Personal Narrative: The Sixth Sense

one of the five natural powers (touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing) through which you receive information about the world around you

The human brain is capable of perceiving and interpreting information or stimuli received through the sense organs (i.e., eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin) (Weiten, 1998). This ability to perceive and interpret stimulus allows the human being to make meaningful sense of the world and environment around them. However, even as the human being is able to perceive and interpret stimuli information through all sense organs, stimuli is most often or primarily interpreted using the visual (eyes) and auditory (ears) sense organs (Anderson, 2009). However, for the purpose of this paper, the visual information process will be examined.

There are six senses in total and these are known as languages of the mind, or ‘modalities’. These are Sight, hearing, feeling, smell and taste, although the last two can be put into the ‘feeling’ category. We use all of our senses in a particular situation but all of us will have a favourite which we are more comfortable with and are likely to fall back on in times of crisis. (Chrysalis pg. 4)

On July 17, 1981 at approximately 7:05 pm, the two suspended walkways of the Kansas City Hyatt atrium collapsed. The collapse killed 113 people and seriously injured another 186. It occurred during a dance when two of the three walkways collapsed. The remaining walkway on the 3rd floor was independently suspended from the atrium whereas the 2nd floor walkway was suspended from the 4th floor walkway which itself was suspended from framing in the atrium roof.

Senses can manipulate your awareness of reality. As stated in Incognito, "So the first lesson about trusting your senses is: don't. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it's true, that doesn't mean it is true. " For example, anosognosia known, as a “lack of insight” is a disease that misleads people into thinking there is no problems with them.

We often perceive sight as our immediate and best tool for understanding the world around us, when in fact, it is not. There are other methods of understanding that go beyond our senses, methods that most people are unable to comprehend. In his short story “Cathedral”, Raymond Carver uses point of view to suggest that there are ways to perceive and understand something beyond just seeing it. In fact, Carver suggests not only that sight is only the most basic level of understanding, but also that true understanding comes from a feeling that is not one of any our five senses.

Senses are society's main boundaries and as we grow old we understand and try to cope with the life we carry.

Human beings have the ability to create their own individual worlds through imagination. However, the imagination is limited because of the constant use of technology and the reliance on vision. The technological culture has separated humans from the actual world and their senses; much like vision has done. In the essay “The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses”, Juhani Pallasmaa focuses on the exploration of the senses and how they interact with one another. We also see his discussion on how vision can affect the human experience. The more visually capable we are, the more we begin to lose our sense of imagination. Similarly in the essay

I was just an ordinary boy named Roger walking down the street. I noticed a woman with a HUGE pocketbook. She was a huge lady and I figured that I should take it. I don’t think that she would care. So I went up to the huge lady and snatched her pocketbook. But the thing is it was so heavy that it made me fall to the ground.

hold her back, she still lives her life and does what is best for Pearl. Hester becomes sought after

In my Philosophy class, we are learning about Descartes. Descartes is a man of reasoning, and he thinks senses are unreliable. It is very interesting to acknowledge

Biologists have long realized that the noses of most vertebrates actually contain two sensory channels. The first is the familiar olfactory system, which humans possess. The second channel is the vomeronasal complex, a system that has its own separate organs, nerves, and connecting structures in the brain. The function of the vomeronasal system is the detection of pheromones, chemical messengers that carry information between individuals of the same species. It was widely believed (as I found in some of the older texts I examined) that humans had long ago discarded this sensory system

We all learn that we have only five senses, but when we grow up and start to understand the real word and think outside the box, we start questioning our second