from Lawrence, SUNDAY PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: The Sixth Sense

Dear Friends,

This Sunday we are discussing: The Sixth Sense.

What we know for sure is that whatever the sixth sense is, it is not
some sort of supernatural power belonging to the gods or aliens. That
sort of idea belongs to literature fiction and fancy thinking without
alcohol. This means that we are discussing some real and factual
phenomenon that can be measured and hypothesised about.

The traditional five senses –sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing-
all deal with the outside world. Whereas modern ideas on senses include
non traditional senses such as pain, balance, temperature (see Wikipedia
under: sense). And furthermore there are internal senses (Wikipedia:
interoception) that are perceptions from inside the body for example
hunger.

This means that if senses are a type of mechanism that perceives a type
of data then there should be no reason why there shouldn't, in
principle, be other senses. Sight and sound are two different data
recognised by two different types of senses. We can add eco location
such as bats, or ultra violet such as cats and other mammals (search
Google for ultra violet perception in animals).

If we are to have a sixth sense, in the meaning of the traditional five
senses, then we should be able to know about it since the five senses
function at the conscious level receiving data from the environment
around us. In other words, there is an external causal agent to activate
our relevant senses. Data from the five senses also has to be
coordinated and synchronised with the other data reaching the brain. And
all of this helps us to give meaning and understand the world around us
to help us act according to our needs.

Thus seeing a round dish with a patterned yellow glow inside it,
smelling of herbs and fish and feeling hot to the touch I know it is
likely to be freshly made home paella. If, however, I could also
incorporate infra red data to my flow of sense data to my brain I might
even tell whether the paella was evenly cooked, well cooked, or still
needs cooking. Today we can still more or less achieve such feats, but
in a very crude manner for example taking samples of rice from the dish
to check for taste and cooking, a thermometer for heat and of course,
maybe a bit late, smell the burnt base of the rice.

But we can also achieve these finer details of paella making if we can
also have infra red and ultra violet perception incorporated into the
flow of sense perceptions to the brain. And there are, I argue, no
natural or logical reasons why we shouldn't also have these extra two
sense perceptions of infra red and ultra violet perception in our body
if evolution took us in that direction. The problem is: who on Earth
would want to bother with evolution after a nice dish of paella on a
Sunday afternoon?

Best Lawrence



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Meet 6:30pm
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Time: from 19:30 to 21h
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from Lawrence, SUNDAY PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: The Sixth Sense