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Mini: How Many Senses Do We Have? · Why We Do What We Do

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we do what we do. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to Why we do what we do?
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  Speaker 2: Mini.
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  Speaker 1: I am your host, Abraham, and I'm your host Shane.
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  Speaker 1: We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
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  Speaker 1: that humans and non human animals do and also about
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  Speaker 1: the ways that they sense and interact with the world.
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  Speaker 1: Turns out, you heard me say, Mini, that's because this
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  Speaker 1: is a short episode.
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  Speaker 2: We do one of these every Monday, or we release
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  Speaker 2: one of these every Monday. At least.
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  Speaker 1: It's supposed to be just a quick dive into a
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  Speaker 1: little topic. Then get out of there, let you get
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  Speaker 1: on with your day. And if you're joining us for
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  Speaker 1: the first time, then welcome.
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  Speaker 2: I hope you enjoy this, Mani. And if you're a.
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  Speaker 1: Returning person, then welcome back. And I also hope that
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  Speaker 1: you enjoy this Mani. And either way, if you would
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  Speaker 1: a friend, and I'll talk more about those things the
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  Speaker 1: ways that you can support us at the end of
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  Speaker 1: our discussion. But we should probably jump into this so
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  Speaker 1: that we can make this short.
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  Speaker 2: Are you ready, Let's do it? Okay?
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  Speaker 1: Our senses as human beings are the variety of ways
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  Speaker 1: that we navigate the world around us. Many, if not
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  Speaker 1: most organisms have a wide array of ways that they
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  Speaker 1: do this humans do as well.
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  Speaker 3: Of course, Yeah, of course, So how many senses do
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  Speaker 3: humans have? Who cares? That is to say, it doesn't
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  Speaker 3: really matter, but we'll go over it anyway, because it's
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  Speaker 3: a lot, and we'll enumerate them and briefly describe them,
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  Speaker 3: because I think a lot of us kind of understand
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  Speaker 3: it to be that we have five senses, but it's
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  Speaker 3: a little bit more complicated than that.
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  Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, and I actually am not going
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  Speaker 1: to list every sense because there's like not consensus about
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  Speaker 1: this topic, but there's sort of proposed ideas. So I'll
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  Speaker 1: get you'll get the idea when we get into it.
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  Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're ready, we're going to dive in.
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  Speaker 1: Like most things, when you're asking, like how many senses
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  Speaker 1: we have, it depends on how you define it, how
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  Speaker 1: you define what a sense is, and how you define
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  Speaker 1: the boundary between one sense and another. Our senses are
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  Speaker 1: a combination of a cacophony of inputs that work together,
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  Speaker 1: and that's actually one of the things that makes this complicated.
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  Speaker 1: Is a lot of our senses work because we have
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  Speaker 1: other senses to help with their work, like our sense
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  Speaker 1: of smell helps with our sense of taste and things
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  Speaker 1: of that nature. But some scientists who have taken this
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  Speaker 1: on as a project to have enumerated between twenty three
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  Speaker 1: and thirty three so over thirty different senses that they
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  Speaker 1: think that we have.
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  Speaker 3: Interesting, Now, the idea of five senses is at least
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  Speaker 3: as old as Aristotle or Aristotiley is I like to
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  Speaker 3: read it. No, it doesn't work as well as so Creates,
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  Speaker 3: who wrote about the five senses in three hundred and
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  Speaker 3: fifty BCE. He also wrote about the five elements, which
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  Speaker 3: we are also know to be incorrect. And in many
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  Speaker 3: ancient traditions there's a legend about a quote sixth sense,
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  Speaker 3: our ability to perceive ghosts. Of course, no, just kidding.
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  Speaker 2: It's actually the.
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  Speaker 3: Idea that we have an unknown ability such as psychic perception.
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  Speaker 3: But there are many more than six senses.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, So anyway, there's that the sixth sense the ghosts,
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  Speaker 1: you get it, And that actually kind of was ideal,
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  Speaker 1: like in some Eastern of philosophies, there's like some people
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  Speaker 1: might have a sixth sense beyond the ones that we know,
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  Speaker 1: and it's like sense X. It could be some unknown
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  Speaker 1: sense we're not clear on. But the senses most people
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  Speaker 1: are already familiar with the sort of five standard in
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  Speaker 1: case you weren't sure, our site, hearing, smell, touch, and taste.
