July 13, 2026 • 14 mins
How many senses do we have? Like so many things, it depends entirely on how you define "senses." If the question is how many distinct things can we sense? Then, we have a number of sense so large it doesn't make any sense (pun intended). But, we'll get into some of the senses that can be reasonably argued to exist to paint a picture of how many potentially overlooked "senses" we might have.
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Join us on Patreon!
Links and References:
- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/02/260208233832.htm
- https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-may-actually-have-over-30-senses-scientists-say
- https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/how-many-senses-do-we-have/
- https://www.sensorytrust.org.uk/blog/how-many-senses-do-we-have
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/why-we-do-what-we-do--3419521/support.
Support our podcast: www.patreon.com/wwdwwdpodcast
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why we do what we do. Welcome
to Why we do what we do?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Mini.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
I am your host, Abraham, and I'm your host Shane.
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
that humans and non human animals do and also about
the ways that they sense and interact with the world.
Turns out, you heard me say, Mini, that's because this
is a short episode.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
We do one of these every Monday, or we release
one of these every Monday. At least.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
It's supposed to be just a quick dive into a
little topic. Then get out of there, let you get
on with your day. And if you're joining us for
the first time, then welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I hope you enjoy this, Mani. And if you're a.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Returning person, then welcome back. And I also hope that
you enjoy this Mani. And either way, if you would
like to support us, you can join us on Patreon,
leave us a rating and a review like subscribe, tell
a friend, and I'll talk more about those things the
ways that you can support us at the end of
our discussion. But we should probably jump into this so
that we can make this short.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Are you ready, Let's do it? Okay?
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Our senses as human beings are the variety of ways
that we navigate the world around us. Many, if not
most organisms have a wide array of ways that they
do this humans do as well.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Of course, Yeah, of course, So how many senses do
humans have? Who cares? That is to say, it doesn't
really matter, but we'll go over it anyway, because it's
a lot, and we'll enumerate them and briefly describe them,
because I think a lot of us kind of understand
it to be that we have five senses, but it's
a little bit more complicated than that.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
I would say, yeah, and I actually am not going
to list every sense because there's like not consensus about
this topic, but there's sort of proposed ideas. So I'll
get you'll get the idea when we get into it.
All right, Well, we're ready, we're going to dive in.
Like most things, when you're asking, like how many senses
we have, it depends on how you define it, how
(02:08):
you define what a sense is, and how you define
the boundary between one sense and another. Our senses are
a combination of a cacophony of inputs that work together,
and that's actually one of the things that makes this complicated.
Is a lot of our senses work because we have
other senses to help with their work, like our sense
of smell helps with our sense of taste and things
(02:30):
of that nature. But some scientists who have taken this
on as a project to have enumerated between twenty three
and thirty three so over thirty different senses that they
think that we have.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Interesting, Now, the idea of five senses is at least
as old as Aristotle or Aristotiley is I like to
read it. No, it doesn't work as well as so Creates,
who wrote about the five senses in three hundred and
fifty BCE. He also wrote about the five elements, which
we are also know to be incorrect. And in many
ancient traditions there's a legend about a quote sixth sense,
(03:06):
our ability to perceive ghosts. Of course, no, just kidding.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
It's actually the.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Idea that we have an unknown ability such as psychic perception.
But there are many more than six senses.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Yeah, So anyway, there's that the sixth sense the ghosts,
you get it, And that actually kind of was ideal,
like in some Eastern of philosophies, there's like some people
might have a sixth sense beyond the ones that we know,
and it's like sense X. It could be some unknown
sense we're not clear on. But the senses most people
(03:37):
are already familiar with the sort of five standard in
case you weren't sure, our site, hearing, smell, touch, and taste.
So those are the different ways that we can sense
the world. Those ways the additional senses identified by scientists are.
