Do we have a sixth sense?

[CapTon 592]

This sounds a bit stupid but hear me out

 

Everyone ALWAYS knows (or most of the time) when someone else is watching them, or when there's another presence somewhere. I believe that that's your sixth sense: knowing when someone is watching you.

 

Your opinions?

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

Tough question, there's no way to tell for sure right now.  There are some explanations for different things though.

 

First of all, there are plenty of times when I'm alone and get a creepy feeling (damn horror movies), but no one is there.  Secondly, (this is a bit more creepy, but valid), what if someone is watching you and you never notice?  There's no way to tell how often you are successfully able to detect this.

 

Another thing to consider are your 5 proven senses.  They deserve more credit than they get.  You may not realize it, but you can detect when someone is facing towards you or away from you with your eyes closed.  If they are close enough, the sound of their talking, whispering, or breathing is significantly louder when it is channeled towards you.  Other subconsciously detected sounds help you stay very aware of your surroundings.

 

Another example I can think of is human sonar.  I personally have it to some extent, and I doubt I'm alone.  Try walking around in a quiet room with your eyes closed, very cautiously (spin around a few times if you're really familiar with the room).  You might be able to tell when you are about to walk into a wall.  Something in the air just feels dense in front of you, and if you pay close attention, you can hear or feel your breathing reflecting off an object.

 

There are of course lots of things that can't be explained.  But some can.

 

EDIT:  Not surprisingly, there's a Wikipedia article for this

[Duke87 1,070]

Humans actually have a lot more than 5 senses without considering anything paranormal.

 

Just sayin'

[Meg 368]

The example that was given about knowing when someone is watching you . . . I know people who have never had that feeling and don't know what the rest of us are talking about.  

 

There is the issue of how sensitive and accurate the senses are.   An obvious example:  color-blind people do perceive color. They just don't perceive the same range that most of us do.   Colors are there, some of us see more of them than others do.   or see them in a different way.

 

Similar examples can be used with other senses (--- insert discussion about hearing ranges ---).   The point is that some people perceive things that others do not.

 

I remember the first time someone looked at me weirdly when I said it smelled like snow is coming.  Apparently some people can't smell it.   Go figure.

 

I suspect the same is true for some (but not all) "paranormal" senses.   To some it is obvious; to others, it doesn't exist.

 

 

 

 

 

[MandelSoft 2,769]

Some "paranormal" senses are either someone's imagination running wild or a combination of other senses. Sometimes, you don't need vague things to explain this sort of things

 

I remember the first time someone looked at me weirdly when I said it smelled like snow is coming.  Apparently some people can't smell it.   Go figure.

I think I can smell rain coming (often a few minutes before it actually hits). I also have a very good sense of direction: show me the route to a place once and I'll direct you to it even one year later

My mother can smell in someone's breath if someone is sick (she works with mentally handicapped children, so sickness is not a too uncommon thing there).

 

Some of these special senses can be trained. You just have to use your other senses in such a way to create a new "composite sense".

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Senses vary and in some cases are absent.  Some people are born deaf, some blind.  Some lose senses.  As an example, I have no binary vision because I've lost an eye, so 3D movies are lost on me.  My sister-in-law has no depth perception but has both eyes, but she has MS.

 

The number of senses is probably larger than the five we regularly know now.  We are predators, and it would be useful to have a sense that acts like a surrounding radar system, and some people do have it still.  I can usually tell if I am being watched.  Unfortunately, none of us are able to sense the intrusion of Big Brother (NSA, CSEC) and other non-living watchers.  This is an age old problem, because even the Romans said 'Quem ipsos custodes custodiet?'  {Who will watch the watchers?}

[Mr Saturn64 742]

I personally, based on personal experience, believe we do.  I just think experiences I've had lead to believing that we do. 

[Fatherted 129]

Balance is a proven sixth sense but I remember that there are multiple others.

[Wiimeiser 444]

A list:

 

sight (ophthalmoception)

hearing (audioception)

taste (gustaoception)

smell (olfacoception or olfacception)

touch (tactioception)

temperature (thermoception)

kinesthetic sense (proprioception)

pain (nociception)

balance (equilibrioception)

the need to go deeper (inception)

 

...Okay, that last one was terrible

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

Heh, I smiled at "inception."

