Yeah..... "sense" is a term that has had a quite wide variety of meanings over the last few centuries, and very few people use it in its modern technical sense during casual conversation.
Here is some history from Ed Reed: The psychologist’s fallacy is a legacy of the Cartesian ontology in which sensations for the first time appeared in modern form. In this ontology, there must exist a class of entities that are both physical and mental, which have both bodily reality and mental significance. Descartes called such entities the “second grade of sense” (Cottingham, 1986; Reed, 1982). Later, Thomas Reid (1785/1969) introduced the modern terminology, distinguishing between sensations and perceptions. Nevertheless, the problem of what could count as a sensation has plagued scientists since the seventeenth century. At first, the stimuli for sensations were assumed to be physical entities (primary qualities, Descartes’ matter in motion), but by the end of the eighteenth century, it was realized that many physical stimuli give rise at best to unconscious sensations (Leibniz’s petites perceptions) which was a contradiction in terms for the Cartesian school. The Scots school of medical physiology, and especially the important experimental medical scientist Robert Whytt (1768), resolved this contradiction by defining stimuli as the activities of nerves, themselves affected by specific physical agencies. Sensations thus became the physical response of the nervous system and the mental state (conscious or not) accompanying that response. This in turn raised the question of why different nerves had varying responses to the same stimulus, and why only certain nerves responded at all to particular stimuli (physiological specificity). At the same time, Whytt wondered why the psychical responses to physical stimuli were specialized (psychological specificity) (see Wright, in preparation, for a review of the Scots school’s thought). Influenced by the earlier Scots, and by his near contemporaries, Charles Bell and Marshall Hall, and also by German Naturphilosophie, Johannes Müller’s Handbook of Physiology (1833–1835/1838–1840) articulated these problems of specificity in a way that still is relevant for psychology and neuroscience. For Müller, the specific physical responses of nerves (nerve “energies” as he, a vitalist, called them) were lawfully correlated with specific mental sensations. The sensory qualities of light, Müller argued, are a result of the specific physical responses of the retina and optic nerve, not of the electromagnetic energy we call light and which presumably causes those responses. Many scientists understood Müller to be arguing for a particularly powerful method for investigating sense perception: control one’s physical stimulation, isolate particular receptors and nerves, and study their specific responses to the controlled stimulation, then use psychophysical methods to correlate the physiologically specific receptor behavior to specific sensations. With this method, one was supposed to be able to deduce a finite number of specific sensations from which all perception might be built up. Helmholtz’s two great masterpieces, On the Sensations of Tone and the Physiological Optics, followed this psychological stimulist method explicitly, but the method is a failure. Conceptually, it is full of holes, as James showed. Historically, no one has ever been able to decide on just what specific sensations exist, tied to what stimuli, or how those sensations might cohere into perceptions (Gibson, 1985) Best, Eric On Tue, Sep 22, 2026 at 5:38 PM glen <[email protected]> wrote: > So I ran a query through Asta, followed by a long conversation with > Mistral, regarding the immediacy/imminence requirement for (basic) > emotions. It seems *most* but not all research does place emotions at a > more physiological layer and feelings at a cognitively processed (or what > I'll call "derived", "inferred", or "higher order") layer. And even though > "scared" is abused a lot, I'm satisfied with my "logic chopping". Words > have meaning. And part of the *problem* with social media, the loss of > meaning, postmodernism, AI slop, propaganda, etc. is that we're too loosy > goosy with our words. So accuse me of what you will! 8^D > > But a friend of mine who is in the late stages of divorce (the wife is > dragging her feet on signing the papers, keeps contacting the husband for > intimate conversations, etc.), asked me for my opinion of a circumstance > that (I think) falls along the lines of Jon's and Marcus' processes below. > > Post separation, but pre lawyer, she hosted a party at her place. The > husband noticed that an ex of hers was there, *and* that she had old > photographs with her and the ex ... "mugging for the camera". But there > were no pictures of him and her (husband and wife) on the walls. To boot, > the husband "saw how he looked at her", meaning the ex. Based on this > circumstance, my friend (the husband) asked me what I