You could sort of broadly classify them as in addition
to those senses, like they're actually different and that are
(04:00):
their own thing, or you could even think of them
maybe as subcategories of these senses, where it's like, well
this is kind of a version of this, but with
the specific emphasis.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Sure, we'll get into that as we go.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Let's go ahead and start describing some of the senses
that you might not be thinking about that are an
important element of how we navigate the world in addition
to the five that we're used to.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Yeah, so the first one we're going to talk about
is propiception, and this is our sense of where our
limbs are in space. It's actually one of the most
comprehensive and unalterable senses that we have that we often
take for granted, but we depend on it for our
conscious activity, like all day every day, Like this is
one of the most, if not the most important sense
that we've got.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, if you just like lift your hand up to
grab something that's nearby without watching your hand the whole
entire time to make sure it goes where you think
you told it to go.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
That's essentially what that is. Like, we really really.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Depend on our ability to control our limbs and body
parts without necessarily having to orient to exactly where they
are the entire time, and that some people argue is
like one of our most foundational important senses. Now, I'm
not going to try and get into like a ranking
system here. I think that's very silly because arguably, without
many of our other senses, even appropriate receptions, not going
(05:20):
to feel that important. Sure, but it is one that
I think we do take for granted because how easy
it is to forget that. The fact that we do
know where we are putting our body parts and various
movements that we make is something that it is a sense,
and importantly, it is a sense that can be disrupted
(05:42):
and have people feel like they're really struggling if they
can't really tell where their limbs and hands and everything
are as they move them around without like even as
they monitor them, they might be a little bit like.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Hmm, I'm not sure you're going where I want you
to go sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Yeah, I mean think about driving like driving is like.
It requires you to be pretty adept at your appropriate
step to feed like sense and being able to pay
attention to stuff because you're moving your feet to maneuver
the pedals. Yeah, you're turning the radio on to play
the ads.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
All right, we're back. The car example is a really
good one for real.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
All right, So we just barely started listing the additional
sense as appropriateception where our limbs are in space around us.
There's also our sense of balance. This is kind of related,
but obviously it is a little bit different because this
is just our way of orienting our bodies in a
particular way. Our sense of balance is part of our
vestibular system, which when that gets messed up, and it
(06:44):
can for a variety of reasons, including being sick, you
can feel like you're like about to fall over because
you're having a hard time centering yourself wherever you are,
even sitting even laying down in some cases. And it
allows us to essentially unconsciously tense and manipulate our muscles
such that we keep ourselves in balance and whatever orientation
we find ourselves. And you actually might like if you're
(07:07):
even whatever position you're sitting in, now, imagine someone injected
you with a drug that made you instantly fall asleep.
How your body would sort of shift and move from
its current position. Please don't do this if you're doing
something dangerous, But like if you were just like sitting
there or lying there or something like, you can imagine
even lying down, there's a good chance that part of
your body will sort of slump or move to a
(07:28):
different position if all your muscles were to just relax
all of a sudden. And that's kind of the point,
is like we actually are holding tents different muscles a
lot of the time, and we kind of do that
and it keeps us so that we are oriented in
whatever position we're trying to be oriented. So it's actually
a more complex sense than you might think.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Yes, there's also inter reception inter reception. Inter reception which
is when we perceive changes in our bodies, such as
hunger and increases in heart rate, And.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
You got to imagine like that that is different than
some of the others they've described like you can't actually
tell when things are going on internally. That's like a
whole thing that you can sort of you can feel. Relatedly,
there's the sense of agency they describe, and somewhat separately,
but I feel like really closely related is our sense
of ownership over our body parts. And the reason they
(08:18):
kind of point these out is again related to things
like injury and illness, where particularly if people have strokes,
sometimes they'll lose the sense of agency, they'll lose the
sense that they're in control of their movements, they'll lose
their sense of ownership over like they're the ones who
are making these choices with their limbs. They'll feel that
they're no longer in control of their movements. It's not everybody,
(08:40):
but there are people who have had strokes who have
reported this experience, and that's you can imagine how scary
that would be. If you're like moving your arm and
you know that you wanted to move your arm, but
you're watching it looks like it's doing it on its own,
Like that would be a little a little frightening. So
that's what they describe as the sense of agency and
sense of ownership.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Yeah, for sure. There's also thermoception, which is our sense
of temperature, specifically heat, and there's debate whether it's the
same as our sense of cold or that if it's
a separate sense or whatever. I feel like, if there's thermoception,
then there's cryoception, right, Yeah, but is it not suception?
