planes of existence

[Logician]

i hope i can articulate myself clearly, I'm very tiered right now as the large social gathering of thanksgiving drained much of my energy. but i just had a thought and decided it was worth posting for discussion on these forums.

It may seem obvious to you that if two consciousnesses exist that they must be able to interact, however this isn't true. If i am sitting next to you, i can only interact with your consciousness through my body's senses of hearing, seeing, and feeling. If i lost these abilities our consciousnesses could no longer interact in any real way.

It is commonly accepted that there are most likely senses our body's or minds do not possess. It is also commonly accepted that there is most likely life aside from humans and the plants and animals we know of. If these beings exist, it is very possible that they possess senses we do not, and lack senses we have. Because of this, it is possible that alien life exists right next to us ( unless direction doesn't maintain relativity in other planes of existence, which i will get to ) and we simply have no way to interact with it.

now, earlier i neglected to mention smell or taste. This is because i consider these senses very secondary to the other three. if i lost the primary 3 i couldn't interact with you in a meaningful way, however i could still smell you, thus haveing some rudimentary connection to your existence.

It is believed by most that we have 5 senses, in truth we have 7. One of the other 2 is the ability to sense the position of your appendages even if you cannot see or feel them. This is what i would call a shadow sense, something that affects us practically none at all, but still exists. It makes sense that there may be other shadow senses that have yet to be discovered which we barely are capable of using, but still have.

Now lets say that one of these "other" beings who exist with us but with whom we cannot interact with due to the limits of our senses, posses as a primary function one of the senses that is a "shadow" function to us. this could explain nearly ever supernatural event that has ever occurred. think about it, there are certain forms of light that are infinitely more powerful than others, say a sun compared to being able to see a couch because of the light reflecting off of it. We may not be able to "see the couches" but we may be able to see say "a explosion" with our shadow of the sense which can "see the couch"

It could even explain inexplicable feelings, such as ones of dread, that occur without reason from time to time... we may not be able to "feel the chair beneath us" but perhaps we can just sense "feeling the shredding of every individual nerve"

DUE to replies wanting me to clarify the last part... this is a copy/paste from a later post of mine:

think of a being that has sight as a shadow sense. they can almost feel the presence of it in a way similar to us almost being able to feel "someone watching us". They cannot "see" a couch by the light reflection off it, because their version of sight is far inferior to our own. but they sense these random blotches of odd radiant energy (a star)

for those of you who don't understand how sight works or are still confused, let me expand my explanation further; you see the light waves reflecting off a object, the object doesn't actually emit visible light. A explosion or certain chemical reactions however, emit light in and of themselves, this is the distinction i am trying to make. a charismatic person generates social energy, a normal person just reflects/works with it.

once again i hope i have articulated myself well, and i hope that even if i didn't, you will get the base of the idea and be able to run with it from there.

 

[Darby]

Re: planes of existance

It is believed by most that we have 5 senses, in truth we have 7. One of the other 2 is the ability to sense the position of your appendages even if you cannot see or feel them. This is what i would call a shadow sense, something that affects us practically none at all, but still exists. It makes sense that there may be other shadow senses that have yet to be discovered which we barely are capable of using, but still have.

Now lets say that one of these "other" beings who exist with us but with whom we cannot interact with due to the limits of our senses, posses as a primary function one of the senses that is a "shadow" function to us. this could explain nearly ever supernatural event that has ever occurred. think about it, there are certain forms of light that are infinitely more powerful than others, say a sun compared to being able to see a couch because of the light reflecting off of it. We may not be able to "see the couches" but we may be able to see say "a explosion" with our shadow of the sense which can "see the couch"

I have two things to ask, 1) what would be the second "shadow sense," other than the feeling of one's limbs. and 2) could you clarify that last paragraph I quoted, I got just about everything, until the end, and although I think I understood, it would be nice to be sure about the intended idea.

 

[Logician]

Re: planes of existance

perhaps we can sense the charismatic auras of people, and people who claim to be able to do this just have a better sense of this than most and not just be good at judging people.

basically, perhaps a certain type of emotion is a shadow sense, and that if enough input is applied to this sense it could effect us in unexplainable ways

 

[Dormouse]

Re: planes of existance

I agree, please clarify the last paragraph, I was with you until then.