 

My own feelings on it are that an extra sense that tells you (oftentimes vague) things is often only remembered when it's right, or even after the fact.  A good example is intuition.  My wife always talks about her intuition being so awesome and trustworthy.  And it is, when she's proven right after the fact and she points it out after I've screwed something up.  Other times, it's like it doesn't exist, or the times it doesn't work are completely forgotten.  I suspect clairvoyants and "psychics" fall into this category.  I don't think this is something worth seriously challenging, though, because is it really worth it?  I won't gain anything but a headache arguing over it with my wife, so I just let it go.  Whatever.

 

So far as smelling snow or being able to tell when you're being watched, those are some things I can't really do, but I would not bet against it, as those above have mentioned, everyone operates their senses a little differently, and some people are MUCH different.  If there are people who can't see or hear or smell very well at all, why couldn't there be people with Wolverine senses?  Pregnant women have them.  Their senses of smell are like a bloodhound's.  Smelling snow might just be an extension of our senses of smell anyways, too, though.

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

The visions we get in my own experience are dependent on several factors. some come true while others don't and these depend on wheather or not something is done to change said vision.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Sensing weather could well be due to training.  I can usually forecast the weather in my immediate area for about 12 hours out just by walking out of doors.  But then, I taught weather for the Power Squadrons for several years and had sailboats for about 40 years.  One gathers some learned skills that become like senses.

 

If you've ever been on open water when a line squall goes through, you know that raised hackles feeling.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

About taste, humans can taste metal ions (possibly considered an anti-taste), calcium ions (which some view as delicious) and starch has a taste as well as the sugar it breaks down into from saliva. Humans have the ability to see near-ultraviolet but it is damaging and usually is filtered by sunglasses or at least thick corneas (people with thin corneas see "brighter, bluer" skies from seeing UVA). I agree that temperature and balance are important senses though pain is an extension of touch and of negative input (plants can "feel" pain as well).

--Ocram

[jmsepe 2,039]

Yes, we have a sixth sense and we termed it common sense... 

HAHAHA. 

 

Sorry if my joke was uncalled for but seriously, I think common sense should really be considered part of the human senses.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If there was any common sense there wouldn't be any politicians nor lawyers.

[CapTon 592]

If there was any common sense there wouldn't be any politicians nor lawyers.

Great and true statement

 

But I never realized that so many different things could be considered senses.

 

My question now is: why aren't we teaching elementary school kids that there are more than five senses? Pain is something easy to learn about (although it's probably not looked highly upon when it comes to the education system), and so is balance.

[hamsterTK 93]

I have a lot of extra senses.

 

The "I am going to get called in to work" sense

The "Dog needs to go poop in the yard or he'll do it on the carpet" sense

The "I forgot to set my alarm clock but my body says get up" sense

The "My canned chili is going to explode in the microwave and make a huge mess if I don't take it out" sense.

[jmsepe 2,039]

Hahahaha. Whoo, A Nonny Moose, I just love your comments. Totally worth it. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Chalk it up to experience.  Could the defense mechanisms developed over a lifetime be called a set of senses?

[CapTon 592]

I believe that senses are anything you were born with, really (not things such as limbs, your body, etc, but things such as eyesight, hearing, etc). Some people can born with great balance while others cannot. I don't think you can develop senses over time. I believe those would be considered skills or something of that sorts.

[TekindusT 3,809]

I read the Wikipedia article linked by MandelSoft. I'm impressed of finding magnetoception there. 

 

I consider myself having a very good spatial intelligence capability (on the other side, I have a million of defects). The tests I have gone through my life have shown how I perform much better at this area than at calculus, logic, etc. Some people are surprised on how can I orientate myself in a city I have never been on just looking 10 seconds at a pixellated map, or how can I make drawings of a workpiece I have seen for only some seconds. And backwards, I can easily project a complex workpiece, or an assembly, just looking at a drawing. I tend to prefer the symmetrical version of anything, the assymetrical version makes me a bit distressed.

 

I'm introducing this because the ability of orienting myself much easily than the rest of people I know (they tell that to me) could be related with magnetoception. Obviously, I'm not a compass, but given this tendency, this implies that I know more or less where the north and south axis directions should be. The sun has an influence also, but this happens also at night or inclosed areas, even below street level. I think there should be a relation between the two phenomena, and I guess that, as the other senses, some people have them more developed than others.

[hamsterTK 93]

I always wondered what it be like to see in near infrared. You couldn't see "heat " infrared but you'd perceive more color variation in leafy plants which would be a nice adaptation for a primate.

Also there is the possible ability to see thru some thin white garments hahaha

Perceiving polarization in light would be cool too.

I want bioengineered supereyes

[Kiiroitori 55]

Anyone thought about emotional sense? (Is that even a thing?)

