What We Do

Instead of examining what people say or taking straw polls of how many senses acquaintances and friends are willing to countenance, John O’Dea seeks a robust psychological explanation for the prevalence of the count of five. His proposal is that when we sense in one of the five modalities, we know what we are doing. As O’Dea first characterises it:

Given that there are different sense organs involved, qualitative character really does make a difference to our intuitions about sense modality. I think there is a reason that our intuitions are sensitive to this combination in particular; that there is a specific aspect of our experience which captures the combination—what I will call, for want of a better name, the feeling of using a sense organ,27

and then adds that “I might equally have used the term ‘awareness’ rather then [sic] ‘feeling’. Part of a perceptual experience is anawarenessof the sense organ being used”.28 _{It is easy to agree that an awareness of using the eyes}

may often, or even routinely, be part of the experience of seeing something. However, what this means for counting the senses must be thought through carefully.

An awareness of the organ involved—be it inferential, as when we close our eyes, or more immediate, as when we are aware of muscular activity and strain in trying to focus on or locate a visible feature—is neither necessary nor sufficient to experience colours as such, and bringing in an awareness of what we are doing, with whatever part of the body is involved, surely cannot turn colours into sounds or sensations of warmth into the smell of roses.

Following O’Dea’s explanations through, it becomes apparent that what he has in mind has nothing to do with such magical transformations initiated by our awareness, and what he takes as truly relevant is the proprioceptive content of the experience. He adopts Gibson’s idiosyncratic definition of pro- prioception, which is not the usual awareness of bodily states (such as positions and movements of limbs) but the awareness of what we are doing with parts of our body.29 _{This is usually spoken of as voluntary motion or effort and it is}

evidently closely linked to agency. Still, whatever technical term might apply, the substantive claim is that:

27_{O’Dea (2010), emphasis original.} 28_{O’Dea (2010), emphasis original.} 29_{See page 64 above.}

There are a number of reasons for thinking that perceptual experi- ences really do include an awareness of sense organ as part of their phenomenology, and that this grounds our intuitions about sense modality, which in turn explains why there are traditionally only five senses.30

Unfortunately this is muddled. It is true that many perceptual experiences have a rich phenomenology but the use of ‘sense organ’ is too loose here. Apart from drawing on Gibson’s ideas, O’Dea also credits Armstrong with characterising a sense organ as “a portion of the body which we [. . . ] move at will with the object of perceiving what is going on in [. . . ] our environment”.31 This characterisation, taken perhaps as a definition, is faulty.

The chief mistake is mixing up sense organs with how we happen to, mainly,

orient themin order to perceive the objects of our interest. Although the em- pirical evidence affirms loudly, as No¨e explains at length,32 _{that sensorimotor}

skills are vital in the acquisition of many kinds of perceptions, it is essential to be clear that this is often a working together of sensory and motor systems which are separable and join up primarily in the pursuit of specific objects. They need not do so; it is possible to see without moving anything. It all depends on what we mean by ‘seeing’. Colours are available without any of the movements normally needed to survey a scene and judge locations, sizes and distances of various features.33

As soon as we move away from seeing and touching—those most trouble- some modalities to start with—we can see that the claim that voluntary motion and our proprioceptive knowledge of which part of the body is being moved, or even used, has anything to do with individuating the five senses is nonsense. No one is aware of the organ ‘being moved’ when they hear something. Most of us have enough indirect knowledge of the importance of the ears and may swivel the head to hear a little better, but it can only be hoped that no one

30_{O’Dea (2010).}

31_{Quoted with ellipsis in O’Dea (2010) and also noted without quotation in Keeley (2002,} p. 13). Armstrong’s position as characterised by Keeley actually undermines O’Dea’s argu- ment; details, quoting Armstrong, are given below.

32_{No¨e (2004).}

33_{By calling the traditional senses modes of attention, and then treating the orientation} system separately, it is clear that Gibson was not confused on this point, but since Gibson was interested in affordances rather than sensations, he neglected to separate seeing colours from seeing textures, patterns and forms, hearing sounds from hearing warnings coming from a particular direction, etc. Cf. Gibson (1968).

would claim that the entire skull is the organ of hearing. Similarly, no one is aware of what, if anything, they are doing with the organ they use to smell with, even though the charming vagueness of ordinary language allows us to say that it is ‘the nose’. Smells are located in the head in a way that sounds are not,34 so we have a good idea which part of the body is involved. What we move is our diaphragm and what we feel is the flow of air, so in that sense we can have an awareness of the part of the body doing the sensing work, but none of this is needed to smell since sniffing and smelling are separable. A stench is offensive partly because there is so little that can be done to escape it. If we had to move something to perceive these things, then surely it would be easier to avoid them. Furthermore, one of the reasons why we have to be instructed to distinguish taste from smell is that we are not aware of the “portion of the body” used to detect the flavours of food.

The last point can be made stronger: we cannot become aware of the rel- evant organ, no matter how much we refine our gustatory discriminations of flavours and savours. An external intervention such as a head cold or holding one’s nose is needed. This results only in an indirect awareness of the organ, such as might be obtained from book knowledge.

The insistence on the necessity of our awareness of the organ being used reveals itself as misguided as soon as O’Dea tries explaining the “odd fact that some rather obvious senses were never included in the traditional five”.35

He first switches the definition of proprioception from Gibson’s self-aware exploratory activity to the explicit or implicit knowledge of the position of one’s limbs (thereby neglecting the movement of limbs—voluntary as well as passive—also traditionally included in proprioception), and then notes that

whereas to look is to use your eyes, to propriocept isn’t to use

anything; at least—and this is the crucial part—not consciously anyway. You are simplyawareof the position of your limbs (indeed people tend not to be aware that they doknow the position of their limbs other than through sight or touch; try asking).36

But in moving we certainly are aware of the part of the body being used and being moved. So even if people tend not to be aware of knowing the positions

34_{The location of smells is actually not an easy issue to resolve introspectively, but then} once we start attending closely, our grasp of where sounds originate is not simple either. On the subject of locality and sounds, see O’Callaghan (2010).

