Ta.

All your cells have in internal clock

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-41918368

With no external data then proprioception is the only sense

JonB wrote:

tin_robot wrote:

True, I guess.  But if detecting the amount of energy within the air that you're in contact with is to be filed as the same thing as detecting the pressure of something you push against - then aren't all senses just touch as well?  Detecting photons of light on your retina - is that touching?  Detecting chemical compounds on your tongue - surely that's touch too then?  Same for the stuff going on in your nose.  As for detecting vibrations in the air against a drum - that seems at least as much tangibly touch as detecting temperature change is.  So, based on that, all senses are touch.

I think you can draw a line between things that you sense when they make contact with your skin/body in general and things that have to make contact with a specific organ to register. Light photons anywhere other than your eye don't do anything, it's a specific sense separate from the others. It's not really a stretch to bundle together the effects of external stimuli on your skin - pressure, pain, heat etc. - and see those as distinct from the other senses. Also, when you describe sense in this way it suggests a reason why balance and proprioception wouldn't be in the same category. They're internal systems rather than reactions to or ways of interpreting external data. In my completely made up as I went along opinion.

Yes, but..  Pain and pressure are equally internal as much as external senses.  Balance uses external as well as internal stimuli.  So we're back to arbitrary distinctions.  But I agree - the "5 senses" is a logical approach in terms of saying "these are the 5 things that help you understand the outside world", even if I'd still argue temperature is a discrete sense in and of itself.  There isn't a right answer - though I'd still argue that teaching that there are only 5 senses is a wrong one.  

For me, the closest to right is still "one or lots", partly because when we talk about the senses we're trying to break down as separate entities a bunch of things that don't really exist in that way.  I wasn't being purely flippant when I suggested you could call it all just "a bunch of brain stuff".  Whether or not you experience something depends to a large degree on your brain rather than any of the multitude of inter-related sensors in your body.

I don't know.  Maybe instead of external and internal we need to distinguish subconscious and conscious senses.  Hearing, sight, pain, touch, temperature, taste, even smell are senses that our brains to some degree selectively register and edit.  Whereas things like proprioception or balance just happen naturally in the background and never really enter our consciousness at all (unless they go wrong).  So perhaps there's a more useful distinction to be made there.  

Though I'm kind of making it up as I go along too.  Like I say, to the best of my knowledge I don't think there's any consensus as yet as to what exactly "the senses" are.

tin_robot wrote:

even if I'd still argue temperature is a discrete sense in and of itself.

That’s because you studied medicine and not physics. ;op

Is the discrete/continuous concept not more about pure mathematics as opposed to its applications?

Jazzie B's son plays right-back for Millwall.

No you're sensing the IR radiation. The air isn't as hot as the hot think you're sensing.