Perception and the 5 senses

First thread, wish me luck! and please bare with me.. lol

I don't know if anything like this has been discussed before, and keep in mind that this is simply a thought I had
while having a hard time falling asleep last night, lol when I can't sleep I tend to do alot of philosophical thinking.

I beleive that it is our individual perception of reality that shapes every aspect of our lives and who we are
as people. Every person on the planet is different and unique because they have all been exposed to their own unique and specific situations and influences. (Not sure if I explained that properly, im sure most of you will understand what im getting at.)

For us to be able to perceive or experience anything we human beings rely on our 5 senses;

-Sense
-Hearing
-Smell
-Taste
-Touch

Take for example a person born, missing 1 or a couple of these 5 senses, their perception of reality, and their
life experience will be much different than someone who has all 5 of them.

Now take for example, and I dont even know if it is possible however im sure it is,
however rare it may be, someone born lacking all 5 of these senses, this person cant feel anything, hear anything, smell anything, taste anything or have the ability to sense anything for example what position ones body may be in.

Now I know my thread seems like it is ready to give out the information, but the truth is I am curious to see what
the people of ATS think about this.

How does this person experience his reality, if this person is still concious, in his head, with nothing but his thoughts, What could this person possibly be thinking about as he has never experienced the world outside of him, would this person somehow, even tho lacking his senses be aware of the world? How could he possibly know what the world even is, or what he is, how would he even form a thought having never learnt any human language.

We all know that we think, in our heads in our native language.

Another interesting thought is, would this person know what sex he is? How could he possibly... think about that one.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, I hope it made some sense to people..

Discuss! =)

reply to post by PsychedeliCintrovert


Sorry bout the paragraph structure, copied from notepad, lol I tried fixing it, looked fine in the preview.

reply to post by PsychedeliCintrovert


I can not answer your main question.
I can still tell some about it.
Years ago I asked a woman, aged 50, if she dreamed at all and if so, how.
This woman had gone blind at the age of 14.
She told me she had dreams, and even sometimes in colour, but always based on the things she had seen before going blind.
She had not fitted in the experiences she had in the following 36 years.

I would say one born without the 5 senses would be deemed a 'vegetable' by modern medicine. This opens an entirely new can of worms.

Is a living human organism, minus the senses, a conscious human being? What is consciousness? My perception of consiousness is the collective thought of the trillions of cells comprising our bodies. Every cell focused into a solitary message forms our consciousness. Think about it, we serve our body in this life. It is learned that god serves us, and we serve our bodies.

I believe the earth is a single cell to our entire universe. On a planetary scale, there are trillions of such that make up our universe. There is a pattern that life follows. Look for the patterns and you will find wisdom.

To be conscious one must be aware. I'm afraid without any senses, one cannot be aware. Thoughts are the result of information from the senses being processed by the brain.

I feel dreadful that this may occur in life. But with no sensory input, there's nothing for the brain to react to or to create with.

Originally posted by 4KAAN
To be conscious one must be aware. I'm afraid without any senses, one cannot be aware. Thoughts are the result of information from the senses being processed by the brain.

I feel dreadful that this may occur in life. But with no sensory input, there's nothing for the brain to react to or to create with.

If a person is blind, they learn to cope with it.
Training helps a lot.
The other senses, that still function, improve.

We also know that, if you want to train say, extrasensory perception, people tend to use meditation in the process to get a calm mind first.
So without the input of the first 5 senses, maybe a spontaneous development of the sixth sense occurs.

I agree to sixth sense, I would think of them being screwed without 5 physical senses, yet there is more then physical - there is emotional. The emotional perceptions would probably gain strength and that would lead to intuition which I believe is the 6th sense.

reply to post by PsychedeliCintrovert


Hello PsychedeliCintrovert. Nice idea for your first thread.

With meditative practice one discovers that the 5 senses are but illusions. To go beyond the physical perceptions is to journey into infinity. This is not crazy talk, this is self-evident experience that all can attain with meditation.

To be born into a life with no perceptions would be Godhood. The individual would have no prejudices, preconceptions, misconceptions, expectations, references, worries, regrets, or fears. This person would not be trapped in the past or future, but would be fully immersed in the moment of 'Now.' He/She would be free from ego and free from all labels of race, sex, religion, and individuality. This person would be experiencing infinite-consciousness until they realized their own consciousness. Upon becoming aware of 'self' as consciousness, creation takes place. In the beginning the void had no form and was dark. Let there be light. And so God created the Universe.

Language, music, art, inventions, and all things created by mankind first started with one idea. The initial idea for anything was simply built upon throughout time to culminate into what we see today. One thought strengthened by another and grew. God says 'Be' and it is. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Word being consciousness, awareness, and thought. There is nothing stopping this person who lacks the 5 senses from creating an entire reality based upon their own liking and imagination.

I'm pretty sure there is science to back this up, I just don't feel like digging for it, but essentially as another poster said, when we lose 1 sense our brain compensates by enhancing another sense. There are more than 5 senses such as balance, temperature, pain, pressure, we just associate the 5 because the orifices that carry distinct characteristics along with touch. I think the 5 are most responsible for gathering and mimicking information to learn.

Originally posted by PsychedeliCintrovert
How does this person experience his reality, if this person is still concious, in his head, with nothing but his thoughts, What could this person possibly be thinking about as he has never experienced the world outside of him, would this person somehow, even tho lacking his senses be aware of the world? How could he possibly know what the world even is, or what he is, how would he even form a thought having never learnt any human language.

They would have an alternate connection to what the world is. They would have to be completely assisted in living, fed, cleaned after, and they wouldn't be aware of any of it other than realizing that sometimes they would feel uncomfortable from hunger or dehydration in the instances care wasn't provided. I don't think there would be "thoughts" in the traditional sense of the word, but they would still be able to gather information from the patterns of what they are still capable of sensing and identify them by sensation alone, mostly likely in terms of "good for me", "bad for me".You could argue that they have no sense of identity, but I think after enough growth in the brain gathering what information it can, a pattern will emerge where self-consciousness can adapt in to calculate, compare and categorize information.

Just my thoughts on pretending to know what I'm talking about.