...................Right..I knew this would be a can of worms if anyone took
me up on it, and the implications for the notion of a "moral sense" are
largely unexplored; in some areas I'm way out on a limb here, so I'll try to
make clear which views are my own, and which are more widely 'scientifically
accepted'.
First, the notion of 5 senses -the original trick question.
Take "Touch", for example.
When we talk about touch, we are actually talking about the way(s) in which
information is apprehended by the skin-organ, via 'sensation'. But on closer
examination, this breaks down into a variety of subsets of infromation
types, which have their own neorological substrates even at the most
peripheral processing level. So, for instance, the 'hot-and-cold' system is
actually separate from the 'warm / not warm' system. (this is why torturers
could traditionally combine 'expectation' with an ice-cube to acheive a very
definite perception of burning).
Further, the 'touch' we mean when talking about sensation other than
relating to temperature breaks down into separate systems, so that
'texture', 'Impact', 'sheer-force detection' and so on use quite different
sets of nerve-endings, and quite different areas of the brain to process. Of
course, I'm not saying there isn't overlap, any more than I would say that
the 'visual sense' and the 'auditory sense' are somehow quite discrete -
they're definitely not wholly independant, and this can be shown using a
variety of brain-scan techniques.
Further, allthough I've just talked about 'skin-sensations' when talking
about touch, in fact there are sensory systems involved in sensing forces in
the muscles, and others in the skeletal system, which are actively involved
in 'touch'.
You can go on to do the same type of breakdown with the 'visual sense', the
'balance-sense, and so on. And you can go on to show that some senses exist
ACROSS what we think of as sensory modalities.
I'm aware that this discussion may be something of a diversion for tis list,
just now, so I won't go on too much. For those interested in this question,
a quite readable statement of the position is to be found in J.J.Gibson's
"The senses considered as perceptual systems" (about 1960-66, something like
that ). Intersetingly, Gibson was a philosopher before he was an
experimental psychologist. He sort of re-wrote the experimental psychology
book by proposing his "Ecological Approach to (Visual) Perception". He was
very interested in questions of 'the world out there' and 'how we know it',
and rejected utterly the sensation-based explanation of the behaviourists
(Skinner et al). This, and his rejection of "homunculus theory" (akin to
Gilbert Ryle's "ghost in the machine") led him to an extreme position in
some respects, but his important contribution was that "perception" is
information-processing, NOT sense-data processing. This at first glance
doesn't seem too radical, but actually the implications are immense. It
required him to talk about the notion of "Reciprocity" of percipient and
environment, at a philosophical level.
Interestingly, (well, to some anyway!) it has led me to incorporate into my
teaching material a variety of "extra-sensory perception" examples, which do
not in any way rest on spooky explanations; you do it all the time. But I
digress.
To sum up: It is generally accepted in several branches of psychology that
you don't only have 5 senses, or 6 or 7 or whatever, and morover that
"perception" is not actually synonymous with "sensation". Rather,
'perception' UTILISES sensation as a source of relevant information, but NOT
the only source. (Imagination, memory, and so on). Of course I'm talking
specifically about perception in humans here, rather than in
phylogenetically 'lower' orders of organism, for whom perception is
demonstrably quantitavely AND qualitatively different.
It is for the above reasons that I have no difficulty in entertaing the
notion that we could have a "Moral sense", though of course I would tend to
refer to it as a "Moral Perception". In recent conversation with a
neurologist, we postulated that such sophisticated neural substrates may
well be identified in the not-too-distant future. This last paragraph is
where I've departed from conventional 'scientific wisdom'; it's a dirty job
but someone has to do it!
P.s - the sense of "balance" is certainly regarded as a bona-fide "sense" by
almost all psychologists.
cheers
ppl
Peter Lennox
Hardwick House
tel: (0114) 2661509
e-mail: peter@lennox01.freeserve.co.uk
or:- ppl100@york.ac.uk
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Budd" <rmb007Q1@hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: 03 April 2000 03:32
Subject: Re: MD Moral Sense?
> > [David Buchanan] Peter, I don't get it. I thought there were five
> > physical senses and that the only controversy about it comes from the
> > belevers in ESP or other paranormal ideas. I can see how "instincts"
might
> > be harder quantify or even to identify, but the senses? A trick
question?
> > Please explain.
> >
> RICK:
> David, I know that some scientists now consider "balance" to be our sixth
> sense (sorry no dead people or ESP). The exhibit about the evolution of
man
> at the Museum of Natural history in NYC is only place that I've seen this
> position.
>
>
>
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