Rather pointless Vulcan question

[Alyssa]

This Question has no use other than to quell my curiosity but how many senses Vulcans have.
What i mean is that humans say they have a sixth sense about things, well with their phsycic abilities would they say they have a seventh or eighth sense?
I am aware that i may not be making sense.

 

[Kenobi]

It would seem to me (as mere speculation) that Vulcans would have six senses. You mention the "sixth sense" of humans- but that is generally conveying the idea of deep-seated intuition. From the series, it seems to me that Vulcans have a certain disdain of the idea of intuition, and wouldn't view it as a sixth sense, nor would humans claim Vulcans to have a sixth sense similar to humans since Vulcans actively reject the notion of intuition.

But Vulcans do possess telepathic traits, and so that would be their "sixth sense" even in the sense that the phrase is sometimes used to convey the idea of extra-sensory perceptions.

 

[blakbyrd]

Kenobi said:
It would seem to me (as mere speculation) that Vulcans would have six senses. You mention the "sixth sense" of humans- but that is generally conveying the idea of deep-seated intuition. From the series, it seems to me that Vulcans have a certain disdain of the idea of intuition, and wouldn't view it as a sixth sense, nor would humans claim Vulcans to have a sixth sense similar to humans since Vulcans actively reject the notion of intuition.

But Vulcans do possess telepathic traits, and so that would be their "sixth sense" even in the sense that the phrase is sometimes used to convey the idea of extra-sensory perceptions.

Agreed.

 

[Timo]

The idea of humans having "five senses" is a strange one to begin with. Who came up with it and why? How to pick and choose from the about dozen obvious and a dozen less obvious "senses" that normal humans have?

The selection that would first occur to me would be "sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste, balance", although one could easily combine smell and taste, or divide touch into a couple of sub-senses, without advanced medical knowledge. Why five?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Smiley]

One sense for each finger is easier to remember.

 

[captcalhoun]

well, we know one sense Vulcans don't have.

humour.

 

[Red Ranger]

captcalhoun said:
well, we know one sense Vulcans don't have.

humour.

I disagree. Listen to some of Sarek's lines in "Journey to Babel." He's a Vulcan and he definitely has a sense of humor. Like his cutting response about why he married Amanda to Spock:

SPOCK: Emotional, isn't she?
SAREK: She has always been this way.
SPOCK: Indeed. Why did you marry her?
SAREK: At the time it seemed the logical thing to do.

Red Ranger

 

[captcalhoun]

...

dude, it was a joke!

 

[Apogeal Alpha01]

Timo said:
The idea of humans having "five senses" is a strange one to begin with. Who came up with it and why? How to pick and choose from the about dozen obvious and a dozen less obvious "senses" that normal humans have?

The selection that would first occur to me would be "sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste, balance", although one could easily combine smell and taste, or divide touch into a couple of sub-senses, without advanced medical knowledge. Why five?

Timo Saloniemi

Hmmm. Care to continue?

 

[Kenobi]

It seems to me that there are five senses because there are five ways to be stimulated in experience of our environment. It's a matter of interpretation of quality of objects. Balance isn't an interpretation of quality, it is an orientating reaction.

I don't know how you would easily combine taste and smell (granted, the one can effect the other, but not replace it), or what sort of sub-senses touch can be divided into.

 

[UnknownSample]

Taste and smell are separate for me. We just get them stimulated by food simultaneously.

Vulcans have wit, the ones we know anyway.

Hearing developed out of the sense of touch. Animals once heard through reverberations through bones I think. Snakes may still do so.

Still seems as if there are five distinct real senses.

 

[Timo]

Mmm... Taste and smell are just the same sensory ends distributed across various cavities in the head, and the division between nose and mouth may be a bit artificial. Touch in turn consists of a number of dissimilar sensory systems that all happen to reside in the skin: for example pressure, sharpness, cold and hot are all sensed by different systems featuring different nerve cells.

Balance is IMHO not qualitatively different from hearing or sight, just quantitatively so: it measures a single quantity (gravitic pull or acceleration) rather than a spectrum of EM or auditory signals that might be considered multiple quantities. But it definitely senses the outside world and gives information about its qualities.

In contrast, there is the positional sense that tells us how our limbs are bent or our head turned even in absence of all other input (say, inside a darkened, quiet space station). That system only derives its input from within our bodies, and might not be a "sense" in the same sense that sight is.

Of course, a closer examination of sight would reveal that to consist of at least two sub-senses: color vision and night vision, relying on two different sets of nerve cells. There are other senses built into the visual system as well, using those two input paths but doing a lot of preprocessing before conscious thought kicks in: there's a motion sight, an edge sight, a continuity sight and so forth, relying on "local subprocessors" related to the eye and the visual cortex.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kenobi]

Timo said:
Mmm... Taste and smell are just the same sensory ends distributed across various cavities in the head, and the division between nose and mouth may be a bit artificial. Touch in turn consists of a number of dissimilar sensory systems that all happen to reside in the skin: for example pressure, sharpness, cold and hot are all sensed by different systems featuring different nerve cells.

True, but though the experiences may vary, they are all the result of tactil contact. Making physical contact with a feather will not produce the same experience as physical contact with a hot iron, yet the means of discovering the quality is the same. It seems to me like asking, "Why do we call it one word "light", when it consists of seven colors?" Simply because we can break down the varying wavelengths into separate color categories shouldn't bring about the conlusion that light is more than light.