35_{O’Dea (2010).}

of their limbs, they are well aware of their movements and we should count a sense of movement if not one of position among the traditional senses.

The perplexities here are easily resolved once we realise that the most important naive distinction in perceiving is not between one sense and another, or between what we do and what we suffer, but between (embodied) self and (external) world. The reason why the sense of movement or the sense of balance are not in the naive count of five can be understood by noting that these are not ‘external’ senses. The naive count seems to be conservative by counting a sense only when the range of what is perceived is not just sufficiently distinct, but something which is ‘not me’ or, in a Berkeleian view of the perceiver as passive patient, even ‘beyond my control’. If this is right, then knowledge of the body is clearly not to be included, and even a very distinct set of feelings and sensations, such as hot and cold, is not counted as a sense because it is not very easy to untangle what belongs to the external object and what belongs to the body. Hence the fact that ‘I’m hot’ and ‘it’s hot’ are practically, but not quite, interchangeable on a hot day. This interchangeability fails for ‘it smells’ and an intransitive use of ‘I smell’; it also fails for ‘I speak’ and ‘I hear’, ‘I touch’ and ‘I am touched’, and all those traditional wits which in earlier times operated reciprocally.

Knowing which organ we are using has some role to play in the perception of objects, but O’Dea’s proposal fails to explain what it attempts to, and leads to absurdities. Taking up the suggestion from Armstrong, which to O’Dea seems “a perfectly plausible characterisation of a sense organ in the ordinary sense of the phrase”,37 _{we end up with the ridiculous notion that turning the}

head means that we hear with the head. But trying to repair the suggestion, by pointing out that the ears are difficult to move independently of the head, merely deepens the muddle; getting free of it requires that we look at what Armstrong actually said.

Here is Armstrong’s full text without O’Dea’s omissions: “a portion of our body which we habitually move at will with the object of perceiving what is going on in our body and environment”.38 _{Not only is this orthogonal to}

O’Dea’s project since it counts, in the modern manner, both external and in- ternal (bodily) senses, it is only thesecondof two criteria used by Armstrong in asking what our concept of a sense is. This second activity criterion—actually contributed by Anthony Kenny and merely entertained by Armstrong—only

37_{O’Dea (2010).}

supplements the first which is the “portion of our body which when stimulated produces a characteristic range of perceptions”.39 _{This is a classic statement}

of the ‘stimulus plus organ yields sensation’ view of sensing. Armstrong sup- poses that the two criteria may be individually necessary and jointly sufficient, but then notes problems with the necessity of the activity criterion, thereby casting doubt on O’Dea’s position more than 40 years before O’Dea proposed it, partly on Armstrong’s authority.40

The approach taken to O’Dea’s proposal has so far been unrelentingly critical, but there is an important kernel of truth in saying that an awareness of what we contribute has an important role to play in individuating the senses. The only trouble is that it has little to do with the traditional count of five— what O’Dea is attempting to explain.

What we contribute should not be construed crudely as movement, or even voluntary movement, since gross movement is not necessary for awareness, or indeed needed to think and to imagine,41 _{which are both forms of activity and}

implicated in perception. More importantly, what we are aware of contribut- ing to specific behaviours should not be confused with what we actually do contribute, orcan become aware of or take ownership of as our contribution.42 Finally, it should be clear that moving and orienting our body with its organs is a means to an end, and when one wishes to use the senses to perceive ex- ternal objects, the best thing to do is not to move but to keep still. ‘Stop and listen’ or ‘keep still and observe carefully’ are the instructions for obtaining intelligence of remote objects, and the attention has to be focused on these at the expense of heeding any proprioceptive feelings.

The main difficulty with the naive position is not that the separation of the traditional five senses is mysterious. It is, of course, based on the iconic sensations: colour, sound, odour, taste, and contact or pressure. Also, if the conservatism regarding a clear separation between ‘I and thou’ or ‘I and it’ is at least part of the story, it is not hard to see why the count is stopped at the skin with touch. Touch has always generated formidable problems for

39_{Armstrong (1968, p. 212). This was already quoted on page 39.}

40_{Armstrong’s reasoning is not particularly relevant; what matters is that the naive count} is not based on proprioceptive knowledge of our own activity.

41_{It is, however, possible to argue that gross movements are necessary in learning certain} habits used in thinking and imagining. On this see, for example, No¨e (2004).

42_{In an analogous context—that of manual skills acquisition—Sennet points out that even} the most accomplished are largely incapable of explaining what they actually do in skilled performance. See Sennett (2008).

systematic thinkers, since even if it is easy to distinguish and communicate various sensations from the body or its surface, the depths are mysterious and vague, and the subject is difficult to separate from the perceived object.

It will be argued that the main problem with the naive position lies in a different direction: in the failure to notice that using sensations as a basis for individuating the senses is necessary but not sufficient for understanding what we accomplish when we perceive, or even what we ordinarily mean by perceptual verbs such as ‘see’, ‘hear’, etc.

At this point—given Armstrong’s criterion for what a sense is—it must still be asked why O’Dea struggles against the primacy of the iconic sensations, or what Aristotle called the proper objects of the special senses.43 _{This struggle}

with sensations is common in the literature and it must be dealt with at some length. A remark which Grice makes about pain can serve as the next step.