We gain knowledge through experiences using our senses. Everything we see, hear, smell, taste and touch provides us with experiences that we process into knowledge.
Can we use reason in the same way?..When we think about things we are processing information not from experience but from reason…using our thoughts to gain knowledge…could we then class thought as the sixth sense?
Not really, from our current understanding of the mind, it only interprets signals from the senses, it doesn’t actually ‘detect’ like is usually defined by what a sense is. However, one could argue that if ESP is an actual occurring event, then the mind could have uses as a ‘sixth’ sense; for it would ‘detect’ thoughts, or things.
Despite all organs coming from the same single strands of genetic code, I suppose that I could say, for a moment, that the organs are each individual parts. From there, I could say that each organ is aware of a certain spectrum of attribute, which is expressed again within.
The sun burns. You look. You are aware of part of the whole – which is the star near us.
You were born. You are aware of part of the whole – which is your existence.
If you could taste, smell, touch, hear and see something all at the same time, you’d get a good feel for what it is… but if you can’t remember how it effects the world around it, and how it is effected by the world, do you know anything four-dimensionally? Nope.
But… if sense is an awareness, then the mind is, ofcourse, the sixth sense, because it can feal through estimation. It can project reconstructed memories and synthesize a piece of reality, then feel that piece of reality in ways which all other senses could not…
And emotions are the seventh sense? They are inborn awareness, they are instincts.
ESP only means Extra Sensory Perception. It can’t be speculated from that acronym that it means a sense of the brain.
Even 5 senses is an oversimplification. Taste and smell are much the same sense in a different form. Vision senses in at least 3 distinct ways using the 3 cones for colour.
You would have to describe detection as a dynamo of biological sensory.
I agree with D.Y.,
And no, thought is not the sixth sense. Motion is.
because of precisely the debate that we are having, no firm decision has been made as to how many senses there are.
nevertheless, it has to be said that there is a strong connection between the processes of thought and sensory perception; notice how, for example, musical intelligence, when translated into ability, corresponds to advanced tactile perception, or how linguistic intelligence corresponds to advanced auditory perception in that area - or, indeed, how intelligent people are often said to be ‘sharp’ or ‘quick’, suggesting the highly-tuned nature of their sense-perception faculty.
however, i do not think that thought can be called a sense. our senses are physiological methods of perception (of reality); and, whereas we do often perceive (new ideas) when we think, we also do many other things - such as model the world and manipulate information. thought, in this regard, is an activity directed to many more different ends than the senses are. there are probably more ways to make this case, but this is the only argument that comes to mind right now.
Not all our faculties are senses- you have things like memory and reason, too. I’ve heard balance called a sense before- knowing that you’re right-side up and so on.
I suppose you could be ontological about this. Making a non-scientiffic distinction between senses (separate the senses without naming biological functions). If it makes sense, I can think of 3.
*Motion sense (balance, hearing): Senses that use interior arrangement based on exterior environment (the pull of gravity on the fluid around the brain).
*Tactile sense (touch): Senses that respond to direct exterior pressure without a necessary exchange. (Nerves don’t “take” or “give” anything, really). As an artificial example, the screen of a PDA, or a keyboard.
*Analytic sense (see, smell, taste): Senses that ingest particle samples and manipulate them like a laboratory in order to better understand the whole. Something of the exterior is removed for the interior.
Notice that this categorization helps to associate things that really are scientiffically closely associated. Eg: Hearing with motion, smell with taste. (Sight ingests light particles, but it’s very different from the ingestion of molecules. I suppose you could call it a combination of the first and third. As light is a wave and a particle.)