Balance is IMHO not qualitatively different from hearing or sight, just quantitatively so: it measures a single quantity (gravitic pull or acceleration) rather than a spectrum of EM or auditory signals that might be considered multiple quantities. But it definitely senses the outside world and gives information about its qualities.

In contrast, there is the positional sense that tells us how our limbs are bent or our head turned even in absence of all other input (say, inside a darkened, quiet space station). That system only derives its input from within our bodies, and might not be a "sense" in the same sense that sight is.

This is true to a point, but I should think that what we call senses are interpretations of stimuli exterior to ourselves. For instance, if a place an rose in front of you, then to experience that object requires use of our categorical senses. It is red, it smells sweet, the petals are soft. Your sense of balance will tell you nothing about that object, and so we don't recongize it as a perceptive sense in relation to our exterior environment.

Of course, a closer examination of sight would reveal that to consist of at least two sub-senses: color vision and night vision, relying on two different sets of nerve cells. There are other senses built into the visual system as well, using those two input paths but doing a lot of preprocessing before conscious thought kicks in: there's a motion sight, an edge sight, a continuity sight and so forth, relying on "local subprocessors" related to the eye and the visual cortex.

But sight is a function which interprets light. I suppose we could sub-divide this as we wish, but in the end it is a collective interpretation of our exterior environment through one stimulus which, of course, we call sight.

 

[Mike Have-Not]

Timo, you bring up some good points. Perhaps one could look at the "five senses" rather as "five sensory groups". Taking into consideration, of course, the idea that taste and smell would belong to the same group. And adding the sense of balance into a group of it's own, perhaps?

Very interesting conversation.

 

[Timo]

True, but though the experiences may vary, they are all the result of tactile contact. Making physical contact with a feather will not produce the same experience as physical contact with a hot iron, yet the means of discovering the quality is the same.

The exact same could be said of taste and smell. Those, too, are tactile senses that describe the quality of what came in contact with us. And certainly there is as much difference between the temperature of an object and its sharpness as there is between the temperature of an object and its taste.

For instance, if a place an rose in front of you, then to experience that object requires use of our categorical senses. It is red, it smells sweet, the petals are soft. Your sense of balance will tell you nothing about that object, and so we don't recongize it as a perceptive sense in relation to our exterior environment.

But then touch can't be a sense, either, because since the rose did not actually come in touch with me, I cannot tell that its petals are soft.

If, OTOH, I am allowed to touch the rose, and perhaps taste it as well, I may just as well be allowed to feel its weight, which brings in the senses of balance and position, which in combination tell me a lot about the object - quite possibly more than the other senses combined, in case some jokester built the thing out of steel, covered it with suitable textiles and scented it with perfume.

But sight is a function which interprets light. I suppose we could sub-divide this as we wish, but in the end it is a collective interpretation of our exterior environment through one stimulus which, of course, we call sight.

True enough. But then smell and taste cannot be considered separate, because they collectively interpret molecular shapes. And hearing cannot be told apart from touch (that is, the sub-sense of touch that senses pressure), because they collectively interpret external pressure.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Red Ranger]

Oh, duh! My bad! -- RR

 

[Kenobi]

Timo said:

If, OTOH, I am allowed to touch the rose, and perhaps taste it as well, I may just as well be allowed to feel its weight

Wouldn't you think that would simply be a measure of touch?

The exact same could be said of taste and smell. Those, too, are tactile senses that describe the quality of what came in contact with us. And certainly there is as much difference between the temperature of an object and its sharpness as there is between the temperature of an object and its taste.

But then touch can't be a sense, either, because since the rose did not actually come in touch with me, I cannot tell that its petals are soft.

True enough. But then smell and taste cannot be considered separate, because they collectively interpret molecular shapes. And hearing cannot be told apart from touch (that is, the sub-sense of touch that senses pressure), because they collectively interpret external pressure.

I think we need to take into account that these concepts were established long before man had any knowledge of molecules and quantum physics. It's true that we can subdivide the whole into parts, but the fundamental concept is that of the whole. As we call the ground we walk on "earth" even though we can divide that fundamental concept into myriad types of earth depending on its composition. But we still designate the idea of the divisions as components of the one unifying concept. So, qualities of objects are designated by the five: what does it look like, sound like, taste like, smell like and/or feel like?

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Alyssa said:
This Question has no use other than to quell my curiosity but how many senses Vulcans have.

If one may quote from the non-ca[n+1]on novelization of ST:TMP by Gene Roddenberry regarding the Vulcan sixth and seventh senses:

"*To Vulcans, the sense of oneness with the all, i.e., the universe, the creative force, or what humans might call God. Vulcans do not, however, see this as a belief, either religious or philosophical. They treat it as a simple fact which they insist is no more unusual or difficult to understand than the ability to hear or see. (The Vulcan sixth sense, referred to earlier, is merely the ability to sense presence of or disturbance in magnetic fields - a sensory ability not uncommon among some Earth species, as well.)"

Presumably the Vulcan ability to send/receive telepathic impressions across astronomical distances (The Immunity Syndrome and The Motion Picture being notable examples) is a byproduct of sense #7.

TGT

 

[captcalhoun]

i thought Spock just sensed a disturbance in the Force.


BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

 

[Plum]

Funny how the destruction of Aldebaran in Star Wars had a scene just like Spock's sensing the death of the Vulcan's in 'The Immunity Syndrome'. Ben Kenobi swoons rather like Spock in the scene. 'Course, George Lucas was always a big swiper.