Talk:Sense

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 January 2020 and 25 April 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Madisenh.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 08:57, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

What is coenesthesis?
"Coenesthesis" redirects here but there is no mention of that term in the article, not even an indication if it is a synonym or merely a vaguely related concept.--Lieven Smits (talk) 20:44, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

>> Some definitions are here, here, and here. Sti11w4ter (talk) 14:39, 9 August 2016 (UTC)


 * A definition is… still not in the article. jae (talk) 16:10, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Misuse of term 'animal'
Humans are by definition animals (we are in the kingdom Animalia), but the opening paragraph seems to use the word 'animal' in a way that excludes humans in error. "Animals also have receptors to sense the world around them, with degrees of capability varying greatly between species. Humans have a comparatively weak sense of smell, while some animals may lack one or more of the traditional five senses." 209.202.60.193 (talk) 23:29, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

>>This appears to have been fixed previously. Sti11w4ter (talk) 14:35, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Emanation and Reason behind these specific Senses
My question is unbiased in any form.

I am interested in the "origin" of the five senses. By this I don't mean who created it.

By this I mean to ask is that why these five senses emanated for us to interact with the world around us.

My question is not cryptic. It's a question after all.

How did it arrive to being these known five senses through evolution? And why these five? I cant seem to find any answer for it.

It's wondrous how it was thought of. Sight, Smell, Sound, Taste and Touch. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.193.80.67 (talk) 17:31, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

>>As the article makes clear, there aren't five senses. There are between ten and 15 in humans alone, depending on how you define "sense." For more on how and why they evolved, check the Evolution article. Sti11w4ter (talk) 14:33, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

"Traditional Five" is not scientific.
In several places, this article gives the impression that some human senses are somehow less important, or are recent discoveries. The "traditional five senses" is a product of ignorance and cultural momentum, and reference to that ignorance should be a minor historical footnote, not the framework for the entire article. There is no evidentiary reason to make a distinction between the many senses. I did not edit the article because such a massive overhaul should be the result of consensus-building discussion, discussion which I expected to find here! Finding none, I'm starting it. After fixing the overall structure, we also need to fix all references to "touch," which is NOT a sense, but three senses that our forbears mistakenly conflated: thermoreception, mechanoreception, and itch (as described in the current article). Yes, it's arguable that itch belongs elsewhere, but currently the article is self-contradictory AND wrong. Let's fix both. Your thoughts? Sti11w4ter (talk) 14:28, 9 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree 100%. In fact I was lying in bed last night thinking about how I can feel infrared radiation (long story, but I have the general topic on my mind) and thinking of how that's quite different than tactile touch, and the more I pondered the issue I could count 8 or 9 distinct external senses.  Then this morning I corroborated my general impression in Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia, and a quick we search shows that the issue is complex, but certainly the so-called "traditional" senses is not meaningful whatsoever, although maybe it deserves some mention for historical purposes.  I vote for wholesale reconstruction of this article. I also think the article should be retitled as "Human sense" since in other animals the issue varies. LaurentianShield (talk) 16:13, 29 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I changed my mind, I have a better idea: This article should be blanked and re-directed to Sensory system. Who agrees or disagrees? LaurentianShield (talk) 16:58, 29 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I'm not with you, LaurentianShield, not yet at least. That article is not as in-depth about each sense, and I believe most Wikipedia users are interested in human senses specifically. I'd like to see this article improved (though I admit I'm not ready to tackle it myself.) Sti11w4ter (talk) 12:55, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Having been absent for a while, I am pleased to see some good changes. Referring to "Aristotelian" senses is much much better than "traditional." Thanks to whoever did that. I think it balances the issues I raised here beautifully, preventing the need for a total re-write. There IS good reason to refer to those five differently simply because of traditional expectations, as long as the reference is accurate. I think that has been accomplished now. Sti11w4ter (talk) 15:48, 31 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Wow! Kudos to whoever rewrote this entire article, addressing this issue and professionalizing it since my last visit. I'm hugely impressed and grateful. See one exception below under balance as external. Sti11w4ter (talk) 17:59, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Missing senses
Our rectum can detect the kind of matter that attempts or passes through anus. Examples: usually we know that a fart would actully be a shart before letting it out, and sometimes we can break the wind safely although we're in urgent need to poop. We also don't need to look at our poop to verify it's primary consistency after letting it out. Sorry about the crude terminology, but I am not an expert. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.240.209.106 (talk) 02:17, 8 October 2016 (UTC)


 * @109.240.209.106 that's literally touch 😐 PortugueseWikiMan (talk) 21:35, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Fancy names for the senses
On 12 March 2011, Sbbeef added to the lead text some "fancy names" for human sensory modalities: ophthalmoception, audioception, gustaoception, olfacoception/olfacception, tactioception, magetoception [sic] and kinesthesioception. These words were added along with the extant words thermoception, proprioception, nociception and equilibrioception. The words magetoception and kinesthesioception were, rightly, since removed. If you Google the first list of words today, you get hits, so what's the problem, right?

Turns out, although we've studied and described these senses for decades, somehow usage of these words only started appearing on the Internet in 2011, right around the time that the words were added to the Wikipedia lead text:

* The seemingly pre-2011 mentions of the invented words are misclassified by Google. Most of the listings represent the same pages, which mention all of the invented words. Manual inspection of the websites reveals that the content is post-2011. On the other hand, manual verification reveals that many of the pre-2011 mentions of the extant words (pruriception, etc.) are genuine.