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I think it's no suception.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
No suception, Okay, so no Susception is our sense of pain,
and there are people born without the sense and it
is a dangerous condition. And the premise of the twenty
twenty five action thriller movie Nouvacane.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah, guy who can't feel pain?
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah, it's scary.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
I think we've talked about it before. But yeah, Like,
pain is a very instructive feedback mechanism. It stops you
from like accidentally killing yourself in a lot of ways.
There's like from eating things that are too hot for
if you're just breaking bones because you're so reckless, and
pain is not stopping you from doing those reckless things,
then you A lot of people do not live very
long if they lack this particular sense.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
There are also these feeling senses. They describe our sense
of gravity, which if you go into space is lost.
Our sense of like being able to feel wind and
maybe changes an air pressure, which you'll definitely notice if
you go up at an airplane very high, our sense
of motion. All of these are potentially considered separate things.
(10:11):
And some of you also argued that like our sense
of how heavy something is is its own sense. You
can like tell generally speaking, like something's got a lot
of weight to it, which has to do with essentially
how much strain it puts on your muscles when you're
trying to hold it, But like that could be considered
its own sense as well.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Yeah, and there are emotional senses such as sense of friendship,
sense of power, distress, companionship, love, and our sense of self.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I wonder if you'd put our sense of humor in there.
I would.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
I think it's important for us.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
That's right now a huge amount of the discussion from
these scientists, because I mean, if you even were to
list all the things we said, I don't think we're
even broadly approaching thirty yet.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Maybe we're halfway there.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
But a huge amount of the discussion that scientists have
been having when they're trying to list these gigantic of
senses is really organized around food. Essentially, they argue that, like, okay,
we've got these different taste senses, so like these are
kind of the subcategories, right though we can taste the
ones we most are familiar with, sweet, salty, bitter, and
(11:13):
mommy sour, Like those are kind of the tastes that
they talk about. But they also point out that, like,
we can tell the difference between the taste of a
raspberry and a strawberry, both of which are sweet, right,
So it's like, it's not just that we can tell sweet.
There's something else here that allows us to distinguish these
variations and flavor from one another, and that therefore, they
(11:35):
argue that we use a combination of our other senses vision, texture,
and smell obviously, and these distinct senses that help us
parse a wide variety of different flavors that we can
then taste. So they actually list a whole bunch of
different ways that, like, we can taste so many different
things because our sense of taste is actually a lot
(11:57):
more fine grained than this idea that there's just the
broad categories sweet, salty, bitter, umammy. They're like, actually it's
you know, if you can take two things that are
bitter at like bitter dark chocolate and bitter coffee. You
can tell the difference between those two flavors, right, And
so there's something else going on there in addition to
(12:17):
like it's not just a combination of those senses. Like,
we can make very fine distinctions in some of these
flavor profiles.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Absolutely, And there are a lot of different ways that
we interact with various simulus features of the world. We
could separate them into every stimulus feature that could be
detectively different from one another, from another stimulus feature that
if we wanted to, like, we could really separate it out,
if we really wanted to spend the time to do that.
But that's like, that's like a lifetime's worth of work,
and it comes down at least in part to the
utility of doing so. We are happy to accept that
(12:46):
we have more than just five sentences, and some of
them seem meaningfully separate, but we're not really sure that
we need to do need a category with every with
like a single example, for every feature of every stimulus
that we could possibly detect. That seems a little bit
ridict and maybe overkill.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, So that's essentially it. That's what there is I
know about senses. There's a lot more than five, and
I think that I'm a lot of the ones we listed,
I think make a lot of sense to include as
their own separate category. I don't know that we need
a different sense for every flavor that we could possibly
detect as being different, but a lot of these do
make a lot of sense to me. Let us know, like,
what are your thoughts? Tell us how many senses you
(13:23):
think we have? List any that we may have missed?
How many senses do you think we have? Shane at
least seven? Fair, very good. So anyway, that's what we
have to say about that. Is there anything that I
missed or you'd like to add before we wrap up?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
No, I think that covers it perfect well.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
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Speaker 2 (14:05):
Thank you so much to my team of people. Thank
you for recording with me today. Shane of course, thanks
for having me. Thank you all for listening.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
I'll go and wrap this up. This is Abraham and
this is Shane. Why We Do what we Do Mini
is out.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Smell you later.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWDWWD podcast dot com.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.
