Why Do We Need Our Senses?
Like I said in class today, it's easy to romanticize our senses. They allow us to interact with the world in countless ways, such the great art, music and food that they allow us to create and enjoy. We are able to do so many different things, consciously and unconsciously, with our senses that it's easy to get wrapped up in what they have become, but I think it's important to take a step back and think about where they came from. And I don't mean how each sense evolved, I mean senses. When it comes right down to it, senses are methods evolved by organisms to allow them to be aware of their environment so that they can adjust behavior accordingly.
One of the defining features of life is homeostasis, which refers to the process by which variables are regulated and internal conditions within an organism are kept relatively stable regardless of external conditions. Basically, the ability to react to stimuli. On a cellular level, this process can be particularly fascinating, as cells, which lack consciousness, adjust automatically to changes in salinity or temperature of the environment they are in. Scaled up to the huge organisms we are, the changes in environment that need to be reacted to can be very different.
What I am particularly interested in is the ways that consciousness plays a roll in homeostasis, because it means intentional reaction to stimuli -- we can foresee future imbalances and work to prevent them. Small rodents know that being eaten is bad for internal conditions, so they need to be able to respond should that become a real possibility. Unlike cells which pick up nearby nutrients because they are there, intelligent beings are able to recognize a need and act to change it.
In order to react to the environment around us, however, we must somehow be aware of it, which is the function that senses play. The five senses are the five methods our body has evolved to signal to our internal selves what is happening around them. Used to identify changes and possible changes in the environment, we use our senses to recognize and maneuver in this world, looking for what our body needs and avoiding what it recognizes as danger. But as we've discussed in class, our bodies and our senses don't stop there. Once we had these systems designed for biofeedback, designed to allow us to maintain the necessary conditions, our bodies evolved new concepts of what is necessary beyond merely living. One relevant example from Dianne Ackerman is the effect of touch (and more importantly the lack of touch) on infants. We have evolved so that touch, especially in the earliest years of development, is necessary for proper development, presumably because offspring that weren't touched didn't have their mothers readily available to keep them alive, and therefore didn't survive.
Touch in this case is being used as a cue to the body that it is protected and that it can use its resources on growth. The mothers, too, are rewarded for touching their children. Both mother and child are experiencing bonding, an important social function that also promotes survival, showing that homeostasis can go beyond immediate biological necessity (food, water, shelter, etc).
One of the defining features of life is homeostasis, which refers to the process by which variables are regulated and internal conditions within an organism are kept relatively stable regardless of external conditions. Basically, the ability to react to stimuli. On a cellular level, this process can be particularly fascinating, as cells, which lack consciousness, adjust automatically to changes in salinity or temperature of the environment they are in. Scaled up to the huge organisms we are, the changes in environment that need to be reacted to can be very different.
What I am particularly interested in is the ways that consciousness plays a roll in homeostasis, because it means intentional reaction to stimuli -- we can foresee future imbalances and work to prevent them. Small rodents know that being eaten is bad for internal conditions, so they need to be able to respond should that become a real possibility. Unlike cells which pick up nearby nutrients because they are there, intelligent beings are able to recognize a need and act to change it.
In order to react to the environment around us, however, we must somehow be aware of it, which is the function that senses play. The five senses are the five methods our body has evolved to signal to our internal selves what is happening around them. Used to identify changes and possible changes in the environment, we use our senses to recognize and maneuver in this world, looking for what our body needs and avoiding what it recognizes as danger. But as we've discussed in class, our bodies and our senses don't stop there. Once we had these systems designed for biofeedback, designed to allow us to maintain the necessary conditions, our bodies evolved new concepts of what is necessary beyond merely living. One relevant example from Dianne Ackerman is the effect of touch (and more importantly the lack of touch) on infants. We have evolved so that touch, especially in the earliest years of development, is necessary for proper development, presumably because offspring that weren't touched didn't have their mothers readily available to keep them alive, and therefore didn't survive.
Touch in this case is being used as a cue to the body that it is protected and that it can use its resources on growth. The mothers, too, are rewarded for touching their children. Both mother and child are experiencing bonding, an important social function that also promotes survival, showing that homeostasis can go beyond immediate biological necessity (food, water, shelter, etc).
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