recognize something that you are not aware of.

If human beings could only hear and smell, it would be impossible to know that we were missing sight. Similarly, a person who is only aware of fives sense, is unaware of his 6th sense and therefore would be unable to say that a 6th sense does or does not exist.

The only thing you can speak about, are the senses you are aware of.

reply to post by Visitor2012


Senses send information to the brain which interprets the information and reacts accordingly. This doesn't mean you are consciously aware of this. For instance, you don't have to rebalance yourself every time you take a step forward. You aren't aware of your balance recorrecting itself as you move forward.

reply to post by brandiwine14


This is a great point as well. Your senses that you are aware of can become linked to different memories if you constantly experience them while living the event. For instance I listen to a lot of music and there are certain songs that I'll listen to that will trigger memories of doing other things while listening to it.

reply to post by Krazysh0t


Hypnosis can also tweak senses or the level of perception (or create a delusion about perceptions). I have tested several aspects one that amazed me personally and I'm continue to pursue exploration is in relation with time (time is not only relative but depends on our internal clock) there has been some attempt to exploit time dilation and acceleration having control of this capability (even if it only remains a delusion seems extremely beneficial for practical application in several situations)...

This is probably not the best examples (as hypnosis shouldn't be used in this way) but for example beyond simply auditory, taste and tactile alteration it can also create visual hallucinations.

The Invisible Hypnotist

reply to post by Panic2k11


You know it's funny. Your senses help you perceive and navigate through reality. Yet humans like to disrupt their senses through various means (hypnosis, drugs, etc) to create new experiences. We get tired of experiencing reality the same way all the time so we like to knock our senses out of rhythm so that we can experience things a new way. Even something as simple as meditation can alter your senses.

reply to post by Krazysh0t


Meditation is hypnosis... but yes the reality in our mind is always superior (in our view) to the outside reality, the fact is that there is no outside reality in the first place, reality exists only as a model on your mind and yours will assuredly be different in many aspects to mine...

reply to post by Panic2k11


Yea this can be easily verified by looking at colorblind people. Someone calling an orange object red, because they can't tell the difference between the two colors sees things differently then someone who can tell the difference between the two colors. Therefore the first person has a different view of reality then the second. Reality is highly subjective.

reply to post by Krazysh0t


The fact is that you only have one nervous system, and there is a center to that nervous system.

You have -one- sense. It manifests and is interpreted in various ways.

But they all work in the exact same way. They are just interpreted differently so that we are able to comprehend and translate a lot of the information at the same time.

Or else we would not be able to make all of the connections we make. An apple is red, round, has a smooth peel, makes a distinctive sound when you bit into it, has a certain flavor, is sweet and bitter, smells like freshness, tastes like freshness, looks like freshness, feels like freshness;

Do you see what happened?

All of the different aspects of that apple that we discerned with all of the various interpretive methods all connected one very important aspect of that apple: It's fresh.

Or... it's rotten.

You have -one- sense.

You can be blind and know you have a fresh apple. You can be deaf and know you have a fresh apple. You can have no tongue and know you have a fresh apple. You would have to be brain dead or completely dead to not know you have a fresh apple. Any one interpretive method is capable of giving you the information you need to know that the apple is fresh.

But with all the senses working together, there are many witnesses, less processing power required to make the judgment, less memory required, and less space required. It's an immediately understood fact.

When you play baseball, if you over-think your swing, you fail. It's a "feeling". But, really, it's allowing what is discerned to manifest instead of trying to take away power from the nervous system to contemplate something that requires not contemplation, but fluid reaction. Now the senses all need to be trained separately from each other, and then to be trained to harmonize with each other. And then these become automatic (when dealing especially with things that are learned and not natural, which is almost everything to a human being).

As well, playing guitar, especially fingerstyle guitar, is the same way.

You must train each of the different senses INDIVIDUALLY in order to be able to focus on each aspect that must be perfected. And then you must start all over again when harmonizing all of these different aspects. Slowly. The hardest part is, after much training, learning to let go of the control over the senses and to let them do their work. No micromanaging; or as some have said, "no mind".

