The reason we say man has taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing is because these describe individual differences that exist, but when we say that these five are senses, we are assuming the eyes function like the other four, which they do not.
False. We do NOT assume "the eyes function like the other four". We recognize that the eyes function differently than the other four senses.
Okay, that's good, because it opens the door to a new way of understanding how the eyes work.
I'm sure there are similarities, and I'm not disputing this, but the optic nerve operates differently
Given that the eyes function differently than the other four senses, it is coherent to say "the eyes function like the other four" because the "like" indicates that there is some similarity.
There is some similarity in that the eyes take in information as a result of what the eyes see, but you cannot call them a sense organ if they don't create normal vision in the brain.
To say that there is similarity is not to say that there are no distinctions. The question then is whether the similarities are sufficient to justify the broad category referred to as senses as well as incorporation therein.
If the brain is looking out at the world through the eyes, not the other way around, you wouldn't call the eyes a sense organ because they wouldn't be functioning as a sense organ (i.e., receiving and transmitting external stimuli).
The fact that vision occurs differently than does touch, hearing, smelling, and taste is not in itself sufficient to justify denying that vision is one of the senses. Likewise, the fact that, among the reputed senses, the optical pathway alone does not depend on nerve endings in order to function is not itself sufficient to justify concluding that vision is not one of the senses.
Well, direct nerve endings are what give the other senses a pathway to that particular sense organ, whether it is touch, taste, smell, or hearing. Not so with the eyes. There is no direct nerve ending that creates a pathway leading to vision.
The nerve endings difference is but a purely arbitrary basis for determining what is and what is not one of the senses.
It is purely arbitrary, because that way of distinguishing does not take into account just what it is that is meant when some sort of system is said to be a sense - what it is that is necessary for some sort of system to be a sense. A sense is that (system) which transforms data about the environment (usually the surrounding or external environment) into information usable by the brain. This means that the only way to justify denying that vision is a sense is to demonstrate that no external environment data is ever delivered to the brain by the optical system. If the optical system can ever so deliver information to the brain without that system needing nerve endings, then vision is a sense despite not having nerve endings.
Obviously, what we see is integrated through other mechanisms, such as thought, experience, knowledge, and memory that retain what we see to make sense of our world. The only reason he said the eyes were not a sense organ was due to the fact that we see in real time, not delayed.
Of course, there are human optical systems which do not deliver information to the brain. That situation occurs as what is called blindness, and persons who are blind do not have that sense called vision.
You (and apparently Lessans) deny that information available within light is ever delivered to the brain even in the case of humans who are not blind.
Until you demonstrate that the optical system (vision) does not deliver information to the brain, your use of the nerve ending distinction in an attempt to deny that vision is one of the senses is indistinguishable from desperate apologetics.
It delivers information to the brain indirectly. I don't know what you have read so far. It is not faith based.
it can be demonstrated at the birth of a baby that no object is capable of getting a reaction from the eyes because nothing is impinging on the optic nerve to cause it
If the remark cited immediately above is imagined as being the demonstration necessary in order to justify denying that vision is one of the senses, then the inescapable conclusion is that you (and presumably Lessans) are very poor logicians.
Even if it were an indubitable fact (which it is not; so, even if we make believe) that no newborn human ever had a physiological response to light via the eyes, what your "demonstration" would not establish is that humans who are not neonates do not react to light as a stimulus sensed through the eyes. Of course, it is an indubitable fact that most humans who are not neonates do physiologically (including optically) respond to light stimuli; therefore, vision is one of the senses in the case of most humans, and Lessans is absolutely wrong to insist or suggest otherwise.
Lessans never said we don't respond to light stimuli, but that does not prove the direction we see. Lessans' claim did not come from astronomy, as I already mentioned, but that in itself did not make his claim incorrect. In fact, sometimes someone from another field can see things with fresh eyes.
the brain contacts the various objects by peering through the eyes
Lessans there appears to claim (without feeling a need for demonstration beyond the already shown to be fallacious "thought-experiment") that the eyes are for brain emissions rather than brain reception.