thought. I logic > chopped everything until he blew up at me ... like everyone does. But in > the end, it came down to him conflating the token "sense" with "mentalize". > He said he *sensed* that his wife and the ex still had feelings for each > other. > > I tried like hell to get him to parse it differently, to explain that he > *inferred* this, not that he sensed it, because the registration of > *sensing* preempts one's ability to doubt the ontological status of the > mentalized model. Not only is my friend's feeling very derived, with all > the assumptions and circumstantial details that implies, but any feelings > the wife and ex might have would *also* be very high order. So the trip > from the physiological state of the husband, to his high order feelings, to > the mentalized model, to the high order feelings of his wife and the ex ... > that path is absolutely loaded with a computational explosion of parameters > and inferences. > > He ended up angry at me and hung up. (Normally he talks forever and I have > to hang up.) Who knows when I'll hear from him again. C'est la vie, eh? > > On 9/17/26 12:03 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > > Many days I walk across a short bridge to a peninsula to a dog park. > Because it is a pinch point, humans either queue or gather on one side or > another. During COVID, most people were willing to keep it one way and > not to cluster on either side. Kind of like it is bad form to stand by the > airplane cockpit door to get into the bathroom. (It is a nuisance to the > flight attendants and it gives bad vibes.) > > > > The gathering with dogs and acquaintances for the purposes of > socializing really annoys me, much like the bad vibes from those that hover > at the bathroom. It confuses who takes the lane because it isn’t clear > whether they are queued or gathering. Do they want to go or not? I > can’t see their facial expression from that distance, so it is hard to > say. Yelling would be ridiculous and might not be clear in the wind > anyway. > > > > Meanwhile, a dog’s vision is good for motion but not for detail at > distance. I know there may be dogs on the other side of that bridge, but > my dog doesn’t necessarily sense it. And her being deaf doesn’t help. To > her, we get to the end of the bridge and suddenly there are 10 dogs of > different temperaments staring her down. I find a quick vector off to the > side. Nonetheless, feeling ambushed, she gives the “Wanna piece of me?” > look to be on the safe side. Because of course she does. > > > > The endlessly socializing senior gals inform their dogs “not to react” > and look disapprovingly. I fake a warm smile and continue. How about > they use their empathy and keep the pathway clear in the first place? > > > On 9/17/26 11:27 AM, Jon Zingale wrote: > > To what extent is this about anxiety, fear, and the perception of threat? > > > > I grew up near several roller-coaster parks. As a kid, I felt a lot of > anxiety about going on rides with my siblings. That was fear of something > anticipated, maybe imagined. > > > > Getting off the roller coaster was different. My body had actually been > thrown around, safely but intensely, in exactly the way the ride was meant > to thrill. Perhaps it was simulating something like being in the toothy maw > of a T-Rex. Checking in with my body afterward felt more like a response to > something that had actually happened. > > > > On a battlefield, I assume both defenders and aggressors feel scared. > What is less clear to me is what presenting as scared is supposed to do > socially or politically. > > > > My band plays 2nd Street Rufina on Friday. Is stage fright the same as > being scared? When I see my little boy today after a week at his mom’s, he > may need time to warm up. Is that reticence also fear? > > > > There is also the response to imagined relations between imagined > communities. I often experience something like a generalized fear of being > inappropriately classified. That is, perhaps oddly, the subject of quite a > few uncomfortable dreams: I am back in middle school, somehow also the age > I am now, and no one seems to understand that it makes no sense for me to > be there. > > > > In my often younger, leftist circles, I feel real pressure to constantly > signal virtue: to present as an empathetic cis white male when nothing in > my soul could feel further from that description. Socially, I can feel a > persistent kind of body dysmorphia, in which my presentation and my being > are almost never aligned. I keep hoping that a long observed record of > behavior will outweigh the immediate classification, but honestly, who is > paying that much attention anyway? > > -- > 8647 ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ > ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα > σώσω. > > > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / > ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >
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