The Missing Sense of Blue

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Ah, the sixth sense. The catch all. The scapegoat. Long recognized, barely defined. My perspective on the sixth sense has changed quite a bit from the beginning of class to the end. I’ll admit that at first I thought the addition of the sixth sense was quite unnecessary and just detracted from the five “real” senses. After all, scientists have agreed for centuries that there are five primary senses, proven through empirical examination and utilized frequently in our day to day lives. It seemed to me that people used this sixth sense as a sort of catch all for any feeling they had which didn’t fit neatly into the five established senses. And so, after a semester of learning about this sixth sense, do I support its nomination into the Mount Olympus of senses? Well, kinda.


Here’s the thing about senses: The idea that there are five of them is kinda a lie. I’ll probably touch on this more in my final post so I won’t belabor the point here, but the concept of having five distinct and unique senses is pretty ridiculous when you consider the ways in which they interact with each other. It is this idea which I slowly developed over the course of our class that got me to start thinking differently about the status of the sixth sense. There is nothing that bothers me more than a concept without clearly defined parameters. Ironic for a religion major, huh? That said, there are certain times when I do recognize that a concept can only work when it is undefined. I think the sixth sense may be one of these cases.


It is the fact that there cannot be five clearly defined senses that encapsulate all empirical experience that necessitates the existence of some sort of alternative. Now, it doesn’t have to be its own individual sense. But as I’ve come to learn more about the sixth sense, the more I’ve realized that it shouldn’t be thought of in the same way as the other senses. It is the fact that it is undefined that makes it so special and so capable of capturing our “unconventional” experiences. Yes, maybe these experiences are psychological and not truly transcending the realm of science, but even so, it is the way it makes us feel that we use to categorize the senses. When we eat something, we attribute the flavor entirely to the sense of taste even though smell is always necessary when tasting something. It is the same thing with the sixth sense. All of the examples we read about in regards to the sixth sense could not be categorized in any of the existing five senses, even though the experiences were very clearly sensual. And to me, that is justification enough to warrant the label of a sixth sense, as much as it drives me crazy to have a sense I know absolutely nothing about.


(Bonus points to anyone who can figure out the meaning of the image header)

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