And I agree with the basic idea of this: We're very limited by our senses, there are many things that could escape our notice simply because we lack the ability to interact with them in a meaninful manner.
It brings to mind dark matter, and how we didn't know of it until recently because it doesn't interact with photons.

 

[Da Blob]

Re: planes of existance

Sounds like you are talking about Spirits. Because of the experiences of my life I am a firm believer in a spiritual dimension and spiritual beings. As humans, we can not know, what we can not 'know'. There is an ambiguity in that statement concerning a couple 'planes' of ignorance.
However, I really think that there are very good reasons to believe that there are more senses than what is commonly known. It is like visual acuity in a way. Everyone has slightly different 'visions'. It is a fallacy to think that 20/20 vision is perfect vision. It is perfect only for a world that depends on everyone being able to focus on words on a piece of paper or computer screen. However, in the real world, it was undoubtedly quite profitable for a group for everyone to be able to see a little differently. Near-sighted people could see one type of threat, while far-sighted people could see a different type of threat and so the group could almost be seen as a single organism with a lot of different eyes.
I think that there is an entire spectrum of hidden abilities that mirror this spectrum of visual abilities. I think we recognize this and have coined the term, Intuitions, to describe these internal senses that might just involve some type of 'sensory' organelle in the brain, itself.

This is speculation to a certain degree, but I know that my Intuition is a very real type of input and I wonder about others experience with their own Intuition. I know, and perhaps it is odd in a way, that the MBTI has a scale that has Sensors on one end and Intuitives at the other end - but what if Intuition is just a different type of Sensory Input?

I would be curious as to other INTPians stories about their own use of Intuition or stories about how their Intuitive abilities have manifested ....

 

[Jaico]

Re: planes of existance

I do think you're onto something there, Logician, when you talk about human senses not being able to fully understand the world around us; we could very well be missing out on a whole lot of other things that we just can't sense - it could be something spiritual, or it could be something that could be explained through the laws of physics, but right now, I think that some phenomenon are simply due to unconscious senses/senses that we're not finely attuned to...

But, er, the ability to sense where your appendages are in relation to your body is called proprioception...however, your point still stands.

 

[Logician]

Re: planes of existance

think of a being that has sight as a shadow sense. they can almost feel the presence of it in a way similar to us almost being able to feel "someone watching us". They cannot "see" a couch by the light reflection off it, because their version of sight is far inferior to our own. but they sense these random blotches of odd radiant energy (a star)

@Da Blob yes it could mean something to do with spirits, but what i was going for is just another sentient species much like ourselves... only with a different set of senses.

@Jaico, thank you for naming it, i couldn't remember. i realize that it isnt called a "shadow sense" im just calling it that myself because it is a sense that we barely have/use.

 

[Darby]

Re: planes of existance

I would like to thank Logician for the clarification, and it was for the most part what I had thought you meant.

and in response to Da Blob as far as intuition goes, I just tend to have a sense of things, with friends, I seem to be a good judge of character, all of my friends are honest(as far as I know), and generally "good" people. Even those who I have had to remove myself from, were generally people who had no intention of hurting anyone but did so by mistake(or maybe I just tell myself that)

 

[Da Blob]

Re: planes of existance

I would like to thank Logician for the clarification, and it was for the most part what I had thought you meant.

and in response to Da Blob as far as intuition goes, I just tend to have a sense of things, with friends, I seem to be a good judge of character, all of my friends are honest(as far as I know), and generally "good" people. Even those who I have had to remove myself from, were generally people who had no intention of hurting anyone but did so by mistake(or maybe I just tell myself that)

Cool, that may have opened up the conversation at bit. Howard Gardner has proposed that there are eight different types of Intelligence. It sounds like you believe that you can 'sense' things about the people around you - that would corresponded to either Interpersonal Intelligence or Emotional Intelligence. You may be correct, it may be an additional sense and not an entire intelligence. Maybe there are 8 different types of Intuitions/senses. That kind of ties in with what Logician was getting at perhaps. What if there was an entire species of "empaths' or another species that took Gardner's Intelligences to the extreme...?

For that matter maybe there actually are Sasquatches/Big foot type species that we can only see temporarily while they are molting or vulnerable in some other way. It would make sense (no pun intended) that any other sentient species on this planet would be able to hide from us, or perhaps simply be hiddden by our relative lack of senses...(?)

 

[nickgray]

Well, to be honest I'd consider such a thing only if I were under some heavy psychedelics or under similar affect. This is absolutely ridiculous.

