Several points to be made in this area of topics.
First off, the easy one... no, i do not believe in a sixth sense in terms of lets call it "esp" for want of a better term, i simply do not believe in anything extra (outside) the senses - but that does not mean, that our limited human sensing would cover everything there is to sensorially perceive (indeed, with the word "human" i have implied non-human, animal sensing, and i can rest my case for in that respect. However, that is too easy - there is also the fact that there are things these days can be seen (and known) that could not be seen before...
and that too has several causes.
We need to learn to be able to see, to perceive... we do that by language, most of us anyway. Language, words, it also limits therefore what we can see. Of course there is all sorts of "knowledge" that goes without saying... but that cannot be proven...
Same really as any belief in metaphysics - i think materialistically... let's say if i were to believe in reincarnation, which i cannot discount in my view of things possible, then there must be something material to pass onwards from one life into the next (someone once commented that sounds like Teilhard de Chardin, but that would be me playing the devil's advocate).
That same someone, my mother, does have one or two ACTUAL experiences that would fall under the category of ESP, for instance when we had returned to Holland from the Belgian Kongo, and at some moment she just KNEW something bad had happened to the one friend she had out there in the jungle - it "must have been" the moment he was slaughtered a tribal thing as these things still happen out there so sadly often... but okay, then it was the final uprising against the colonial power.
So hm... how do i deal with that... no idea really... bar keeping it in mind, with scientific honesty... noting that there or more things indeed, Horatio.... but one can only grown in learning...
Next point. More from the professional point of view, this... There IS a sixth sense. it's called propriosepsis, I translate it deliberately vaguely for the mean while as "the sense of self". All humans have it, it might even be the very first sense to develop in the womb. More practically, and by extension, it includes the sense, the awareness of self in one's space (this is where typical aspie clumsiness comes in, by means of a not quite all there sense of how one relates to the outside world - resulting in us bumping in to things, an I see no problem at all in extending this to things like mindblindness... this is already a form of non- or poor-connecting).
I also called it "professional" with neurology and psychiatry in mind, as not only is there plenty to read on the subject (although I still try to use the idea in an even wider sense) - but I was presented with a questionnaire not that many years ago, in preparation of my proper diagnosis - it literally was a list to "measure" my propriosepsis...
Now we get to what I think may be quite new..., but the more I think of it, the better I like it. I need to get into another, more biological than intra-psychological part of neurology however, before I can give it my linguistic twist.
We perceive anything via our senses, however many separate ones we may come to distinguish. Our senses are taught by experience, and, at some point, we develop words to make sense of what we are sensing. This already, and from the very start is a process of reciprocation - exchange between the subject (you) and the object (anything not-you) [[ note how proprisepsis is impicitely HERE already: it IS in the experienced awareness of anything FROM not-you - such as even being fed stuff in the womb by the external mother(ing)-system).
This entire process is dialectic in its development... and simply means it is essentially a form of communication.
Neurologically, we perceive the outside world with our traditional five separate senses, but remember these are separate tracts. Only in the brain (maybe this would be the mind-aspect of the brain)(maybe this is where "personality" dwells) are the separate tracts combines... the neural tracts, pathways, becoming a proper network, where indeed (ideally) the separately collected input gets processed in into a whole that is more than its constituting parts... that would be "the richness of full (human) experience" - if only the brain has come to full maturation.
Technically, this works by means of mirror-neurons, passing on the "information" from one to the next and so on - exchange between channels occurs at stations, that are called "supermirrorneurons" - that is where any event get's it visual, and audible, and its tangible, and it's smelling and it's tasting qualities. It might even be said that any event, in this way, can be seen as "created by the combining mind".
(It is so very easy to mistake this religiously and decide that the word became flesh, forgetting that that there still had to be flesh first for us to process it into meat.)(And, for another aside: the act of reading occurs according the very same structure, to read is to believe - unless, why else would one read, but in order to dispense with disbelief.)
COMMUNICATION therefore is what it is all about, and that means we can apply Roman Jakobson's model of communication, which has six aspects... Any piece of communication will refer to any one or more of these aspects.
Sender [[MESSAGE / Code / Context / Channel ]] Receiver
For Jakobson, it was a model to describe and even define the literariness of text, but in essence this covers all forms of communication. This was basic stuff of the basic course in Theory of Literature. And, maybe a note to self for now - there is something soooo "autistic" or "aspie" where he concludes that "literature" and by extension "art", occurs by means of certain "devices" which ALSO draw the attention (the form of the message itself (as opposed to what it refers to, it's (outside) meaning). In text for instance, using alliteration or any other form of rhyme (repetetiveness) will suffice to draw the reader's attention away from the external meaning and toward the appearance, the style even, of the message.
Whether intentional or not... the term body-language in its normal usage points at unintentional "language" where it is seen to contradict what a person is actually saying (the losing coach at half time comes to mind in these Brazilian days ;]] )
The interesting thing to note in context, is that this is a turn toward AND (by interpretation) back into itself... I cannot escape the irony of this autism, which in fact I do call IPS - Ironical Personality Structure (not Syndrome, that is too symptomatic a medical word) (please note that irony is essentially defined by DISTANCE. In my view, autism is distance from self).
Jakobson becomes more interesting to our present topic, when we consider the "metalingual" or "metalinguistic" or "reflexive" function of the message. Because the entire 6-aspects model can be linked and repeated.
When at one level there is "the message" consistent of these six functional aspects, at a philosophical level, one can view this entire process, in its parts and as a whole. That is another level, the meta-level, in the way that grammar is a meta-language about language.
FINALLY... I can now connect all these different considerations. Whatever makes up "personality", language is part of it, as it is part of perception itself. Wherever the linguistic capacity comes from, whether from nature or nurture (I strongly believe nature, molded and modeled by nurture). Language gives sense to senses, guides to senses, language is what gives time-history to our sensing, that is experience.
Whether for biologically real, or at the very least for theoretical purposes, it simply makes sense to distinguish a seventh sense, maybe not a proper next one to the enumeration of six, but still a separate one, call her seven-of-nine you romantics, and she is my goddess: Language.
PS
As to the ESP-sixth-sense experiences referred to by OP, I know that I have seen such things reported, in one of the books by Olga Bogdashina, I would assume Sensory Perceptual Issues in Autism and Asperger Syndrome, but I have not managed to find it again :[[[
Personally, I would assume that is "in character" for the more-noticing autistic mind to also have more unconscious experiencing, and a stronger instinct - at least for certain things in accordance with autistic (unbalanced) so-called "special talents"
Generally, I cannot leave unmentioned that this linguistic view of "normal-mature" and by implication "autistic-immature" experience, connects very well with the view of autism as proposed by Martine Delfos' A Strange World ? Autism, Asperger's Syndrome and PDD-NOS. A Guide for Parents, Partners, Professional Carers, and People with ASDs -
this holds especially for her view of autism as an immaturity of brain development, which is related to the extreme-male-brain theory.
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a point in every direction is the same as no point at all - or is it
may your god forgive you
25 Jun 2014, 4:15 am
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