You're listening to Why we do what we do. Welcome
to Why we do what we do?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Mini.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
I am your host, Abraham, and I'm your host Shane.
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
that humans and non human animals do and also about
the ways that they sense and interact with the world.
Turns out, you heard me say, Mini, that's because this
is a short episode.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
We do one of these every Monday, or we release
one of these every Monday. At least.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
It's supposed to be just a quick dive into a
little topic. Then get out of there, let you get
on with your day. And if you're joining us for
the first time, then welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I hope you enjoy this, Mani. And if you're a.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Returning person, then welcome back. And I also hope that
you enjoy this Mani. And either way, if you would
like to support us, you can join us on Patreon,
leave us a rating and a review like subscribe, tell
a friend, and I'll talk more about those things the
ways that you can support us at the end of
our discussion. But we should probably jump into this so
that we can make this short.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Are you ready, Let's do it? Okay?
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Our senses as human beings are the variety of ways
that we navigate the world around us. Many, if not
most organisms have a wide array of ways that they
do this humans do as well.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Of course, Yeah, of course, So how many senses do
humans have? Who cares? That is to say, it doesn't
really matter, but we'll go over it anyway, because it's
a lot, and we'll enumerate them and briefly describe them,
because I think a lot of us kind of understand
it to be that we have five senses, but it's
a little bit more complicated than that.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
I would say, yeah, and I actually am not going
to list every sense because there's like not consensus about
this topic, but there's sort of proposed ideas. So I'll
get you'll get the idea when we get into it.
All right, Well, we're ready, we're going to dive in.
Like most things, when you're asking, like how many senses
we have, it depends on how you define it, how
(02:08):
you define what a sense is, and how you define
the boundary between one sense and another. Our senses are
a combination of a cacophony of inputs that work together,
and that's actually one of the things that makes this complicated.
Is a lot of our senses work because we have
other senses to help with their work, like our sense
of smell helps with our sense of taste and things
(02:30):
of that nature. But some scientists who have taken this
on as a project to have enumerated between twenty three
and thirty three so over thirty different senses that they
think that we have.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Interesting, Now, the idea of five senses is at least
as old as Aristotle or Aristotiley is I like to
read it. No, it doesn't work as well as so Creates,
who wrote about the five senses in three hundred and
fifty BCE. He also wrote about the five elements, which
we are also know to be incorrect. And in many
ancient traditions there's a legend about a quote sixth sense,
(03:06):
our ability to perceive ghosts. Of course, no, just kidding.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
It's actually the.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Idea that we have an unknown ability such as psychic perception.
But there are many more than six senses.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Yeah, So anyway, there's that the sixth sense the ghosts,
you get it, And that actually kind of was ideal,
like in some Eastern of philosophies, there's like some people
might have a sixth sense beyond the ones that we know,
and it's like sense X. It could be some unknown
sense we're not clear on. But the senses most people
(03:37):
are already familiar with the sort of five standard in
case you weren't sure, our site, hearing, smell, touch, and taste.
So those are the different ways that we can sense
the world. Those ways the additional senses identified by scientists are.
