Sensible Senses (October 6th, 2016)

I may have already made my love for open discussion lessons to be quite clear. However, I shall reiterate this fondness as today's lesson was another great example of one that I find myself truly engaging with due to being mostly opinion and discussion based.

Accordingly, today's lesson was begun with a rather simple (seeming) riddle: "If a tree falls down and no one hears it, does it still make sound?" When I first read the question my immediate instinctive response was- yes, of course the tree makes sound regardless of someone hearing it. Nevertheless, my understanding of sound was clearly a little distorted as the mind blowing answer was revealed to us. Hence, today I was enlightened about how sound itself is produced due to vibrations. However, in order for the vibrations to be classified as a "sound," there must be a mechanism present to mediate the transformation. Accordingly, this mechanism is human beings is essentially our ears. I personally would have never looked at this questions from a such a perspective and hence the answering of this questions made me aware of how it is crucial to engage with a presented questions not always directly but also with some hindsight wisdom that can allow us to better assess the question and a potential answer.

Moving on, we watched the "how many balls can you see?" video and I was left speechless once the true essence of the video was established by revealing the hundreds of clear jell like balls. I mean, what made me even more stunned was the fact that I knew of the existence of these globular structures as I oft played with them as a child. Nevertheless, the thought of this never even occurred to me. In my opinion, the reason for this lies in the fact that we as humans have been engineered to accept so much at face value that we as a species have become quite gullible. If asked to focus on one thing, our mind eliminates other potential distractions whereas the main point may be to test how we can balance our perception and judgment effectively. Similarly, the Queen Elizabeth smile and frown face and the Albert Einstein facial illusion, is another example of how the human mind can easily be manipulated to get it to focus on one element, that an anomalous element takes them by surprise.

Whilst I throughly enjoyed the aforementioned elements of today's lesson, my favourite part without a doubt was the part where we examined the story of "The Boy Who Can See With No Eyes." Using echo locations to detect sight? That is a phenomenon I never thought possible for the human mind. However, watching this video allowed me to be better acquainted with how people adapt to their own needs and work around their problems to find effectual solutions to them. With this solution being an exceptional one. I mean, it sounds crazy but the fact that a boy has developed this skill also sheds light on how he may have activated a certain part of his brain that may not otherwise be activated for other people. That being said, this ability is clearly not innate and his ability to do so has emerged form his determination and willpower.

In the latter part of the class we analyzed the different nuances of senses that we do not often categorize whilst speaking about sensory perceptions. The following are some of these unconventional senses:

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• Nociception: This sense of response is essentially the response adopted by the nervous system in an emergency situation. This response is also known as the fight or flight response as the nervous makes decisions based on subcategories of these two main sets. 

• Chronoception: This sense essentially relates to the idea of the perception of time. Unknowingly, we already studied this concept last lesson and it is now good to know how we can label this concept as being chronoception. 

• Proprioception:This sense can be defined as he sense that allows an individual to make connections between one's own individual body parts. Thus, the simplest of things such as raising an arm or the movement of fingers fall under proprioceptive movements. 

• Equilibrioception: As the name suggests, this sense is essentially the sense of physical balance in a mundane context. In fact, whilst we may have never considered this sense in our lives, it is critical to engage with the fact that this is the sense that allows us to stand without stumbling around. Perhaps clumsy people have a lower degree of equilibrioception which causes the constant tripping. 

• Thermoception: Thermoception is essentially the mechanism that allows our bodies to perceive varied temperatures. For instance the detection of cold and warm temperatures can be attributed to thermoreceptors in the body. In fact these thermoreceptors play an important role in the organ systems due to the fact that they allow the body to always maintain optimal conditions by externally detecting surrounding temperatures. 

Possible claims-

First order claims- 

• The neural cortex of the brain, responsible for logical perception is placed very close to the area responsible for memory. 

Second order claims- 

• Sensory perception is not reliable due to the fact that sense and perception is subjective and not an objective element that remains constant in different individuals.