At school I learned humans only have the 5 Aristotelean ways of sensing the world:
- Smell
- Taste
- Touch
- Hear
- See
According to wikipedia, officially, a 6th sense has been added: vestibular (balance).
My Criticism
Even when we expand to 6, I still feel (7th?) this sensory model is completely inadequate and has a very stone-agey paradigmatic vibe to it.
My main criticism are simple questions:
- What is sensing thought?
- What is sensing emotion?
- What senses the feelings of other humans? (empathy)
- How do you sense hunger?
- How many different protein receptors are there in our cells?
Inner Experience
The classic 5 sense model is very extrinsic. It focuses only on senses that are perceived from the outside world, and hence are required to navigate the outside world. The 6th sense is already more ambiguous as it is about the balance of the body itself.
However, everybody is clearly sensing thoughts and emotions. These are signals for navigating the inner world. But somehow, by maintaining this 5 senses model we totally discard the existence of our inner experience. And one could interpret that these signals are not real because they are also difficult to scientifically measure.
These are my quick thoughts on this topic. Maybe I'm the only one who finds this model odd and outdated. Feel free to comment and share your thoughts and opinions.