SoullessAutomaton comments on Religion, Mystery, and Warm, Soft Fuzzies - Less Wrong

17 Post author: Psychohistorian 14 May 2009 11:41PM

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Comment author: SoullessAutomaton 15 May 2009 02:41:01PM 7 points [-]

To sate the curiousity of anyone uninclined to look for information themselves, other senses include:

  • Equilibrioception, via the inner ear, providing sensation of angular momentum and acceleration
  • Proprioception, feedback on the movement and position of the body. This is why you can close your eyes and touch your fingertips together.
  • Various internal signals, such as hunger
  • Pain, a distinct sensation that can be caused by various conditions
  • What is commonly regarded as the sense of "touch" can be separated into multiple distinct types, including heat, cold, and pressure.

For a demonstration of the difference between heat and cold sensation, place small amounts of the chemicals menthol (from peppermint extract) and capsaicin (from chili peppers) in your mouth--the former triggers cold receptors, while the latter triggers heat (and pain) receptors.

As an aside, there are also five distinct sensations of flavor, not the four that were commonly accepted until recently.

Comment author: swestrup 16 May 2009 07:09:03AM 1 point [-]

The above is a great list. Here are a couple more to add:

Vision can also be divided into a modelling sense (what's out there) and a targetting sense (where is something). There are known cases of someone losing one of these without the other. (ie a totally 'blind' man being able to perfectly track a moving target with his pointing finger by 'guessing'.)

As well, we have something called the 'General Chemical Sense' that alerts us to damage to mucus membranes, and is the thing that is complaining when you have the sensation of burning during excretion after you've had a spicy meal.

Comment author: gwern 15 May 2009 02:50:36PM 0 points [-]

To further sate people's curiosity: the 5th is umami.

Comment author: SoullessAutomaton 15 May 2009 03:11:13PM *  1 point [-]

Yeah, I probably should have mentioned that. Also note that it basically means "tastiness" which is not false advertising. Umami is the flavor of glutamic acid (better known in its salt form as monosodium glutamate), found commonly in protein-heavy and aged or fermented foods, such as meat, cheese, yeast extract, fermented soybeans, and so on.