Ie: Sadness, Love, Anger etc.

I can detect ones emotional feelings. But I believe this is natural anyway, maybe some are better than this then others?

[Odainsaker 2,135]

Supereyes, huh?

 

Sometimes, especially in the mornings, if the sunlight passing through the slits in the window blinds hits the corner of my eye at the just the right angle while I am not wearing my glasses, I will see peculiar globules and flows blurring into and drifting superimposed over my vision.  It actually resembles very much the contents of fluid seen under a microscope.  When I squint or blink, the globules, particles, or bubbles and the flows are mightily disturbed in a way that suggests they are all indeed in a fluid.  Egads, I know I am quite nearsighted, but I didn't think I was so nearsighted as to be seeing eyeball coating tears under high magnification!  Nah...can't be.  At least I haven't spotted anything wiggling or swimming yet...

 

Now to start developing that ability to detect minute changes in gravitation.

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

Anyone thought about emotional sense? (Is that even a thing?)

Ie: Sadness, Love, Anger etc.

I can detect ones emotional feelings. But I believe this is natural anyway, maybe some are better than this then others?

its called being an empath...

it is also called discerning spirits it is a gift that only certain people have.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

@TekindusT:  You must be pretty good at 3D modelling then.  How about 4D?  Can you model a tesseract?

[TekindusT 3,809]

@TekindusT:  You must be pretty good at 3D modelling then.  How about 4D?  Can you model a tesseract?

 

I can say I'm good at 3D. On the Computer Aided Design subjects in my degree I had an edge in which I spent less time modelling than my colleagues so I could spend more time on the drawing normalization. 

 

Unfortunately, when I'm taken out of the 3D world, like often happens in linear algebra, I get totally lost. Algebraically, there's no big difference between a 3x3 and a 4x4 or a 25x25 matrix. For me, the problem becomes totally unsolvable; I failed linear algebra 3 times.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Wow, TT, I guess you need to take a bit of a paradigm shift when you do linear algebra.  Have you tried an approach through synthetic geometry or maybe tensor calculus?

[Meg 368]

Supereyes, huh?

 

Sometimes, especially in the mornings, if the sunlight passing through the slits in the window blinds hits the corner of my eye at the just the right angle while I am not wearing my glasses, I will see peculiar globules and flows blurring into and drifting superimposed over my vision.  It actually resembles very much the contents of fluid seen under a microscope.  When I squint or blink, the globules, particles, or bubbles and the flows are mightily disturbed in a way that suggests they are all indeed in a fluid.  Egads, I know I am quite nearsighted, but I didn't think I was so nearsighted as to be seeing eyeball coating tears under high magnification!  Nah...can't be.  At least I haven't spotted anything wiggling or swimming yet...

 

Now to start developing that ability to detect minute changes in gravitation.

 

I know what you mean.   Tiny little globules, flowing around semi-randomly, although the paths are curved and not straight. I would use the word "swimming".   It takes just the right angle of sunlight to see them.

 

I am quite nearsighted as well.  I have heard various theories as to what they are.    As you mentioned, it looks like fluid underneath a microscope, almost like cells going through a capillary.  I agree:  Nah...can't be.     Another theory says they are energy particles in the air that just happen to have the right lighting.  

Whatever it is, it seems to be considered outside the range of "normal" vision, whatever that is.

 

 

 

Anyone thought about emotional sense? (Is that even a thing?)

Ie: Sadness, Love, Anger etc.

I can detect ones emotional feelings. But I believe this is natural anyway, maybe some are better than this then others?

its called being an empath...

it is also called discerning spirits it is a gift that only certain people have.

 

 

Some are definitely better at this than others.   Many people seem totally oblivious to what other people are feeling.  It took me a while as a child to realize this because it is obvious to me.   I've had to learn how to shield against them.  I still avoid unfocused crowds because they are too turbulent.   Focused crowds (movie theater, football stadium, etc.) aren't as bad because the energy is directed and therefore less turbulent.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Early morning experiences by the myopic, of which I used to be one, are merely the fluids in the eye.  Opaque and semi-opaque particles that normally rest on the bottom of the optic orb are stirred up sometimes.  They are called floaters.  If they persist in regular daytime hours, you may have a detached retina starting, in which case you want to see an ophthalmologist PDQ.  This is experience talking.  The hospital lab was doing pre-op tests while I was on the gurney being wheeling into the O.R.

 

Since my eye rehabilitation a few years ago, I have had 20/25 or better vision in my left eye.  Lost the other one many years ago.