You could sort of broadly classify them as in addition
to those senses, like they're actually different and that are
(04:00):
their own thing, or you could even think of them
maybe as subcategories of these senses, where it's like, well
this is kind of a version of this, but with
the specific emphasis.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Sure, we'll get into that as we go.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Let's go ahead and start describing some of the senses
that you might not be thinking about that are an
important element of how we navigate the world in addition
to the five that we're used to.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Yeah, so the first one we're going to talk about
is propiception, and this is our sense of where our
limbs are in space. It's actually one of the most
comprehensive and unalterable senses that we have that we often
take for granted, but we depend on it for our
conscious activity, like all day every day, Like this is
one of the most, if not the most important sense
that we've got.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, if you just like lift your hand up to
grab something that's nearby without watching your hand the whole
entire time to make sure it goes where you think
you told it to go.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
That's essentially what that is. Like, we really really.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Depend on our ability to control our limbs and body
parts without necessarily having to orient to exactly where they
are the entire time, and that some people argue is
like one of our most foundational important senses. Now, I'm
not going to try and get into like a ranking
system here. I think that's very silly because arguably, without
many of our other senses, even appropriate receptions, not going
(05:20):
to feel that important. Sure, but it is one that
I think we do take for granted because how easy
it is to forget that. The fact that we do
know where we are putting our body parts and various
movements that we make is something that it is a sense,
and importantly, it is a sense that can be disrupted
(05:42):
and have people feel like they're really struggling if they
can't really tell where their limbs and hands and everything
are as they move them around without like even as
they monitor them, they might be a little bit like.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Hmm, I'm not sure you're going where I want you
to go sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Yeah, I mean think about driving like driving is like.
It requires you to be pretty adept at your appropriate
step to feed like sense and being able to pay
attention to stuff because you're moving your feet to maneuver
the pedals. Yeah, you're turning the radio on to play
the ads.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
All right, we're back. The car example is a really
good one for real.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
All right, So we just barely started listing the additional
sense as appropriateception where our limbs are in space around us.
There's also our sense of balance. This is kind of related,
but obviously it is a little bit different because this
is just our way of orienting our bodies in a
particular way. Our sense of balance is part of our
vestibular system, which when that gets messed up, and it
(06:44):
can for a variety of reasons, including being sick, you
can feel like you're like about to fall over because
you're having a hard time centering yourself wherever you are,
even sitting even laying down in some cases. And it
allows us to essentially unconsciously tense and manipulate our muscles
such that we keep ourselves in balance and whatever orientation
we find ourselves. And you actually might like if you're
(07:07):
even whatever position you're sitting in, now, imagine someone injected
you with a drug that made you instantly fall asleep.
How your body would sort of shift and move from
its current position. Please don't do this if you're doing
something dangerous, But like if you were just like sitting
there or lying there or something like, you can imagine
even lying down, there's a good chance that part of
your body will sort of slump or move to a
(07:28):
different position if all your muscles were to just relax
all of a sudden. And that's kind of the point,
is like we actually are holding tents different muscles a
lot of the time, and we kind of do that
and it keeps us so that we are oriented in
whatever position we're trying to be oriented. So it's actually
a more complex sense than you might think.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Yes, there's also inter reception inter reception. Inter reception which
is when we perceive changes in our bodies, such as
hunger and increases in heart rate, And.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
You got to imagine like that that is different than
some of the others they've described like you can't actually
tell when things are going on internally. That's like a
whole thing that you can sort of you can feel. Relatedly,
there's the sense of agency they describe, and somewhat separately,
but I feel like really closely related is our sense
of ownership over our body parts. And the reason they
(08:18):
kind of point these out is again related to things
like injury and illness, where particularly if people have strokes,
sometimes they'll lose the sense of agency, they'll lose the
sense that they're in control of their movements, they'll lose
their sense of ownership over like they're the ones who
are making these choices with their limbs. They'll feel that
they're no longer in control of their movements. It's not everybody,
(08:40):
but there are people who have had strokes who have
reported this experience, and that's you can imagine how scary
that would be. If you're like moving your arm and
you know that you wanted to move your arm, but
you're watching it looks like it's doing it on its own,
Like that would be a little a little frightening. So
that's what they describe as the sense of agency and
sense of ownership.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Yeah, for sure. There's also thermoception, which is our sense
of temperature, specifically heat, and there's debate whether it's the
same as our sense of cold or that if it's
a separate sense or whatever. I feel like, if there's thermoception,
then there's cryoception, right, Yeah, but is it not suception?
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I think it's no suception.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
No suception, Okay, so no Susception is our sense of pain,
and there are people born without the sense and it
is a dangerous condition. And the premise of the twenty
twenty five action thriller movie Nouvacane.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah, guy who can't feel pain?
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah, it's scary.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
I think we've talked about it before. But yeah, Like,
pain is a very instructive feedback mechanism. It stops you
from like accidentally killing yourself in a lot of ways.
