While thinking about the possibilty of some people having access to more than just the 'normal' five senses, I thought of something.

Don't we all have a sixth sense? The one that governs our balance, sence of direction, and inclination? The one that can cause motion sickness if disrupted in certain ways?

Couldn't the (usually) subconsious information provided by the inner ear be considered a sixth sense? It doesn't really fit into the classification of the common five - certainly not taste, hearing, smell, or sight.

I guess it could be argued that it falls under touch, as the sense is translated through pressure sensors lining the inner ear. But it doesn't "feel" by any definition of the word. It's not like you have a tactile response to most of the information provided- lying down doesn't promote a tickling sensation in the ear, for instance.

What do you guys think? where should the information given to us by the inner ear be classified?

i think sense would be defined by most people as "a sense that we have contious control over to interpret our enviroment"

I wouldn't call this a sixth sense. While sixth sense could be any sense that has yet to be discovered, the sixth sense in the traditional terminology is ued to describe areas such as telepathy (mind reading), tele-/psycho-kinesis (moving objects with ones mind) and the general 'unexplainable'. I think for the most part it is quite possible that we all do have a degree of telepathy. Has anyone ever been thinking about a person just when a text or phone call or encounter with that person occurs?? It could be argued that if one thinks about that person frequently then this is merely just coincidence which is being highlighted on the particular occasion because the person in question has entered the equation.

On a side note I really wish I had telekinetic powers! *grins satanically* lol

thank you both for the replies.

i think sense would be defined by most people as "a sense that we have contious control over to interpret our enviroment"
ok, I can see this- you can close your eyes, turn your head, move your hands- all allowing you to consciously improve or degrade your persection of an object through your senses. The sense of balance does't really allow you to improve the degree to which you can feel it by any simple physical means.

In addition, a friend of mine mentioned that he would put the feeling of hunger into the same catagory as the sense of balance- something that you know but don't have direct perseption of. He also thought that they should both go under 'touch', similar to to how you "can feel cold air coming across your skin, but you dont need to touch it to know its there"

I think this falls more into the category of survival instinct.

We can do without any of our senses, but without our survival instincts (reflex, awareness etc)....leaves us pretty vulnerable.

I remember learning about numbers of senses, something like 10 or more. The one you were talking about river-wind, in the ear, that regulates balance was one of them. Along with knowing where your limbs are in space around you (proprieration? is that what it's called?) If I got time, I'll dig this up and list some of the others. It's kind of interesting.

I think a sense should be defined as any part of us that gives us information about our environment. Anything to do with sensing the human body is part of the environment too.

cool Xenu, thanks!

Yup, also we have meatal particles in our heads. There is a theory, and experiments have been done by putting them in random places, that whales use this "sense" to know the difference between North and South.
Humans just aren't so developed in that area.
Also imagine to an animal thats evolved extremely good senses such as hearing and touch, but it's only contact with the electro-magnetic world is with weak insignificant light-dark receptors. In it's whole life it never has a use for these receptors, and only feels strange, unexplicible phenonema now and then when exposed to bright light. Could that be considered a sense?

The magnetic iron molecules in our brains... tiny tiny tiny... would probably not be considered a sense, because humans have evolved past pure instinct, and that was how the iron worked.

My past teachers have regarded the equilibrium in our ears as, either an extension of the "touch" sense, or a sixth sense. But human literature(science and all else) regards humans as having six senses, so they probably feel it would be too early to deem it a true sense, without more testing.

I think that a sense could be better defined as: "something that takes in information from the outside world and transmits it to our brain." I think you will agree that this definition works for all five of the currently recognized senses:
sight: information from photons of light waves
hearing: information from sound waves
touch: chemical signals from nerves
taste: chemoreceptors on the tastebuds
smell: chemoreceptors within the nasal cavity

I think that without any of the senses, one would have no awareness of the outside world at all (even Helen Keller had touch, smell, and taste). The question then is: If I had none of these five senses, would my sense of balance and direction be enough to give me awareness of the outside world?

Perhaps one could claim that this internal "sense" recieves information from gravity, or even the earth's magnetic field. In this case, then I would agree that it could be considered a sense.

However, one may also argue that this "sense" is merely a complicated mechanism within the brain which uses the information from the other five senses to create a subconsious idea of balance and direction. Example: Lobsters and other crustaceans have an internal structure called a statolith which consists of a small piece of material(I believe it is sand) resting on a bunch of tiny hairs. When the lobster turns upside down, the sand touches these hairs and tells the brain that it must turn the animal over. I would claim that this is merely an adaptation of the sense of touch.

So, does our sense of balance and direction merely consist of an adaptation of other senses or is it able to stand on its own? I have no clue.