Abstract
I argue that we should reject the sparse view that there are or could be only a small number of rather distinct senses. When one appreciates this then one can see that there is no need to choose between the standard criteria that have been proposed as ways of individuating the senses—representation, phenomenal character, proximal stimulus and sense organ—or any other criteria that one may deem important. Rather, one can use these criteria in conjunction to form a fine-grained taxonomy of the senses. We can think of these criteria as defining a multidimensional space within which we can locate each of the senses that we are familiar with and which also defines the space of possible senses there could be.
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Notes
Grice (1962) considers a creature like Four-Eyes. However, he puts his imagined creature to different philosophical use than I do here.
See Book III, Chap. 1. It is reasonably clear that Aristotle was claiming that as a matter of fact there are only five senses, and, given the nature of the world as he took it to be (composed of elements, each of which had different properties), there could be only five senses. Thus, he was claiming that it is nomologically necessary that we have only five senses. He was not claiming that it is metaphysically necessary.
Nudds (2004, p. 35). On the same page, not only does he say that he has “not come across a good argument” for the idea that the folk notion of the senses is liable for revision, but he also says, “There have been authors who attempt to give a ‘scientific’ account of the senses, but they do nothing to show that they haven’t simply changed the subject. Whatever they are giving an account of, it’s not the senses as we commonly understand them” (footnote 11).
It may be that no one has ever held the sparse view that I outline here, but parts of it have certainly been avowed, and the position serves as a useful stalking horse.
The term “kinesthesia” is sometimes used interchangeably with “proprioception” thus defined. However, sometimes “kinesthesia” is used exclusively as a term for our sense of awareness of the movement of the body, while “proprioception” is reserved for the sense of the body’s position.
Note that the vomeral nasal system does not produce experience with phenomenal character but it does possess the other features.
See Classen (1993, p. 2).
The evidence adduced here about touch is summarized in Craig (1996). Craig claims that temperature and pain processing are closely coupled structurally in the brain and that brain lesions rarely affect one without the other. The brain’s processing of pressure is structurally more distinct.
See Dallenbach (1939).
Rivelin and Gravelle (1984, p. 17)
See Hughes (1999).
See Hughes (1999).
See ibid.
There are other examples that I have not discussed here. See, for example, ibid. and the essays in this volume.
Matthew Nudds (personal correspondence) is concerned that my account does not explain why people do say that there are five senses when asked and why this has not changed. I think that it is changing. Some people do not reply that there are five. Others who do, quickly rescind the view when other candidate senses are mentioned to them. No doubt most people have given the question little thought and reply automatically with the answer they learned from their preschool books.
See Grice (1962).
Some disjunctivists, followers of J. J. Gibson’s ecological approach, as well as sensorimotor theorists, hold such a position.
This has been argued for by Siegel (2010), where accuracy is elucidated as the conditions in which there is freedom from error.
For more information on this methodology see ibid.
Of course, there are some reasons to question this neat dichotomy, even for the Aristotelian senses, as we will see in due course. In particular, it turns out that distinguishing taste and smell is particularly difficult.
Further details of the bat’s echolocation, together with excellent informed speculation on the representational and phenomenal nature of the bat’s experience, is given in Akins (1993).
Whether we can draw a sharp line between perceptual content and judgment is a highly debatable matter.
Some people might even wonder whether bees (and other animals) are the subjects of any states with phenomenal character.
See Kardong and Mackessy (1991).
See Bach-y-Rita (1972).
In the actual world there will of course be contingent connections between the criteria. For example, the proximal stimulus and the sense organ/physiology of the sense probably partly determine the representational properties and the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. The extent to which any necessary connections exist among the criteria is a difficult question and one’s answer to it will depend on one’s views on (at least) the following: the nature of phenomenal character, what types of metaphysically possible worlds there are, and whether a sense must generate conscious experiences. Thus, one might hold that while each possible sense will occupy some place in the multidimensional space, not every position in the space is a place that a possible sense could occupy.
Of course, when faced with certain senses we may be ignorant of the nature of those senses with regard to the facts pertaining to one or more of the criteria, but that is merely our unfortunate epistemic situation. When we embrace all four criteria and resist shoehorning all of the senses into a few discrete kinds, we can simply note, for each criterion, all of the facts we know. For example, in assessing the nature of the sensory organ in TVSS we should mention both the camera and the skin of the subject and the connection between them.
Perhaps with additional restrictions of the kind outlined in footnote 30.
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Acknowledgments
Versions of this paper have been given at the Consciousness at the Beach 3 Workshop, Centre for Consciousness, Australian National University, Kioloa Campus; an interdisciplinary workshop on the senses arranged by the Philosophy Department, University of Toronto at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France in 2009; and at the Pacific APA in San Francisco in 2010. I would like to thank the participants and in addition, Michael Brady, Jon Bird, Barry Smith and Susanna Siegel. The material in this paper comprises a portion of my “Introduction: Individuating the Senses” forthcoming in F. Macpherson (ed.) The Senses: Classical and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives, Oxford University Press.
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Macpherson, F. Taxonomising the senses. Philos Stud 153, 123–142 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9643-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9643-8
Keywords
- Senses
- Perception
- Experiences
- Phenomenal character
- Representation
- Proximal stimulus
- Sense organ