How many senses are there?

Ok, as per usual the skeptic alarms are going off. lol.
I will elaborate on the conditions of the night in question.
1. Room is pitch black. thick drapes on windows.
2. Ceilings are 15 foot. a good distance from my sleeping head.
3. Scorpion was curled up into a scrunched up postition, as in
not moving at all.
I could absolutely not see this thing up there. nor did I hear it since it was not moving at all. nor could I smell it. As far as I know scorpions dont smell. It was quite small about 1 inch and tan. In fact at first I thought it was a small insect.
So I can not rule out sound but between the air conditioner and ceiling fan going I would not hear it.
I am ruling out smell, cuz I have killed many scorpions, they do not emit a oder.
I am ruling out sight cuz it is pitch black in my room at night and this thing is 15 feet in the air and only about a inch long.I believe my spider senses were tingling..

There is one other thing I'd want to eliminate related to your story. Scorpians fluoresce under ultraviolet light. I'd want to make sure that there were no UV sources (known or unknown) which might have caused the reaction, even if you were only mildly able to see the critter.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

What are some sources of UV?
All the lights in my room were off.
Analog alarm clock.
No night lights.
My watch emits a very tiny amount from the luminous hands.
But that was probably under the covers.
I can not think of any source of light UV or otherwise.
Im am telling you I "felt" this thing all night but was not aware of it till I opened my eyes that morning.
**edit to add: I heard somewhere that humans only use a small portion of the available "brain power". I also know that there are many unexplainable and undescovered phenomenon in regards to the human animal. I believe, and this is just my opinion, that humans, and other animals can sense things that are not under ordinary circumstances detectable other than by some means or mechanisms that is yet to be explained scientifically.This message has been edited by 1.61803, 04-27-2005 02:44 PM

There are several possible sources, from computer screens to fluorescent lights. The source could have been external, outside the room. But it's one possible logical thing to check. In addition I don't know if scorpians only fluoresce when lit or if they continue to fluoresce for sometime afterwards. So there might be some time factor as well.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I recentley saw a program about an individual named
Daniel Tammet. He is a Austistic savant who has the ability to
see images of numbers in his head. He also says that he feels
textures and shapes of numbers in his mind. He can make complex calculations such as 37 to the power of 14 in his head without error. He can recite Pi to something 20thousand decimal places from memory, without error. He can learn any language in a week. (He learned Icelandic in 1 week). All of these feats have been verified.
Does Mr. Tammet have senses that transend what we call the 5 senses? If it is possible for one human, then do all of us have the same propensity ?

What`s happening when amputees feel not only pain from a severed limb, but a sense of 'wholeness'? IOW they 'feel' the limb to still be there. Is there a harddrive in the brain playing back pain sensations as well an aura of an intact body from before the operation, or do they still sense new input from a phantom limb?

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What`s happening when amputees feel not only pain from a severed limb, but a sense of 'wholeness'? IOW they 'feel' the limb to still be there. Is there a harddrive in the brain playing back pain sensations as well an aura of an intact body from before the operation, or do they still sense new input from a phantom limb?

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This, to me, sounds a lot like problems you get on networks. I sawe a prog just a little while ago on the way the brain works, and they covered this in an interesting way. They had a man who had lost a hand, but felt cramp, as if his hand were permanently clenched in a fist. So they gave him a mirror set up so as to make his remaining hand look like his missing hand, and then he was able to "unclench" the missing hand by opening it in the mirror. This is one of the things that contributes to me viewing the body as very mechanical - but IME, we have so far not included information science into what we mean by "mechanical".

Learning more about such things since I posted this old thread, I'm even more convinced that the notion of five senses is basically nonsense (unless you perform the trick of lumping a vast number of independent senses into one set).For humans, I'd list:1. Sight
2. Smell
3. Hearing
4. Touch
5. Taste6. Heat
7. Cold (we actually have different receptors for heat and cold)
8. Proprioception (sensory awareness of posture and position, vital for balance and movement)
9. Nociception (i.e. pain)
10. Acceleration/balance (the vestibular organs, which although located in the ear are entirely separate in function and have their own nerves)

Hi Mr. Jack, But some are part of the same system.Touch encompasses all of these:6. Heat
7. Cold (we actually have different receptors for heat and cold)
8. Proprioception (sensory awareness of posture and position, vital for balance and movement)
9. NociceptionIt's the same receptor: Cutaneous receptor

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With the above mentioned receptor types the skin can sense the modalities touch, pressure, vibration, temperature and pain. The modalities and their receptors are partly overlapping, and are innervated by different kinds of fiber types.