There's like from eating things that are too hot for
if you're just breaking bones because you're so reckless, and
pain is not stopping you from doing those reckless things,
then you A lot of people do not live very
long if they lack this particular sense.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
There are also these feeling senses. They describe our sense
of gravity, which if you go into space is lost.
Our sense of like being able to feel wind and
maybe changes an air pressure, which you'll definitely notice if
you go up at an airplane very high, our sense
of motion. All of these are potentially considered separate things.
(10:11):
And some of you also argued that like our sense
of how heavy something is is its own sense. You
can like tell generally speaking, like something's got a lot
of weight to it, which has to do with essentially
how much strain it puts on your muscles when you're
trying to hold it, But like that could be considered
its own sense as well.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Yeah, and there are emotional senses such as sense of friendship,
sense of power, distress, companionship, love, and our sense of self.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I wonder if you'd put our sense of humor in there.
I would.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
I think it's important for us.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
That's right now a huge amount of the discussion from
these scientists, because I mean, if you even were to
list all the things we said, I don't think we're
even broadly approaching thirty yet.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Maybe we're halfway there.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
But a huge amount of the discussion that scientists have
been having when they're trying to list these gigantic of
senses is really organized around food. Essentially, they argue that, like, okay,
we've got these different taste senses, so like these are
kind of the subcategories, right though we can taste the
ones we most are familiar with, sweet, salty, bitter, and
(11:13):
mommy sour, Like those are kind of the tastes that
they talk about. But they also point out that, like,
we can tell the difference between the taste of a
raspberry and a strawberry, both of which are sweet, right,
So it's like, it's not just that we can tell sweet.
There's something else here that allows us to distinguish these
variations and flavor from one another, and that therefore, they
(11:35):
argue that we use a combination of our other senses vision, texture,
and smell obviously, and these distinct senses that help us
parse a wide variety of different flavors that we can
then taste. So they actually list a whole bunch of
different ways that, like, we can taste so many different
things because our sense of taste is actually a lot
(11:57):
more fine grained than this idea that there's just the
broad categories sweet, salty, bitter, umammy. They're like, actually it's
you know, if you can take two things that are
bitter at like bitter dark chocolate and bitter coffee. You
can tell the difference between those two flavors, right, And
so there's something else going on there in addition to
(12:17):
like it's not just a combination of those senses. Like,
we can make very fine distinctions in some of these
flavor profiles.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Absolutely, And there are a lot of different ways that
we interact with various simulus features of the world. We
could separate them into every stimulus feature that could be
detectively different from one another, from another stimulus feature that
if we wanted to, like, we could really separate it out,
if we really wanted to spend the time to do that.
But that's like, that's like a lifetime's worth of work,
and it comes down at least in part to the
utility of doing so. We are happy to accept that
(12:46):
we have more than just five sentences, and some of
them seem meaningfully separate, but we're not really sure that
we need to do need a category with every with
like a single example, for every feature of every stimulus
that we could possibly detect. That seems a little bit
ridict and maybe overkill.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, So that's essentially it. That's what there is I
know about senses. There's a lot more than five, and
I think that I'm a lot of the ones we listed,
I think make a lot of sense to include as
their own separate category. I don't know that we need
a different sense for every flavor that we could possibly
detect as being different, but a lot of these do
make a lot of sense to me. Let us know, like,
what are your thoughts? Tell us how many senses you
(13:23):
think we have? List any that we may have missed?
How many senses do you think we have? Shane at
least seven? Fair, very good. So anyway, that's what we
have to say about that. Is there anything that I
missed or you'd like to add before we wrap up?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
No, I think that covers it perfect well.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
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Speaker 2 (13:46):
All of those things are very important.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
They help the algorithm reach more people, and we do
appreciate anything you're willing to do. If you join us
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list of supporters at the end of our full length discussion.
As a shout out and appreciation to the people who
have made that plunge.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Thank you so much to my team of people. Thank
you for recording with me today. Shane of course, thanks
for having me. Thank you all for listening.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
I'll go and wrap this up. This is Abraham and
this is Shane. Why We Do what we Do Mini
is out.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Smell you later.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWDWWD podcast dot com.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.
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