Sixth Sense

Kinesthesia - the sense that detects bodily position, weight, or movement of the muscles, tendons, and joints.

The sixth sense is often, wrongly, thought of as some form of PsionicPerception?, but as humans have seven senses, not the commonly attributed five, this is wrong. -- BryanDollery

So what are the seven?

A sixth sense is a sense of how much fun you are having.

Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, balance, language (see TheLanguageInstinct). Kinesthesia (aka proprioception) probably qualifies for a seventh slot to the same extent as any of the others.

Language as a sense? That seems a stretch to me. An instinct I can easily buy into, though.

In fact that's not just a stretch. Senses are ways you receive information about the outside world. Language has to travel along with hearing, or sight, or touch. To claim it's a primary sense is, well, non-sensical.

Interesting. This implies that "hearing" is primary in a sense of not being mediated by (not having to 'travel along with') some other thing; and that language isn't a way to receive information about the outside world. Aren't there difficulties with this position ?

I don't think so. When you're listening to someone talk, the primary sensation is that of sound. You're going to understand they're making noise whether or not you understand what they are saying, or even that they are saying anything (as in a crowded room). Language comes in second, as an interpretation thing. In any case, though, I think the problem is that we are talking about two completely different things. Your next paragraph...

I'll confess, I'm currently engrossed in TheLanguageInstinct and it tends to color my thinking on this kind of issue. I'm tempted to think of "sight" or "smell" as just modules of neural anatomy that process certain kinds of information which is delivered to them along complex pathways (e.g. sound waves to ear to cochlea to auditory nerve to brain); and to think of "language" as another such module, processing another kind of information which reaches the brain along pathways that differ little in kind. -- LaurentBossavit

...talks about sight as a module of neural anatomy where information is processed. I wouldn't have called that sight so much as interpretation of what one is seeing - that is, I'm thinking of senses as the channels in which raw data comes in, not the centres where it is important. If you'll forgive my presumption, I think what I'm referring to is more in line with what is conventionally meant by sense, if only because it gives me the standard five count rather than your seven. -- JoshuaGrosse

I wholeheartedly agree with that last statement. I'd only add the question : and the conventional view is better than competing views because ?..

Well, because that's how we decide what words mean, my friend. :)

The little I know of neurobiology and cognitive psychology strongly suggests that there isn't such a thing as "what we really see" versus "the interpretation of what we really see". In this view, the process of seeing is the collaboration of several modules; there is no such thing as a process of acquiring "raw data" which would in some sense be more "true" to the outside world than a later "interpretation" of that data along cognitive lines.

No, no, no. You're still talking about interpretation of data rather than acquisition of data. According to my understanding of the word, which I am suspecting is conventional, you see not with your brain but with your eyes. The senses, in that sense, are just input peripherals and clearly not one of the corresponds to language.

Just playing DevilsAdvocate for fun and maybe intellectual profit; the gently confrontational stance. I agree that "you see with your eyes" is the accepted wisdom. I submit for your consideration that "you see with your brain" is an equally valid in(pun-intended)sight; and that the question "what is the sense of sight" could find a more fruitful answer there.

Are there times when we could be described as seeing things, though our eyes are closed ? When we blink, do we still retain the impression that our sight sense is operating continuously, or do we perceive the interruptions ? Do we ever normally notice that there is a "blind spot" in our eye, resulting in areas of our visual field that (according to the conventional definition) we don't "see" at all ? In hemianopia cases (where stroke patients have lost the ability to perceive one half of their visual field), how do we explain that we can lose exactly half of our sight while both eyes are undamaged?

Personally, when I blink, I do notice the interruption. I wouldn't even have considered it as abnormal until I read this. I'm becoming curious, now... do I see the interruption because the frame rate of my visual cortex is faster than normal, or because my blink speed is slower? Oh, and I am aware that I've got a blind spot; wearing glasses does this, simply because there are areas of the frames that fade out. Anyway, my vote is that we see with our eyes, while our brain interprets. If you lost your eyes, it would be possible (in theory) to wire other visual input devices such as cameras into your brain. In such a case, you'd be seeing with the camera.

What part of the eye do we see with ? The cornea, the lens, the retina? Do we see with the cones or the rods? If your answer is "the whole eye", why shouldn't we count the optic nerve as part of the eye? How about the visual cortex? How about my glasses, which supplement a deficient lens?

(You can tell I'm in an inquisitive mood today.)

Unfortunately, I'm not - work puts a damper on that. :) But for now, I'd like to suggest that just because the concept of interpretation is more important than the concept of input, does not make it a better meaning of the word "sense" if it does not correspond to the way people use the word.

Physical considerations are not relevant. The intuitive meaning of 'sense' derives from introspection and so a sense can be defined as the rawest mechanism of perception available on a conscious level. Language is excluded in this manner. In any case, language has the same problems as the CommonSense.

Btw, I thought that kinesthesia was the experience under marijuana of having your senses scrambled. If that's not it then what is that experience called?

(I believe you're thinking of synesthesia -- "smelling" colors, etc. See: http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-10-cytowic.html Kinesthesia has as its base kine- as in kinetic a.k.a. motion -- SES)

Thank you. Ironically, that lends weight to the idea that language is a sense. If the perception of letters triggers associated colours then the person with this particular synesthesia would conceive of language as a sense.

That said, actually, kinesthesia still falls under this category...so I guess it must be a neglected 6th sense. But language does not. Or, to explore further: if language is a sense, why not music? Or painting-sight? Or C code? All of these get processed slightly differently.

"Everybody knows" that there are five senses in much the same way, IMHO, as "everybody knows" there are four elements. In this vein, consider the movie titles TheSixthSense? and TheFifthElement? (both, incidentally, fairly good movies).

Urm, sorry, but I know of over 100 elements. MrAristotle, perhaps, knew of 4.

Hence the "everybody knows" in quotes. TongueInCheek?

Besides, he may not have been referring to elements of the periodic table. He could have meant the four elements of graphic design, for example. (Proximity, Alignment, Repetition & Contrast)

Kinesthesia is "awareness of the position and movement of the body and limbs by means of sensory nerves in the muscles and joints". I think balance is a separate sense; it has a specific sense organ in the inner ear. I suspect that "knowing when one desperately needs to pee" comes under kinesthesia.

We are also sensitive to level of chemicals eg in the blood stream, although I am not sure this counts as it is unconscious. Any others?

Pain seems to be an entity separate from all other things we perceive. We also have a sense of balance - it might be lumped under kinesthesia, except that the above definition would need revision because that sense actually comes from the ear, the organ of the hearing sense. (Now isn't that strange...)

Of course, it's not perceived that way. Pain is closely related to itching. Visibly so in fact. It may also be related to other touch sensations.

Interestingly, trawling the Web for some firm definitions (e.g. from biology or medicine) ended in frustration. Lots of texts refer to something called "special senses"; the online EncyclopaediaBritannica lists... only four, and shies away from two of them at that : Perception relies on what are called the special senses -- the visual, auditory, gustatory, and olfactory. [...] Of the special senses, the cerebral organization of the visual and auditory senses are better understood than that behind the olfactory and gustatory. For this reason, only the former two are discussed below.

I'm wondering whether "special" has the ordinary meaning in this phrase.