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  Speaker 1: So those are the different ways that we can sense
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  Speaker 1: the world. Those ways the additional senses identified by scientists are.
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  Speaker 1: You could sort of broadly classify them as in addition
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  Speaker 1: to those senses, like they're actually different and that are
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  Speaker 1: their own thing, or you could even think of them
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  Speaker 1: maybe as subcategories of these senses, where it's like, well
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  Speaker 1: this is kind of a version of this, but with
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  Speaker 1: the specific emphasis.
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  Speaker 2: Sure, we'll get into that as we go.
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  Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and start describing some of the senses
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  Speaker 1: that you might not be thinking about that are an
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  Speaker 1: important element of how we navigate the world in addition
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  Speaker 1: to the five that we're used to.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so the first one we're going to talk about
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  Speaker 3: is propiception, and this is our sense of where our
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  Speaker 3: limbs are in space. It's actually one of the most
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  Speaker 3: comprehensive and unalterable senses that we have that we often
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  Speaker 3: take for granted, but we depend on it for our
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  Speaker 3: conscious activity, like all day every day, Like this is
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  Speaker 3: one of the most, if not the most important sense
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  Speaker 3: that we've got.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you just like lift your hand up to
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  Speaker 1: grab something that's nearby without watching your hand the whole
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  Speaker 1: entire time to make sure it goes where you think
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  Speaker 1: you told it to go.
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  Speaker 2: That's essentially what that is. Like, we really really.
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  Speaker 1: Depend on our ability to control our limbs and body
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  Speaker 1: parts without necessarily having to orient to exactly where they
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  Speaker 1: are the entire time, and that some people argue is
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  Speaker 1: like one of our most foundational important senses. Now, I'm
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  Speaker 1: not going to try and get into like a ranking
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  Speaker 1: system here. I think that's very silly because arguably, without
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  Speaker 1: many of our other senses, even appropriate receptions, not going
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  Speaker 1: to feel that important. Sure, but it is one that
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  Speaker 1: I think we do take for granted because how easy
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  Speaker 1: it is to forget that. The fact that we do
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  Speaker 1: know where we are putting our body parts and various
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  Speaker 1: movements that we make is something that it is a sense,
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  Speaker 1: and importantly, it is a sense that can be disrupted
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  Speaker 1: and have people feel like they're really struggling if they
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  Speaker 1: can't really tell where their limbs and hands and everything
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  Speaker 1: are as they move them around without like even as
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  Speaker 1: they monitor them, they might be a little bit like.
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  Speaker 2: Hmm, I'm not sure you're going where I want you
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  Speaker 2: to go sort of thing.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean think about driving like driving is like.
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  Speaker 3: It requires you to be pretty adept at your appropriate
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  Speaker 3: step to feed like sense and being able to pay
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  Speaker 3: attention to stuff because you're moving your feet to maneuver
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  Speaker 3: the pedals. Yeah, you're turning the radio on to play
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  Speaker 3: the ads.
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  Speaker 2: All right, we're back. The car example is a really
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  Speaker 2: good one for real.
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  Speaker 1: All right, So we just barely started listing the additional
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  Speaker 1: sense as appropriateception where our limbs are in space around us.
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  Speaker 1: There's also our sense of balance. This is kind of related,
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  Speaker 1: but obviously it is a little bit different because this
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  Speaker 1: is just our way of orienting our bodies in a
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  Speaker 1: particular way. Our sense of balance is part of our
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  Speaker 1: vestibular system, which when that gets messed up, and it
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  Speaker 1: can for a variety of reasons, including being sick, you
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  Speaker 1: can feel like you're like about to fall over because
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  Speaker 1: you're having a hard time centering yourself wherever you are,
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  Speaker 1: even sitting even laying down in some cases. And it
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  Speaker 1: allows us to essentially unconsciously tense and manipulate our muscles
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  Speaker 1: such that we keep ourselves in balance and whatever orientation
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  Speaker 1: we find ourselves. And you actually might like if you're
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  Speaker 1: even whatever position you're sitting in, now, imagine someone injected
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  Speaker 1: you with a drug that made you instantly fall asleep.
