Sight, smell and other senses

[FlytrapGurl]

Tre, this is the kind of stuff I think of all the time... probably out of boredome and brain numbness. I've thought of alot of unheard-of quantum-physics-like theories about things. It's sort of a pasttime since I have no life.

 

[Slurm]

Wow....
This feels like a zippy the pinhead strip.

 

[herenorthere]

Or like new college students after some beers (too many) and some philosophy or physics classes (too few).

 

[FlytrapGurl]

Why does everybody think this is so insane? Wow, a new idea, how crazy is THAT?!!?!

 

[endparenthesis]

I think part of the problem of the original question is how much of the process is being lumped under the sense itself. I'm not sure how one defines the "sense of sight" exactly... but there's a difference between receiving information (eyes) and processing information (brain), and the differences in how people interpret beauty probably happens mainly in the processing stage.

And then there's the things you can never know... like does another person actually experience what you would label as red, but growing up they learned that specific color was called orange, so you think you're talking about the same visual experience, but you aren't... yada yada yada.

 

[endparenthesis]

By the way, some of you might want to read Sight Unseen. It's a collection of letters between a sighted philosopher and a blind philosopher trying to nail down the true differences between their sense-based understanding of the world. And it explores the notion of other senses existing that we aren't aware of that other beings might feel they couldn't live without (like many of us do with sight), and how we may not have nearly as much sensual access to the universe as we think we do.

Unfortunately it's written in full-blown philosopher-speak ("solving" the limitations of language by using bloated, repetitive, almost unreadable arguments)... so it's a rough one.