If your boss at work is constantly running around making sure every single job was completed the way it should have been, that boss either knows they didn't hire the right people for the job, or the boss is a micro-manager and WILL ONLY NEGATIVELY AFFECT THE PROCESS. Because they will inevitably find some small mistake that is pointless, and therefore they will redirect energy to something meaningless instead of allowing the body to accomplish the bigger picture.


Do not micromanage unless you are training. But once the training is complete, let go, move on.

You have -one- sense.

The body reads languages many different ways. The world communicates in many different ways. All of this information passes through the brain to be interpreted. The mind comprehends all things simply as they are. It is the body that requires the translation.

I hope this horse is dead, because I'm not interested in clubbing leather any longer.

Krazysh0t
reply to post by Panic2k11

 

Yea this can be easily verified by looking at colorblind people. Someone calling an orange object red, because they can't tell the difference between the two colors sees things differently then someone who can tell the difference between the two colors. Therefore the first person has a different view of reality then the second. Reality is highly subjective.

The world is a Rorschach inkblot. No one could ever 'say' what it is really.
Words and concepts about what is seen or heard will always conflict.
Only direct seeing and hearing, tasting and touching without concept reveal the truth - which is non conceptual.

reply to post by Krazysh0t


The weird senses:

The intuitive emotional sense or a "sensitive" or emotionally feeling the aether (subconscious mind's emotions maybe) - the one where you emotional feel something without knowing what is causing the feeling.

-Subcategories would be the gut feeling, that creepy deja vu feeling, the surreal feeling, the sudden overwhelming grief of a being or presence, the sinister or madness of a place feeling - that uneasy feeling, and the divinity feeling where you feel like you are in the presence of God or are enlightened.

The intuitive knowing sense or "esp" or reading the aether - the one where you know something without witnessing it with the 5 senses.

-Subcategories would be the stage fright sense (I guess that's a good name for it - the one where you can feel and know someone is watching you), out of body visions sense, the knowledge that something has change but you don't know what it is sense, premonitions or prophetic visions or knowledge of the future sense, knowledge or visions of the past or present sense - like people who help cops find missing persons or the hive mind sense, and then people who talk to the dead or demons or whatever either vocally or visually sense.

reply to post by TarzanBeta


This is an more simplistic view of the senses than the saying that we only have 5 senses. Not to mention your sense of smell goes directly to your brain instead of passing through the spinal chord. Sure you can some up all your senses into the experience that is the red apple, but the individual characteristics that you experience that make up the entirety of it are the individual senses.

For instance a blind man can still experience the taste of the apple. He doesn't need to see it to know that it tastes delicious. Consequently, you don't need to taste or smell the apple to know that after eating it, the apple has filled you up.

You can always break any experience you have down into its individual senses. Each experience may have several senses involved that make up the entirety of it. However not all experiences use all the same senses. Therefore you cannot define that we just have one sense. We do have one brain however that processes the incoming senses and determines what you are experiencing.

Maybe I'm reading your post wrong, but the second half of your post seems to contradict your first half. You mention played the guitar by utilizing your individual senses yet at the beginning of the post you mentioned only one sense.

Anyways, what you are describing is training your reflexes. This is an example of utilizing your senses without your knowledge. These senses send signals to your spinal chord that already has the corresponding reaction stored there and immediately send that out for you to react accordingly without thinking about it.

For instance, while playing the guitar and a particular song during the chord progression, you have to play an A minor chord. Your spinal chord while processing your sense of timing and listening to the notes being played realizes that the A minor chord is coming up on the next note and you instinctively know to shift your fingers to the A, C, and E notes on the neck of the chord. You don't have to think about where these notes are, you just move your fingers to that position.

reply to post by Krazysh0t


People refer to them as individual senses. But it's not really true. They are different methods for interpreting. That's all. But what is happening is "interpreting". One senses, one interprets.

The brain is the core of the central nervous system. But, on that note, smelling doesn't go straight to the brain. It is perceived contextually against the barrier, and also smelling requires taste to function properly. These two methods of interpretation are directly related to each other and are therefore not separate methods of interpretation; but are two sides of the same coin.

That brings the physical interpretive methods down to 4 instead of 5.