For the first list of words, the timing, co-occurrence of the words and the nature of the pages suggest that the mentions of the words were the consequence of a single poorly cited addition made in 2011 in a prominent place in the Wikipedia article, and otherwise not present in the literature. This contrasts with the second list of words, which are genuine and present all along in the literature. Per WP:NOR, I motion to change the lead text to the following: "Sight (vision), hearing (audition), taste (gustation), smell (olfaction), and touch (somatosensation) are the five traditionally recognized senses." The words in parentheses are the standard words used in the literature, in the body of the Sense article, and in the respective articles for the sensory modalities.&mdash;Goh wz 00:49, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I have carried out the proposed edits.&mdash;Goh wz 23:35, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Sense of Familiarity
I added a couple "senses" to the section "Perception not based on a specific sensory organ". For "Agency" I had some good sources and there's an existing article. For "Familiarity" though, I'm probably missing something. I found sources, but they're recent and very technical, being neuroscience studies. It seems wrong to spend most of the paragraph on purely reductive concerns, ie, which part of the brain produces the feeling of familiarity. Clearly there's some tradition of studying things like deja vu and capgras syndrome. The existence of the Mandler 1980 paper, and discussion in Ho et al. 2015, both suggest that the concept of a distinct sense of familiarity has been used in the cognitive sciences for decades. So I think there are probably things some much less technical things which could be said on the topic, but I can't particularly think of them. Dranorter (talk) 15:50, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

"sense" in other primates, other mammals
this article is a great source of info for "sense" in humans. And I think a lot of it would pertain to other primates & a bit less still to other mammals. Is that info organized somewhere on wikipedia too? I can't find it. I would like to see something in the 'see also' that might give a comparable overview on, well, primates or mammals or both. any guidance? thanks. skakEL 12:34, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

oops, reading closer now. skakEL 12:36, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

the 7. sense
I know something without knowing it before. I have often had the incident that I knew something before it happened. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.157.80.122 (talk) 13:42, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Cognitive Mental Sensations
This idea comes from Robert Burton, who created the idea of 'cognitive mental sensations': for example the 'a-ha' experience or 'eureka'. These are sensations about our mental experience. Another example would be the feeling of being certain, about an idea or belief: we are generally unaware of feeling anything when we say something, until we are pressed or questioned about it.

I think these are very interesting and important sensations, that are not generally thought of as part of our sensory experience, yet provide clues and insights into psychological phenomenon like delusions, deja-vu, etc.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnu0vE2E4-M&t=840s — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr Robot 2020 (talk • contribs) 00:30, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Balance as an external sense
There are no sources in this article suggesting that balance is an external sense and to be sure, it's not. Like hunger or visceral pain, etc. balance just tells us about our own bodies and how they are oriented: it does not give us new information about the external world. I have no clue why it's placed alongside smell and vision. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:08, 29 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I would argue that the vestibular system and equilibrioception are external in nature. The vestibular system senses external gravitational fields, the body's position in relation to it, and acceleration in relation to an external reference frame. It is sometimes confused with another sensory system, proprioception, which provides information on the movement and position of the body parts. Modern scientific literature most commonly defines 6 external senses, not 5. The "traditional five senses", as others have indicated it here before, are historical and cultural, not scientific. 2601:C6:C600:7870:B0DF:274:E627:5EB4 (talk) 05:53, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Totally agree: balance is external, and this article currently mis-classifies it. The information it provides is 100% about one's orientation to (or movement through) an external gravitational field. Ask an astronaut. Or anyone who has ridden a roller coaster. It tells us nothing about the internal workings of our body except in reference to gravity or acceleration through space (which physicists will tell you are the same thing). External. Sti11w4ter (talk) 18:03, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Sense of Time?
Odd to find nothing in this new-and-much-improved article about the sense of time. Especially given that there's a GREAT article titled "Time perception" already on Wikipedia. Don't have time right now to work on adding it here in a way that will mesh well with the existing. For example, is it internal or external?! Sti11w4ter (talk) 17:16, 14 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I see someone has added the link. Thank you. I still think time should be more prominent in the article. Sti11w4ter (talk) 21:21, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Lead
please explain how the lead is excessive. At 52,137 characters, this article can comfortably handle four paragraphs per MOS:LEADLENGTH. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:10, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

The paragraphs are of excessive length and detail. Each of them contain 2-3 paragraphs worth of text that just happens to not be separated by a newline. It fails the goal described in the guidelines you gave. To quote: “ The length of the lead should conform to readers' expectations of a short, but useful and complete, summary of the topic. A lead that is too short leaves the reader unsatisfied; a lead that is too long is intimidating, difficult to read, and may cause the reader to lose interest halfway.” SkSlick (talk) 20:34, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

The lead has now been modified and simplified, and much of the content has been moved to the text, so I am removing the "lead too long" tag. -- MelanieN (talk) 16:06, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Too technical
Hello everyone! I've made some changes to the lead and added a "too technical" template to the top of the article. Per WP:Technical, we're writing for a general audience, and it's important to remember that many of our readers may be encountering a formal description of the senses for the first time. The level of scientific detail in this article, while commendable, needs to be better balanced by non-scientific prose providing commonsense descriptions of these processes and terms. I've made changes to the lead along these lines, and will try to add and prune in the rest of the article if I have time, but I'd appreciate all the help I can get, of course. Ganesha811 (talk) 11:25, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Chemoreceptor
Chemoreceptor 2405:204:51A5:47C8:371D:891A:4CD5:B6EB (talk) 23:33, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

This is how a general biology article should be!
Wow, this is actually a really good biology article that isn't extremely human-centric with lots of animal info!

Well, aside from the fact that the subtopic "sensory organs" which talks about sensory organs in general, links all main articles to human anatomy, that I fixed, but overall great article! Tons of animal information! That's good!

What I want is to have more articles with actual info on animals (cough cough underwater vision barely having any animal info despite being a major aspect in marine biology cough cough) so keep up the good work guys! LoverOfAllAnimalsActivist (talk) 10:57, 16 April 2024 (UTC)