Question of perception

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by Ghostintheshell, Jan 11, 2012.

  1. Ghostintheshell Registered Member

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    Are we limited to the five senses because that's all there is to physically percieve, or are there only five because thats all we currently need for survival?

    Could there possibly be plains of other phenomena occuring all around us all the time that we simply cannot percieve; yet we can sometimes percieve the effect that they can have on other percievable phenomena? I'm thinking of dark matter here, but i currently have an extremely limited understanding of that - only that we generally accept it's existence based on effects that it has on things that we can percieve.
     
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  3. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    They are pretty much all we really need.

    But as to that being the the only things to perceive, think for just a moment about the dozens and dozens of other things we've developed scientific equipment to detect and measure.

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    All the way from EM waves and sound waves below and above our perception limits to things far to numerous to list.
     
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  5. Pincho Paxton Banned Banned

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    There must be more, because those 5 wouldn't complete a robot. the sense of self springs to mind. The sense of time. You can also add them together like...


    Taste + heat + food texture + smell

    Which is a bit like mixing a few liquids, and ending up with a new liquid. So the whole thing is fuzzy logic.
     
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  7. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    Other organic senses that humans definitely have:
    balance, passage of time, up-down orientation
    but these are tenuous senses, easily confused by some of the environments in which we operate and therefore unreliable, is probably why they haven't become highly developed.

    Other organic senses present in non-humans, and possibly available to humans:
    echo-location, differentiating chemical concentration, detecting and locating vibration sources, detecting various kinds of radiation. Again, maybe not developed because sight and hearing were more versatile, applicable to more situations in our environment.

    It's interesting to speculate what latent abilities we might be able to discover and train, when/ if we need to adapt to changing conditions in our environment. How long would it take, and how many individuals have ready access these capabilities, and how we could accelerate their development.
     
  8. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    Our awareness of the limitations of our senses and the ability to design technology to measure beyond those limitations is a rather unique talent, as you point out, Read-Only.

    Our awareness of BEING aware and our concept of spatial awareness within a potentially infinite universe of yet to be determined origin are also rather amazing faculties, IMO.
     
  9. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    There are a ton of things we don't sense. We only see a narrow spectrum of EM radiation, we don't see ultraviolet or infrared, much less microwave or radio waves. We aren't aware of polarized light. We can't hear very high or very low sound waves. We cannot echolocate or perceive magnetic fields. We can't sense electricity like a shark can. Our sense of smell is quite limited compared with dogs or insects. Touch is dependent on the number of nerve endings, so we don't "see" with touch like a mole can. I could go on and on, there are probably an infinite number of discrete senses that could exist.
     
  10. wlminex Banned Banned

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    . . . slightly OOB off-topic . . . suppose that one had NONE of the 5 or more 'physical senses' or combinations thereof. Aside from survivability, would one (same) otherwise be able to 'sense' anything about their milieu . . . or the universe in general? Just curious for opinions . . .
     
  11. Pincho Paxton Banned Banned

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    I think you would be a vegetable.
     
  12. wlminex Banned Banned

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    . . . don't neccesarily agree with PP . . . the brain/mind would still be functional - but thoughts would difficult to communicate to others! . . . (probably 'not so' for veggies) <-- humor here!.
     
  13. DwayneD.L.Rabon Registered Senior Member

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    Well,
    The Five Senses cover the range of events in nature to gain in depth understanding of proccess. they recover the nessacary data for the gain of knowlegde. Humans are well suited with the senses that they have.

    As far as greater senses the mass of the human body serves as a register of universal events, for example Oxygen and Hydrogen are atomic elements that define 80 percent of th human body or more as water, these atomic elements are polarized to the background of the universe or cosmos. In this understand of the orientation of water in the human body the majority of your physical feeling of body is that of the universe.
    In addition the atomic elements that allow thought in the human mind, such as phosphate,potassium,sodium,sulfur which allow neruons to transmit signals forming thoughts or preception, are atomic elements that are polarized to the background of the galaxy(being events with the galaxy).
    The general flux of thought is the feeling of that of the galaxy.

