Thread: 5 senses?

i tend to think that splitting senses into five categories is a little old-fashioned...i think it's a lot more complicated than just five ways to perceive energy.

Kinesthesis. And I agree w/ mongreloctopus, it's overly-simplistic to divide human perception into just five senses. Obviously humans can perceive the world in more ways than sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste. Kinesthesis is just one of those. People more well-versed in medicine than I could elaborate on more.

We also have a sense that tells us where our limbs are at any given moment. That's why amputees have problems with phantom limbs and what not.

Wiki says: Sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, thermoception, nociception, equilibrioception, proprioception (that is the body aweness one).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senses

I wonder how many things there are that certain nerve cells react to, for instance, there are 2 kind of nerve cells in your eyes, for black/white colors but allso for colors. That explains why when it's dark you can see stuff, but you can't see colors. So you could call that 2 types of sense too.

However, the other type of nerve cell eighter pick up Red, Blue or Green light. (at least 3, maybe not these lol I forgot).

So, you could say you have 4 different nerve cells that react to different things in your eyes.

Allso, arn't there different cells for Heat then for detecting Cold?

I agree that the old 5 senses clasification is a bit of a generalisation of the endless kinds of singals we percieve.

I dedicate to you all this magnificent song: The Senses by the Animaniacs.

Yakko: The sense of sight
Is what guides us right
When we go out on walks.
Wakko: The sense of smell's
The way you tell
That you need to change your socks.
Dot : The sense of touch
Is what hurts so much
When you bang your toe on the bed.
Yakko: The sense of hearing is something good
'Cause if a tree falls in the wood
Would there be a sound? You bet there would
If it landed on top of your head
YW+D : Your head
If a tree lands on top of your head!

Wakko: The sense of taste
Affects your waist
Yakko: Which makes five senses in all.
Dot : There's a sixth sense, too, but it's hard to explain
It's a psychic connection that's inside your brain
So you can understand people like Shirley MacLaine
Yakko: Who wear crystals they bought in the mall
YW+D : The mall
Who wear crystals they bought in the mall!

Yakko: And now the other senses!

Dot : There are scents you can smell
Like cologne from Chanel
Or the scents of expensive perfume.
Yakko: There are scents of flowers
We hope overpowers
The kitty box next to your room.
Phew!
Wakko: There's a sense of pride
You have deep down inside
Yakko: When you practice a sense of fair play.
Dot : There are dollars and cents that you pay at a toll
Yakko: Or the census man who is taking a poll
Wakko: And a sense of confusion; we're out of control
YW+D : And they really should take us away
Away
They really should take us away!

Dot : There's a sense of humor
A sense of doom, or
A sense of awe, sense of timing.
Yakko: The sense of a word
A sense of absurd
Like trying to do all this rhyming!
Dot : There's incense
Wakko: And horse sense
Yakko: And common sense, it's true.
Dot : Sense of wonder, sense of beauty
Wakko: Sense of honor, sense of duty
Yakko: A sense of doubt, a sense of danger
Dot : A sense of fear, when you meet a stranger
Wakko: A sense of style, a sense of worth
Yakko: A sense of direction for knowing the earth
YW+D : A sense of dread as we're singing this song
That it's starting to turn out completely all wrong
And it's time that we end it because it's too long
'Cause it just doesn't make any sense
No sense
It just doesn't make any sense!
[/b]

Originally posted by Neuro
What about the sense for balance? There is this thing you your ear that monitor what's up and down. So actually there are 6 senses.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't blanced sensed by they movement of fluid through three ring0like canals? In that case it's just the sense of touch.

Originally posted by Roller
Correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't blanced sensed by they movement of fluid through three ring0like canals? In that case it's just the sense of touch.

The "senses" are classified not so much because of the way in which they operate, but more because of the way in which they are "experienced", if that makes sense.

Originally posted by The Blue Meanie
The "senses" are classified not so much because of the way in which they operate, but more because of the way in which they are "experienced", if that makes sense.

Ah, yes that's true... I stand corrected. When I think about it, you're right... there's tons more senses that we need to take into account...

Originally posted by Neruo
There is this thing you your ear that monitor what's up and down.

It's considered to be a person's equilibrium. As a person gets older, it's common for a preson's equilibrium to go out of wack for some reason. I used to have more information on it but I don't remember it any more.

Just as another point of view, and this is just off of the top of my head, could you not also argue that there really is only one physical sense: touch. When you see something, it's technically light waves... in a (loose) sense touching the receptors in your eyes. When you hear, it's sound waves touching receptors in your ear. When you smell, it's the chemicals in the air that touch receptors in your nose. Same with taste. Then it's up to the receptors to interpret this data based on past experiences.

As for the non-physical senses, well, that's a longer discussion than I currently care to get in to.

Originally posted by Amethyst Star
Just as another point of view, and this is just off of the top of my head, could you not also argue that there really is only one physical sense: touch. When you see something, it's technically light waves... in a (loose) sense touching the receptors in your eyes. When you hear, it's sound waves touching receptors in your ear. When you smell, it's the chemicals in the air that touch receptors in your nose. Same with taste. Then it's up to the receptors to interpret this data based on past experiences.

Ummm... sorry, Ame, but I gotta disagree here. Smell and taste, SURE, they CAN be reduced to "touch", I suppose, if you're willing to break the idea of senses down to a molecular level.

Sight is different. Whether "light waves" can actually touch anything is a VERY controversial point. They may causally impact things they come into contact with, but I do not know whtehr this can be classified as "touching" per se: presumably, for two things to touch, they must first be objects with physical dimensions.

Whether light waves fall into this categorry hass not yet been discovered... particle-wave theory, etc.

But like I said before, the idea of a "sense" is a colloquial, NOT a strictly scientific concept. Senses are not defined/seperated by the way in which they operate... all the science behind the operation of the senses is just the background machinery.

A SENSE is the result of that machinery... it is what is experienced, what is sensed, how we, as humans, experience the RESULT of all that backstage machinery.

Thus, when looking at senses, I think that trying to define the senses and seperate/conglomerate them by the backstage machinery through which they arise, is a little pointless. Sure, we can and should examine the backstage machinery to see how the senses work, but I do not hink we should try to CLASSIFY the senses by this backstage machinery...