 

[Darby]

Since noone else seems to have anything to say, I think intuition is just (or at least this is how I have seen it so far), as an unconscious processing of information, much like meeting someone for the first time, just when they are walking up, you are already making assumptions about how they will act etc. throughout the whole of the conversation/relationship. Now you may say the ability to make accurate predictions comes from another sensory input, or just an abundance of previous information/experiences with people who are similar to the newly met person(mentioned above).

I personally think that my ability to judge character comes from meeting many new people, not necessarily from an extra "shadow sense" but I may be completely mistaken

 

[Agent Intellect]

Intuition is probably a good representation of a 'sense'. This is why some things are intuitive and others are counter-intuitive. We sense things on what we have come to call a 'classical' scale, because just like with color and sound, there is only a range of things we can perceive that seem 'intuitive'.

For one thing, dimensions themselves. It's possible we do live in an n-dimensional existence, but 3 space and 1 time are the only ones within our intuitive range (similar to ROYGBIV being the range of color we can see). Quantum mechanics only seems counter-intuitive to us, and I'm sure there are things on the incredibly large scale (perhaps even the true properties of dark energy/matter/flow) seem counter-intuitive as well.

I often wonder how much the shape of our brain effects the way we experience reality. Stereochemistry is the part of chemistry studying the spatial arrangements of atoms in in molecules, which is incredibly important for the function of a molecule (some isomers will have a single functional group reversed and it will behave completely differently), and it seem logical that something as complex as the brain is affected by its spatial arrangement - sort of the same way our eyes can be near/far sighted based on their shape.

 

[Nicholas A. A. E.]

There's not just "7 senses"... there's no clear definition of sense, so there can be as many as you like - temperature and pain come to mind. There's probably a load of them listed on Wikipedia. Unless there's some consensus I don't know about.

And I wouldn't disparage the sense of one's body in relation to itself. I think it's called kinesthesia, and I'm pretty sure it's super important for coordination. I doubt we'd be able to do anything nearly as complicated as walking, without it.

 

[Artifice Orisit]

I'm sceptical of the specific "shadow senses" Logician has mentioned but the general idea he's getting at is fascinating.

Though I find it difficult to believe there's invisible yeti running around I have been wondering about how "real" thoughts are and if or not there's an entire ecology of "mind creatures" that exist, if only in an entirely subjective way.
A ghost would be an example of one such creature which can be "seen" despite it's absence in the physical world, this being because it's perceived directly by the mind, the eyes view nothing, but that matters little when the mind already perceives it.

Of course just because one perceives a ghost to be the "soul" of a deceased person doesn’t necessarily mean that it is, perhaps this is merely what the creature wants to be perceived as, which would make sense considering how ghosts can be anything from floating balls of light to nonliving objects like ships/trains or even floating animate bundles of hair and other truly nonsensical stuff.

But if these entities exist (subjectively) why would they want to be perceived?
And how else or indeed is there a limit to their ability to affect our minds?
Scary thought

 

[Logician]

perhaps i was wrong to use kinesthesia for an example of a "shadow sense". better would be something like; when you see a person of great charisma walk into the room, you can feel the presence of his personality. However if a person of little character walks into the room (say, a typical society conformist) you feel nothing. You can detect the greater input to your "sense of personality" just as someone with sight as a shadow sense could detect a sun. but you cannot sense the personality of the average person, just like someone with sight as a shadow sense cannot see things that only reflect light

for those of you who don't understand how sight works or are still confused, let me expand my explanation further; you see the light waves reflecting off a object, the object doesn't actually emit visible light. A explosion or certain chemical reactions however, emit light in and of themselves, this is the distinction i am trying to make. a charismatic person generates social energy, a normal person just reflects/works with it.


@cognisant yes scary thought, and precisely what i meant to imply when i said " but perhaps we can just sense "feeling the shredding of every individual nerve" , just put into "feeling" form as to make more sense (although i seem to not have succeeded in that. . .)


http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EldritchAbomination

 

[warryer]

But if these entities exist (subjectively) why would they want to be perceived?

but perhaps we can just sense "feeling the shredding of every individual nerve" , just put into "feeling" form as to make more sense (although i seem to not have succeeded in that. . .)

I had an experience like this. There was such a feeling of dread and utter destruction of my very being that came with it. I am sure that I wasn't meant to be aware of this entity but I was.