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  Speaker 1: How your body would sort of shift and move from
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  Speaker 1: its current position. Please don't do this if you're doing
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  Speaker 1: something dangerous, But like if you were just like sitting
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  Speaker 1: there or lying there or something like, you can imagine
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  Speaker 1: even lying down, there's a good chance that part of
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  Speaker 1: your body will sort of slump or move to a
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  Speaker 1: different position if all your muscles were to just relax
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  Speaker 1: all of a sudden. And that's kind of the point,
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  Speaker 1: is like we actually are holding tents different muscles a
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  Speaker 1: lot of the time, and we kind of do that
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  Speaker 1: and it keeps us so that we are oriented in
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  Speaker 1: whatever position we're trying to be oriented. So it's actually
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  Speaker 1: a more complex sense than you might think.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, there's also inter reception inter reception. Inter reception which
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  Speaker 3: is when we perceive changes in our bodies, such as
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  Speaker 3: hunger and increases in heart rate, And.
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  Speaker 1: You got to imagine like that that is different than
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  Speaker 1: some of the others they've described like you can't actually
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  Speaker 1: tell when things are going on internally. That's like a
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  Speaker 1: whole thing that you can sort of you can feel. Relatedly,
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  Speaker 1: there's the sense of agency they describe, and somewhat separately,
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  Speaker 1: but I feel like really closely related is our sense
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  Speaker 1: of ownership over our body parts. And the reason they
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  Speaker 1: kind of point these out is again related to things
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  Speaker 1: like injury and illness, where particularly if people have strokes,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes they'll lose the sense of agency, they'll lose the
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  Speaker 1: sense that they're in control of their movements, they'll lose
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  Speaker 1: their sense of ownership over like they're the ones who
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  Speaker 1: are making these choices with their limbs. They'll feel that
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  Speaker 1: they're no longer in control of their movements. It's not everybody,
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  Speaker 1: but there are people who have had strokes who have
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  Speaker 1: reported this experience, and that's you can imagine how scary
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  Speaker 1: that would be. If you're like moving your arm and
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  Speaker 1: you know that you wanted to move your arm, but
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  Speaker 1: you're watching it looks like it's doing it on its own,
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  Speaker 1: Like that would be a little a little frightening. So
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  Speaker 1: that's what they describe as the sense of agency and
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  Speaker 1: sense of ownership.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. There's also thermoception, which is our sense
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  Speaker 3: of temperature, specifically heat, and there's debate whether it's the
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  Speaker 3: same as our sense of cold or that if it's
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  Speaker 3: a separate sense or whatever. I feel like, if there's thermoception,
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  Speaker 3: then there's cryoception, right, Yeah, but is it not suception?
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  Speaker 2: I think it's no suception.
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  Speaker 3: No suception, Okay, so no Susception is our sense of pain,
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  Speaker 3: and there are people born without the sense and it
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  Speaker 3: is a dangerous condition. And the premise of the twenty
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  Speaker 3: twenty five action thriller movie Nouvacane.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, guy who can't feel pain?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's scary.
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  Speaker 1: I think we've talked about it before. But yeah, Like,
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  Speaker 1: pain is a very instructive feedback mechanism. It stops you
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  Speaker 1: from like accidentally killing yourself in a lot of ways.
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  Speaker 1: There's like from eating things that are too hot for
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  Speaker 1: if you're just breaking bones because you're so reckless, and
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  Speaker 1: pain is not stopping you from doing those reckless things,
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  Speaker 1: then you A lot of people do not live very
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  Speaker 1: long if they lack this particular sense.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 1: There are also these feeling senses. They describe our sense
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  Speaker 1: of gravity, which if you go into space is lost.
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  Speaker 1: Our sense of like being able to feel wind and
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  Speaker 1: maybe changes an air pressure, which you'll definitely notice if
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  Speaker 1: you go up at an airplane very high, our sense
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  Speaker 1: of motion. All of these are potentially considered separate things.
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  Speaker 1: And some of you also argued that like our sense
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  Speaker 1: of how heavy something is is its own sense. You
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  Speaker 1: can like tell generally speaking, like something's got a lot
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  Speaker 1: of weight to it, which has to do with essentially
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  Speaker 1: how much strain it puts on your muscles when you're
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  Speaker 1: trying to hold it, But like that could be considered
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  Speaker 1: its own sense as well.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and there are emotional senses such as sense of friendship,
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  Speaker 3: sense of power, distress, companionship, love, and our sense of self.
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  Speaker 2: I wonder if you'd put our sense of humor in there.
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  Speaker 2: I would.
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  Speaker 3: I think it's important for us.