This has nothing to do with brain emissions, nothing at all.
It is not specified just what it is that the brain supposedly emits when the brain peers through the eyes, but somehow "there has to be light at the eye" for the brain emission to actually succeed at whatever that emission does in place of conventionally understood vision.
What emission are you talking about? The brain doesn't emit anything. It sees the external world in real time, nothing more.
It should be blatantly obvious that the Lessans notion that the brain is not informed by light and vision is baseless. But worse still is not that there has been no bothering with demonstrating that there is the alleged through-the-eyes brain emission, no, worse than that is the fact that this way of thinking offers no new possibilities for thinking about and solving problems.
You have no idea what this knowledge offers, so please don't go there.
At least the brain-informed-by-light concept has resulted in some actual, practical benefits to humans, but the through-the-eyes brain emission concept has not even been accompanied with any apparently possible and otherwise unavailable benefit - even in principle.
And, please, do not resort here to the issue of body or face ugliness, because ugliness does not depend on brain emissions through the eyes. Sure, ugliness can be regarded as generated in and by the brain,
Pray tell?
but in no way does that necessitate thinking that it is emitted by the brain, because, after all, ugliness would be generated in like fashion if, contrary to Lessans' claim, light informs the brain. The brain-emissions concept adds nothing while being less useful than is the vision-informed brain concept.
You keep bringing up emissions, and I have no idea what you mean. Obviously, you came in here late because I don't think you understand anything that he wrote regarding the eyes.
----------------------------------------------------------
Someone whose interest had never been sufficiently aroused to pursue my discoveries, because they sounded ridiculous, was visiting an exposition in Canada where he saw a sign on one pavilion that read, “Come inside and let us prove scientifically that the eyes are not a sense organ.” He was absolutely amazed because he knew when I said that man does not have five sense organs that I was also referring to the eyes. When seeing this sign, he couldn’t believe it; however, after convincing himself in Canada that man only has four senses and a pair of eyes, he became very much involved in my work upon his return. But to show you again how the person, not the knowledge, is the one being judged, when someone else told his cousin who is a dentist that the eyes are not a sense organ, the reply was, “That’s ridiculous; how can you know what is true and what is not true. You only went to grade school,” to which he responded, “Well, you don’t have to take my word for it. In Canada, the proof has already been made a part of a scientific exposition.” The dentist then replied, “Well, I haven’t seen anything to that effect in the newspapers.” This proves conclusively that what he accepts as the truth is determined by who tells him something is true, not by his ability to perceive relations revealing these truths. However, I have my own proof, so let us get on with what is necessary to open our minds to the fresh air of undeniable knowledge. The dictionary states that the word ‘sense’ is defined as any of certain agencies by or through which an individual receives impressions of the external world; popularly, one of the five senses. Any receptor, or group of receptors, specialized to receive and transmit external stimuli as of sight, taste, hearing, etc. But this is a wholly fallacious observation where the eyes are concerned because nothing from the external world, other than light, strikes the optic nerve as stimuli do upon the organs of hearing, taste, touch, and smell.
Upon hearing this, my friend asked me in a rather authoritarian tone of voice, “Are you trying to tell me that this is not a scientific fact?”
I replied, “Are you positive because you were told this, or positive because you yourself saw the relations revealing this truth? And if you are still positive, will you put your right hand on the chopping block to show me how positive you really are?”
“I am not that positive, but we were taught this.”