This was not something that I tried to force. I don't even know if that would be possible. I was simply thinking and happened to stumble onto it. I can't really describe it but, it was communicating (without words and I understood the full meaning) and using this feeling of destruction as leverage against me.

Perhaps you are on to something Logician. Think of this what you will, I know what I experienced.

 

[Da Blob]

Well, just to verify (validate?) others experiences I am quite adept at the "hair-on-the back-the-neck-rises, goose-pimpled, I-am-being-watched, I-am-not-alone" sensation (sense?).
However, I do think that it is important to note that there is a tendency to put a "face' on an experience - just because we think we have encountered a spirit or shadow entity does not mean we actually have - we are just seeking to categorize an "unclassified experience"...

 

[Darby]

I am really enjoying this discussion, my INTJ friend and I were arguing about this the other day. I said that I believe it is wholly possible to sense a presence when walking in a room, and he said that these perceptions are purely assumptions we make based off the five senses(I guess it's 7 now).

he then said that If you were to put a blindfold on and plugged your ears, you would have no sense of a presence, and I admittedly had no good arguement against this since all my experiences as far as I can remember have had my eyes and ears in use

He then gloated at me about being able to out think me....now i must crush him mercilessly!

 

[Logician]

although several people now have said "your on to something logician" i don't believe this topic can progress in discussion. If im right, then by the very rules i stated, we could never interact with these others and could do nothing to affect any slight, coincidental effect they have on us or vice versa.

And if im wrong there realy isnt much to say either, it would be like arguing with a solipsist. Once i say that your senses are corrupt or inadequate no argument you create can really mean anything, as you are only what my senses tell me you are, and reality is only what your senses tell you it is.

So as profound as the idea may be, it isn't discussable far beyond "i agree" and "i disagree".

oh well... pity

 

[Darby]

although several people now have said "your on to something logician" i don't believe this topic can progress in discussion. If im right, then by the very rules i stated, we could never interact with these others and could do nothing to affect any slight, coincidental effect they have on us or vice versa.

And if im wrong there realy isnt much to say either, it would be like arguing with a solipsist. Once i say that your senses are corrupt or inadequate no argument you create can really mean anything, as you are only what my senses tell me you are, and reality is only what your senses tell you it is.

So as profound as the idea may be, it isn't discussable far beyond "i agree" and "i disagree".

oh well... pity

it would help if we were willing to let people die through natural selection again(it seems to me that we have become too scared of death, we feel the need to stop it in some way), then maybe the more charsma sensing people(assuming sensing charisma was useful), would give birth to better charisma sensing people, till maybe it became somewhat of a real sense

EDIT:I'm not sure what that had to do with the quote, but i felt it had some vague link im not quite conscious of

 

[Da Blob]

it would help if we were willing to let people die through natural selection again(it seems to me that we have become too scared of death, we feel the need to stop it in some way), then maybe the more charsma sensing people(assuming sensing charisma was useful), would give birth to better charisma sensing people, till maybe it became somewhat of a real sense

EDIT:I'm not sure what that had to do with the quote, but i felt it had some vague link im not quite conscious of

Bah Humbug, I am not that ambitious. I would just like to see a reversal of the current relationship between birth rate and IQ/giftedness. As it stands High birthrate > low IQ / High IQ >low birth rate...

So if evolution is correct we are evolving into a species with fewer intelligent people...

 

[Nicholas A. A. E.]

it would help if we were willing to let people die through natural selection again(it seems to me that we have become too scared of death, we feel the need to stop it in some way)

Seems to me you've got a misunderstanding of natural selection. The whole point of natural selection is that behaviors (or conditions leading to behaviors) that promote the propagation of themselves will propagate. In other words, people have always been scared of death. That's why we survived.

 

[Agent Intellect]

In terms of pure survival, lower intelligence may be advantageous to our species. Higher intelligence usually causes people to be outsiders and individuals, which is not a good survival trait in our species.

 

[Darby]

Seems to me you've got a misunderstanding of natural selection. The whole point of natural selection is that behaviors (or conditions leading to behaviors) that promote the propagation of themselves will propagate. In other words, people have always been scared of death. That's why we survived.

I meant it not on an individual note, but our fear of letting others die

 

[Nicholas A. A. E.]

It seems to me that this is an evolutionarily favourable behaviour as well.