What if we had more than five senses?

Question

Ok, so obviously we have five senses- seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting.
And blind people/deaf people don't have a concept of one of at least one of these.
Our world is what we experience through them but what if the world was completely different?
What if we're just limited to five senses instead of hundreds and what we "see" isn't really what we "see"?

Does that make any sense? Well, if it does, leave me an answer or what you think. Thank ya.

Answer 1

I understand perfectly what you're talking about. What if the world we see (or think we see) is actually only a peice of some bigger picture. What if there is something right in front of us that we cannot understand. Our brains just cant comprehend it. We may see it everyday, feel that something is missing, but we cant see what it is! These are the type of questions that you can lie awake forever, thinking about. They simply cant be answered because for the question to be answered, it would have to already BE answered. Does that make any sense?

Answer 2

I'll try to conceive of what another sense could be.



Seeing is just interpreting electromagnetic waves in a certain manner, the frequencies corresponding to the "visual light" spectrum. If we could detect ultraviolet rays, for example, like bees, this would just be heightened sight, not a whole new sense. So cannot talk about electromag waves.



hearing is physical disturbance longitudinal waves interpreted as such. So we cannot consider things that are physical waves.



Smelling is olfactory reception based on contact of specific particles triggering senses for specific neurons. Having different reception for different particles would thus just be heightened smell (like dogs).



Taste is similar but there are only five receptors, for glutamate (umami), sodium ions (salt), protons (sour), glucose (sweet) and alkaloids (bitter). I would call more receptors for different things heightened taste.



Touch is reception of a physical stimulus by contact.



The vestibular sense (the 6th sense), or balance and equilibrium, involves grasping an orientation of our body to a field of gravity, and working with other senses like touch and often sight.



I've figured out what other senses could be: sensing atomic forces and sensing magnetism. I can't think of many others

Answer 3

What if reality was but an illusion and that truth was hidden? I guess as a consequence that many men, if not all, wouldn't be able to see truth and they would come to argue one with an other. Certainly, some would do errors, thinking they are acting rightly; others would think of the actual virtue as being errors; very few may act rightly and understand that they are doing so.



If some blind people who do not possess sight have never met someone who sees, isn't there a possibility that he assumes that reality is limited to what he feels - that sight doesn't exist?



There is also a possibility that this person gives shapes and length and the like to things accordingly to his senses, but it could pretty well be false and he would be there, seeing an illusion as truth.



Let many of them being together and speaking, they would surely all share their ideas and they would come to see some as being wiser and more knowledgeable while others as being lesser. They would base their answers on their illusional world and it could be that some thinker who speaks rightly would be turned down because many more speaks differently.



Also, those men would prefer to be led by a more experienced person who "knows" more about those shapes than them and many of them would agree to give to the speech of these "wiser men" more importance.



After a lenghty period, different group would probably arise and they would surely speak one against the other. They could both be wrong, believing that they are right.



Fights, wars, conflicts over their ideals and to defend their illusions.





Doesn't this sound like our world? Many blind men, unable to see truth who arrogantly speak as if they did...

Answer 4

I'm not exactly sure I understand the entire post, so I'll concentrate on the question itself. The fact is, we actually have more than 5 senses. For example, most of us have a sense of balance or equilibrium (just think about the last time you had an ear infection and how clumsy you were) as well as a sense of where our bodies are in space, known as proprioception; even with your eyes closed, you probably know how your body is positioned. (Spinal cord or brain injured individuals may not.) Sight, just as any other sense, is only your brain's interpretation of a relay of electical impulses along nerve fibres; how your brain (as opposed to mine) may process stimuli is unique to you, however. Is it not "real" because of these slight differences in perception? I guess I subscribe to the belief that reality is relative to the individual, even though the process of interacting with and processing stimuli may be roughly the same. The word around us can be considered a "fact"; our interpretation is subjective.

Answer 5

Hmm; we do not see or interact with dark matter, and there is postulated to be three times more dark matter than ordinary matter. Also we cannot see every form of light. We only see the visible light spectrum, but there is no difference between visible light, and other forms of light; the only reason we call it visible light is because it is what humans can see. Radio, UV, infrared, microwaves, x-rays, and gamma rays are all different types of light that we cannot see; but they are all forms of light none the less. So there are many things in the universe that we cannot sense that are in fact there. Three fourths of the matter in the universe is not sensed by us; which is quite fascinating to think about really.

Answer 6

This is a reasonable question.

I think the world would be the same

but we could have extra sensors to get more out of it.

We have adapted the five senses to extract extra information.



But what if we had a sensor for love?

You wouldn't have to guess if someone loved you, you knew.

And maybe a sensor for honesty.



I prefer just the five senses and my Faith in the natural and spiritual.

Answer 7

We don't see with our senses . We see only with our eyes , but we feel with our senses . So we have senses that can't be counted.

Answer 8

There are six senses.

You forgot about "thinking." <}:-})