And then you cannot judge what you are seeing properly if you cannot hear. Hearing offers witness testimony to justify understanding exactly what it is that you just saw.

For example, you may see the reflection of a flash on a wall in the dark. If you don't hear thunder, then you're not sure that it is lightning that you witnessed.

As well, just because you hear a horse galloping, it doesn't mean that the horse is galloping. Foley artists use coconuts.

As well, your eyes will not interpret the balance to you, the ears will. But the balance is visually discerned, though judged internally by the hearing mechanisms.

As well, have you not discerned how that light and sound seem to have the exact same properties? there is a condition in which people see sounds and hear colors. How is that possible if there is more than one sense? These must be completely and directly related.

They are interpretive methods.

And when you are playing guitar, I say to focus on the interpretive methods. They are not senses stand alone; and no sense is stand alone. Even when you are micromanaging one method, you are by necessity, putting all other methods into slavery of that method, and thereby making it the current master. Once each method has been mastered and each method has learned to support the other methods, then ONE sense can be developed perfectly.

But as long as anyone believes that our interpretive methods are independent and distinct, and especially if anyone is trying to break apart the interpretive methods and render them and define them into many more senses, then one will only accomplish dividing the mind instead of bringing it together. People will become imbalanced; especially because most, if not all, people will not be able to actually discern even the very, very minute importance of any one of the so-called specific and minute senses. For there are always deeper things to be learned. It only takes one more drop to fill a cup, but more than a drop will spill when it is let go.

There is one sense and it must be unified and stay unified. That is the nature of communication. And that is what our sense does; it communicates with the physical world. But once you start dividing communication up and claiming that there are many different languages, you're not really understanding communication.

Japanese and English are both language. One may say, "These are different languages." No. They are not. They are both the same. They are verbal communication. It is the interpretive method which sets these two languages apart. And all the other languages for that matter.

All people are trying to say the same exact things : "I'm right." "I'm wrong." "I like." "I don't like." "I need help." "I want to help." "I approve." "I disapprove." "I love." "I hate." and so forth.

It is that simple.

There is no contradiction, I made no contradiction, and you -know- I made no contradiction.

Enjoy.

reply to post by TarzanBeta


What you have described is your senses interacting with each other. Sure taste and smell go hand in hand, but that is only most of the time. What about when you have a cold and your nose is all clogged up? You can still taste things when you eat them. Sure the taste is diluted, but it is there none the less.

Again you mention balance and sight. If what you said was completely true then blind people wouldn't be able to walk around without becoming dizzy all the time.

I understand that different senses have to work together to make an experience work many times you are unaware of the senses even functioning, you are just reacting. However that doesn't mean you have one sense. Think of it like a computer. There are many different types of input devices and monitoring processes that go into a computer. When navigating a webpage, you may use a combination of your keyboard and mouse to get from place to place, but even though the navigation is utilizing two input devices, you don't call it one input. In fact if you look at the programming level, you'd see that there are two input streams being ran there. The same is true for a person. This is why the human brain is compared to a computer a lot.

Krazysh0t
reply to post by TarzanBeta

 

What you have described is your senses interacting with each other. Sure taste and smell go hand in hand, but that is only most of the time. What about when you have a cold and your nose is all clogged up? You can still taste things when you eat them. Sure the taste is diluted, but it is there none the less.

Again you mention balance and sight. If what you said was completely true then blind people wouldn't be able to walk around without becoming dizzy all the time.

I understand that different senses have to work together to make an experience work many times you are unaware of the senses even functioning, you are just reacting. However that doesn't mean you have one sense. Think of it like a computer. There are many different types of input devices and monitoring processes that go into a computer. When navigating a webpage, you may use a combination of your keyboard and mouse to get from place to place, but even though the navigation is utilizing two input devices, you don't call it one input. In fact if you look at the programming level, you'd see that there are two input streams being ran there. The same is true for a person. This is why the human brain is compared to a computer a lot.

Your brain doesn't interact with itself. Information is interpreted as it is run through the brain's filters. But it's all in the mind; one thing.