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  Speaker 1: That's right now a huge amount of the discussion from
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  Speaker 1: these scientists, because I mean, if you even were to
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  Speaker 1: list all the things we said, I don't think we're
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  Speaker 1: even broadly approaching thirty yet.
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  Speaker 2: Maybe we're halfway there.
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  Speaker 1: But a huge amount of the discussion that scientists have
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  Speaker 1: been having when they're trying to list these gigantic of
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  Speaker 1: senses is really organized around food. Essentially, they argue that, like, okay,
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  Speaker 1: we've got these different taste senses, so like these are
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  Speaker 1: kind of the subcategories, right though we can taste the
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  Speaker 1: ones we most are familiar with, sweet, salty, bitter, and
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  Speaker 1: mommy sour, Like those are kind of the tastes that
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  Speaker 1: they talk about. But they also point out that, like,
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  Speaker 1: we can tell the difference between the taste of a
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  Speaker 1: raspberry and a strawberry, both of which are sweet, right,
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  Speaker 1: So it's like, it's not just that we can tell sweet.
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  Speaker 1: There's something else here that allows us to distinguish these
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  Speaker 1: variations and flavor from one another, and that therefore, they
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  Speaker 1: argue that we use a combination of our other senses vision, texture,
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  Speaker 1: and smell obviously, and these distinct senses that help us
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  Speaker 1: parse a wide variety of different flavors that we can
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  Speaker 1: then taste. So they actually list a whole bunch of
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  Speaker 1: different ways that, like, we can taste so many different
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  Speaker 1: things because our sense of taste is actually a lot
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  Speaker 1: more fine grained than this idea that there's just the
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  Speaker 1: broad categories sweet, salty, bitter, umammy. They're like, actually it's
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  Speaker 1: you know, if you can take two things that are
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  Speaker 1: bitter at like bitter dark chocolate and bitter coffee. You
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  Speaker 1: can tell the difference between those two flavors, right, And
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  Speaker 1: so there's something else going on there in addition to
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  Speaker 1: like it's not just a combination of those senses. Like,
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  Speaker 1: we can make very fine distinctions in some of these
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  Speaker 1: flavor profiles.
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely, And there are a lot of different ways that
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  Speaker 3: we interact with various simulus features of the world. We
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  Speaker 3: could separate them into every stimulus feature that could be
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  Speaker 3: detectively different from one another, from another stimulus feature that
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  Speaker 3: if we wanted to, like, we could really separate it out,
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  Speaker 3: if we really wanted to spend the time to do that.
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  Speaker 3: But that's like, that's like a lifetime's worth of work,
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  Speaker 3: and it comes down at least in part to the
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  Speaker 3: utility of doing so. We are happy to accept that
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  Speaker 3: we have more than just five sentences, and some of
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  Speaker 3: them seem meaningfully separate, but we're not really sure that
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  Speaker 3: we need to do need a category with every with
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  Speaker 3: like a single example, for every feature of every stimulus
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  Speaker 3: that we could possibly detect. That seems a little bit
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  Speaker 3: ridict and maybe overkill.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's essentially it. That's what there is I
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  Speaker 1: know about senses. There's a lot more than five, and
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  Speaker 1: I think that I'm a lot of the ones we listed,
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  Speaker 1: I think make a lot of sense to include as
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  Speaker 1: their own separate category. I don't know that we need
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  Speaker 1: a different sense for every flavor that we could possibly
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  Speaker 1: detect as being different, but a lot of these do
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  Speaker 1: make a lot of sense to me. Let us know, like,
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  Speaker 1: what are your thoughts? Tell us how many senses you
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  Speaker 1: think we have? List any that we may have missed?
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  Speaker 1: How many senses do you think we have? Shane at
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  Speaker 1: least seven? Fair, very good. So anyway, that's what we
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  Speaker 1: have to say about that. Is there anything that I
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  Speaker 1: missed or you'd like to add before we wrap up?
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  Speaker 2: No, I think that covers it perfect well.
• 13:41
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  Speaker 1: As a shout out and appreciation to the people who
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  Speaker 2: Thank you so much to my team of people. Thank
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: you for recording with me today. Shane of course, thanks
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: for having me. Thank you all for listening.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I'll go and wrap this up. This is Abraham and
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  Speaker 1: this is Shane. Why We Do what we Do Mini
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  Speaker 1: is out.
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  Speaker 3: Smell you later.
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