    DwayneD.L.Rabon
     
  14. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Polarized? Are you talking about gravity or what?
     
  15. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    Electro-magnetic, probably. Yep, that's another one, and shared by all life on the planet, too. Basis for telepathic communication and eventual unification of earth life into a single conscious entity?
     
  16. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Some of the consequences of the topic might even be better explored in the general philosophy forum. Back in the 18th century, Immanuel Kant first unleashed the idea of perception and understanding being the result of received data or influences conforming to the "innate" general principles of a cognitive system. Rather than the traditional view that perception and identification were simply "given" with universal agreement in regard to any type of conscious entity. That is, without a consideration of mediating agencies and internal processing contributing interpretative biases that might come with these various "kinds" of systems and their senses -- thus being a factor in the world, environment, or reality yielded by perception and conception.
     
  17. Ghostintheshell Registered Member

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    Yeh, i hadn't considered the more temperamental senses such as balance, though a lot of things like that relating to proprioception, are linked very closely to what i would consider part of the "touch" group of senses - it uses the inner ear but also stretch receptors that essentially measure how the muscles are oriented (how stretched etc).

    Time is a form of interoception i think, but the levels of our interoception are limited (in the most part) by what we can take from the external world to understand whats going on inside our minds.

    That's one of the main things i was getting at - but it's impossible to comprehend in any way what these possibly latent abilities are like or how we would experience them. For example echolocation (as you mentioned) is another sense that we know exists but when i try and imagine how it would be experienced in a sensory manner i just have a visual in my mind of soundwaves bouncing around - but it wouldnt be like that because its not a visual phenomenon, i dont have the tools to percieve such things so i got to thinking about how much of this is going on around us all the time (and i mean not including things that we already have figured out exist using brainsmarts, like the EM spectrum) - although i dont know how they first knew of wavelngths of light outwith the visible spectrum... was it a by product of trying to quantify the visible spectrum or was it discovered due to a search for the reason behind the effects that couldnt be explained by the visible spectrum alone? That last point was off topic, but if you know the answer off-hand please do tell!
     
  18. Ghostintheshell Registered Member

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    Good point, i should have been clearer in my OP - i dont mean just continuations of the phenomena that we can already percieve. The points you listed for the most part are just different parts of spectra of phenomena that we already have tools to percieve so we can percieve of their existence already (eg. UV light is a form of light, which we can percieve in some forms already, we just can't visually percieve it due to our limited retinal abilities.)

    I mean mainly entirely new, or unknown, senses that may have to be used to percieve as yet completely unimaginable spectra of phenomena.
     
  19. Ghostintheshell Registered Member

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    Ooooooh, can of worms there! Would the brain be functional though? Without stimulation and being able to take in any information from the outside, or external, world there would we be nothing for us to gauge anything else against, there would be nothing to apply anything to - you couldnt use language (there's another hard one; whether langauge is necessary for thought - i may start a thread on that actually), you couldn't ascribe meaning to anything, conscious thought as we know it wouldnt be able to exist in an environment with no perceptual inputs imo.
     
  20. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    What we can't perceive with the abilities that we are born with can be found out about by building machines to do it for us. That way we can perceive many things otherwise unknown to us by just what we are born with.
     
  21. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    re #16 ghostintheshell

    The ultimate in autism. Like being buried alive, only without memory or knowledge of another kind of existence, or an outside world. Shudder!
     
  22. Ghostintheshell Registered Member

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    @ C C - that sounds like the sort of literature that i should read in order to understand this a bit better - i seem to be asking the same questions as Kant but i wasnt aware that he had asked them! He was a far smarter man than I, so perhaps he arrived at some good conclusions.

    I had a choice between doing my higher philospohy paper on either Plato or Kant when i was 16 and i chose Plato because i already knew about the theory of forms and the cave allegory etc. I should have not been such a lazy ass and done Kant, i may have figured this question out a bit better by now!
     
  23. wlminex Banned Banned

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    . . . makes sense to me . . . perceptualy . . .!
     

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