Blind people do have a hard time developing balance. But when they do, that simply means they have mastered an aspect of that form of interpretation. But those that became blind and were not born blind, they -do- have a hard time learning to balance. Sound can be a very tricky creature until you become extremely familiar with how echo works and how the doppler effect works, and the like. And if one is blind and deaf, then further still, they may still have physically feeling. And if they have that, then they become an even greater master of that method of interpretation.

These days, computers are certainly a little more intuitive than they used to be. And these days, I plug my mouse and my keyboard both into the same USB card.

Two inputs, two interpretive devices (for accomplishing the exact same tasks mind you; the mouse was not a requirement, but a luxury add on that made things more efficient) - and yet the signals are processed in the exact same way. As for the analogy of the keyboard and mouse, I think that it proves my point further. But I think our interpretive devices are even more segregated than the keyboard and the mouse, and yet I still understand that they all report to the same authority. That authority is the decider. That is the sense. For without an authority, whether it be by leadership or whether it be by the understanding of one's own nature (knowing one's own limits; as it is written, behold, the locusts have no leader, and yet they move together from place to place...), there is certainly no sense.

The human brain is compared to a computer, and in some ways, this is okay... but mostly it is not.

The human functions are so incredibly complex. There is an aspect that computers, as long as they are inorganic, will never possess; and that is intuition. Though I also think that organic does not necessarily have to be natural or even physical. I refer to the conscience whose seat cannot be found by the likes of men, but has been sought, debated, and stipulated by all the great minds -- to absolutely no avail. For it if were to be found, then men would have died long ago, having knowledge of how to move it by force.

But a computer is just a tool. And the body is a tool. But that which animates the body is not a tool, but is the very essence of life and understanding.

Now that very essence of life and understanding does not interpret as the body does; for it discerns all things from one stimulus factor. And that stimulus factor is the mind, seemingly contained within processes of the brain. And all energy that passes through the brain is the same energy.

Just like all energy that passes through your computer is the same energy; it comes out of the wall, or so it seems. It is all the same.

And it is that energy that keeps us alive, and yet also, provides understanding and insight into all of the things which the brain interprets from its sense of the body's reports of various data, acquired by its various methods.

The data and the methods are various. They are interpretive. There can only be one sense.

Again.

There is a right answer and there is a wrong answer.

If I hand you an apple, and I say, "What did I just put into your hand?" And you say, "An orange." Then you are wrong.

If you say, "An apple." Then you are right. That is the bottom line. That is one sense. You are unified. You have understanding. That is what is called "common sense".

Some say we should have been built like birds, or like beasts, or like ants, or like grasshoppers, or like many other things; dogs, cats, and the like. But the fact is that each of these creatures do not have balanced communication. Some see greater, hear greater, and see less and hear less. Their method of smell isn't even always the same; whereas in some it seems almost intuitive because of the minuteness of the particles required to create the smell - but in some, they are so small, that they examine the textures -by a completely different method- for example, Praying mantis', and ants, and much smaller creatures at that. And yet we say, "That is our equivalent of smell."

But that is just another way of saying that the method by which they interpret textures in various dimensions (because smell is based on microtextures and taste is based upon macrotextures, or textures that relate more to our dimension of "size", so to speak) is completely different from our own, but it processes the same kind of information.

Technically, according to your understanding, that would just mean they have a completely different sense that we do not have.

Which makes no sense.

And therefore, that's not sense.

We cannot be right about something and at the same time be wrong about something. We are either right or wrong. This is one sense. You cannot say, "It smells like fresh cut grass, so it must be fresh cut grass." And then find out that it is burning paper. You did not use your sense. You made an assumption based upon limited information. And that's okay, but that does not make you any less wrong.

So therefore, your sense was betrayed. Communication was broken down because one stimulus said one thing, and another said a different thing. This is not sense. This is what we call a lack of sense.

That's the point.

It shouldn't take so many words to express what I am able to discern in a matter of a few seconds, if not less. But I see so many various angles by which one might justify this faulty understanding that I believe is part of a growing problem to cause people to dive deep into an ocean with silly assumptions. Ideas are very good. But it is almost always a bad idea to make something more complex than to understand it for what it is.

Those that work logic speak well when they say that the point of mathematics is to bring an equation down to its simplest form, so that it may be understood. To create problems, we re-complicate things.

That's how they make tests.