It is an undeniable fact that light travels at a high rate of speed, but great confusion arises when this is likened to sound, as you will soon have verified. The reason we say man has taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing is because these describe individual differences that exist, but when we say that these five are senses, we are assuming the eyes function like the other four, which they do not. When you learn what this single misconception has done to the world of knowledge, you won’t believe it at first. So, without further delay, I shall prove something never before understood by man, but before I open this door marked ‘Man Does Not Have Five Senses’ to show you all the knowledge hidden behind it, it is absolutely necessary to prove exactly why the eyes are not a sense organ. Now tell me, did it ever occur to you that many of the apparent truths we have literally accepted come to us in the form of words that do not accurately symbolize what exists, making our problem that much more difficult, since this has denied us the ability to see reality for what it is? In fact, it can be demonstrated at the birth of a baby that no object is capable of getting a reaction from the eyes because nothing is impinging on the optic nerve to cause it, although any number of sounds, tastes, touches, or smells can get an immediate reaction since the nerve endings are being struck by something external.
“But doesn’t light cause the pupils to dilate and contract depending on the intensity?”
That is absolutely true, but this does not cause; it is a condition of sight. We simply need light to see, just as other things are a condition of hearing. If there were no light, we could not see, and if there was nothing to carry the sound waves to our ears, we could not hear. The difference is that the sound is being carried to our eardrums, whereas there is no picture traveling from an object on the waves of light to impinge on our optic nerve. Did you ever wonder why the eyes of a newborn baby cannot focus the eyes to see what exists around him, although the other four senses are in full working order?
“I understand from a doctor that the muscles of the eyes have not yet developed sufficiently to allow this focusing.”
“And he believes this because this is what he was taught, but it is not the truth. In fact, if a newborn infant were placed in a soundproof room that would eliminate the possibility of sense experience, which is a prerequisite of sight — even though his eyes were wide open —he could never have the desire to see. Furthermore, and quite revealing, if this infant was kept alive for fifty years or longer on a steady flow of intravenous glucose, if possible, without allowing any stimuli to strike the other four organs of sense, this baby, child, young, and middle aged person would never be able to focus the eyes to see any objects existing in that room no matter how much light was present or how colorful they might be because the conditions necessary for sight have been removed, and there is absolutely nothing in the external world that travels from an object and impinges on the optic nerve to cause it.
Sight takes place for the first time when a sufficient accumulation of sense experience such as hearing, taste, touch, and smell — these are doorways in — awakens the brain so that the child can look through them at what exists around him. He then desires to see the source of the experience by focusing his eyes, like binoculars. The eyes are the windows of the brain, through which experience is gained, not by what comes in on the waves of light as a result of striking the optic nerve, but by what is looked at in relation to the afferent experience of the senses. What is seen through the eyes is an efferent experience. If a lion roared in that room, a newborn baby would hear the sound and react because this impinges on the eardrum and is then transmitted to the brain. The same holds for anything that makes direct contact with an afferent nerve ending, but this is far from the case with the eyes because there is no similar afferent nerve ending in this organ. The brain records various sounds, tastes, touches, and smells in relation to the objects from which these experiences are derived and then looks through the eyes to see these things that have become familiar as a result of the relation. This desire is an electric current that turns on or focuses the eyes to see that which exists — completely independent of man’s perception — in the external world. He doesn’t see these objects because they strike the optic nerve; he sees them because they are there to be seen. But in order to look, there must be a desire to see. The child becomes aware that something will soon follow something else, which then arouses attention, anticipation, and a desire to see the objects of the relation. Consequently, to include the eyes as one of the senses when this describes stimuli from the outside world making contact with a nerve ending is completely erroneous and equivalent to calling a potato a fruit. Under no conditions can the eyes be called a sense organ unless, as in Aristotle’s case, it was the result of an inaccurate observation that was never corrected.”
“Well, I say, what difference does it make whether we have four senses and a pair of eyes instead of five senses? I certainly don’t feel any different, and I still see you just as before.”
“Once it is understood that something existing in the external world makes contact with the brain through the four senses, but that the brain contacts the various objects by peering through the eyes, it makes a huge difference, and many things can be clarified.
You have provided no reason for thinking that the brain is not optically informed.
False. Until you actually understand what he's talking about in terms of what occurs in infancy, nothing will make any sense. The very least you can do is to follow his reasoning, whether or not you agree. That would be a first start.