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Found in the somatosensory system.

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The somatosensory system is a diverse sensory system comprising the receptors and processing centres to produce the sensory modalities such as touch, temperature, proprioception (body position), and nociception (pain).

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But they are not seperate and equilibrioception/balance only functions as a result of other senses working together. It is not independent.

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Balance is the result of a number of body systems working together. Specifically, in order to achieve balance the eyes (visual system), ears (vestibular system) and the body's sense of where it is in space (proprioception) need to be intact. Also the brain, which compiles this information, needs to be functioning normally.

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I would say we have many senses, both for external use and internal use. But as far as the external goes we have 5, and the other senses branch off of these.- Oni

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If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.
~George Carlin

Read your link more closely, my friend, those are different types of receptor. Even more so, as you look at the operation thereof. A system is not sense; a sense is a sense. Yes, there are commonalities in how differing sense are conveyed but they do, none-the-less, carry differing information.equilibrioception/balance[/url] only functions as a result of other senses working together. It is not independent.[/qs]A good point. Balance was a misnomer, none-the-less the information conveyed by the vestibular organs stand seperate from other senses.Now, you may argue that our senses are combined, that - for example - balance depends on varying sources of information but the same is very much true of all your senses. You do not see the world as it is directly conveyed by your eyes but as it is reconstructed by your brain. You do not hear speech as conveyed by the systems in your ear (which, btw, are very cool - they're effectively performing a biological Fourier transform) but as post-processed by your brain to identify sounds relevant to the language you know.Thus, arguing that a sense combines with other to produce sensation may be true, but by that argument we really only have one sense.

I apologies, I quoted the wrong link. I meant to link this: Cutaneous mechanoreceptors.

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Cutaneous mechanoreceptors provide the senses of touch, pressure, vibration, proprioception and others.

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Fair enough, but I was just trying to show that the senses: touch, temperature, proprioception, and nociception are part of the same sensory system. I don't think I follow.The vestibular sense is the same as equilibrioception, or the sense of balance. It would not function properly without the other senses.I agree that they stand seperately, but if it can't function properly without the other senses I believe this makes it a secondary branch of the original senses. I think...? But the senses are independent of the brain. Our brain receives the information and makes a representation of reality based on the info it got from its sensory inputs. IMO this is not the same as saying vision is required for balance. The brain compiles all the info and processes it, but that is secondary to the actual, initial sensing of what we interacted with.- Oni

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If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.
~George Carlin

I think your link is wrong.Proprioception uses mechanoreceptor just as cutaneous touch does; but proprioceptive recepetors are not located in the skin - they're primarily located in the joints and muscles.One could also reasonably argue that the different forms of receptor constitute differing senses. In which case - by your link - cutaneous mechanoreceptors alone constitute multiple senses. I'm not sure that's a useful way of looking at it though. They're really not. Touch uses mechanoreceptors, temperature uses two distinct kinds of thermoreceptor (one for hot, one for cold) which produce differing sensory reports, and nociception uses another form of receptor again and pain is quite clearly experienced differently from touch. Vision is not required for balance (or blind people would fall over, and you couldn't stand with your eyes shut), it is used to augment it. But goes both ways. Ever got horribly drunk and experienced that sickening world spinning thing? That's caused because the vestibular organs in your ears are giving errant information. Normally the information from your circular canals is combined with information from your eyes to provide a stable image; when it starts being wrong your sense of vision gives you the false impression that the world is spinning around you.

Thanks for the corrections on my misunderstandings, Mr. Jack.It's been a long time since I've looked at this field of science.I have, since I replied to your post, begun to brush up on it and it seems I was mistaken on a few things. I'll continue to look into it and if I have any questions/remarks I'll bring them to this thread.Thanks again,- Oni