Sense of balance

[Mitera Nikkou]

Why isn't balance the sixth sense?

[SweetSophia]

Because the ability to see ghosts is. Or perhaps it's because the 5 senses as the stand are the methods of perception we're most aware of while balance isn't commonly thought of as a way of perceiving the world around us.

[Tiaiel]

Mostly anything you can feel wothout using one of your common senses.
Like feeling things that are going to happen, so feeling not with your skin but with another sensual organ.

[Mitera Nikkou]

Okay, the lucky seventh sense, then. ;/

What I'm getting at is that your sense of balance is just as important for interacting in an environment as your other senses. Walking seems easy and automatic enough, but even that has to be learned. There are many things that we wouldn't be able to do unless we were able to find and adjust our balance. And there are plenty of surfaces and conditions that require an adjustment in your balance that you have to feel out, such as when you're on ice, on unsteady terrain, or, in some cases, very limited surface areas. You can probably attribute most of your sense of balance with the sense of touch, but that's no different than how much the sense of taste and smell share in functionality, and yet they're two separate senses.

So I'm going to be an advocate for the sense of balance! :O

[Xia]

*whacks Nikkou in the ear*

Balance is basically a sense, just not one of the big five, because its more of a reactionary thing than it is proactive.

[Christina Anikari]

I am pretty certain that it is because it is an effect of sensory input from the senses of feeling, hearing and sight. I don't know the details of how it works, but it is based on date acquired from those three senses somehow.

[Mitera Nikkou]

But "proactive", by its definition, seems to be exactly what balance does, for the most part. Like when we ride a bike, we have to learn how to expect how our balance shifts on wheels instead of feet; pure reaction isn't going to do any good unless there's judgment and foresight (from experience) involved. And for more complicated movements, such as you'd find in gymnastics and martial arts, judgment and foresight, based on what you've learned in prior experiences, would help to avoid an immediate end to whatever moves you had hoped to learn. It's no different than how sight works. At first you just see, but you don't know what you see; it takes time to recognize one thing from another, much like learning to recognize the position of your body required to maintain your balance.

Anyway, the vestibular sense, involving the sense of balance, seems to be mostly dictated not by sound or by sight, but by something in the inner ear. So it has its own distinct functionality, and I think we'd be worse without balance than losing any one of many other senses. So... Screw the "classical" five senses. It's literally a sense, scientifically, by what I read (not just where that link takes you); it's just another one of those things where an out-dated system sticks around due to tradition, or laziness, or whatever.

[Nylena]

The Sixth Sense is gaydar, isn't it?

[Sophia Anieri]

Balance is in fact a separate sense, based on fluid moving in the inner ear. (Hearing is based on the movement of hairs in the inner ear.) But, I believe that it's traditionally lumped in with touch, which covers quite a lot of things when you think about it. Heat, cold, pressure, even pain. A sense that's too often underrated.

[Christina Anikari]

The fluid only handle feeling your current position, the moment things around or yourself start moving then other senses kick in to track the movement and anticipate so you can adjust. Balance is more than just feeling your current state and correcting, it is predicting future states so you can prepare and the fluid in the inner ear does nothing for that.

[Mitera Nikkou]

Neither do the other senses do anything for predicting, either. Can you hear an imagination sense coming on? ;p

Nevertheless, balance is a sense. Imagine not being able to find your balance. Your other senses aren't going to help you, there. Just think about a time when you got dizzy, and how you had to wait for that to pass because no amount of sight, touch or other senses was able to compensate until it did.

[Stellar]

Sweets said it first, but was sort of shrugged of so~ Here I go with a long winded ramble ^_^

Senses are faculties used to allow the brain to preceive the world around us. As opposed to blance, being specifically how we interact with reality.

Through sight we can see a path before us, gauge the slope or steepness of it, and any obstacles in it's way; with that knowledge have an idea of how to walk down the path. Taste, smell and touch don't have much to do helping balance unless you're blind or in a dark place, and there's few places where hearing can help balance like at intersections or rail road crossings; but seriously that's more of personal safety then balancing, unless you're about to walk into a river... but if you don't see the river first.. then you might as well be blind =p And even so, blind people use canes to 'see' where they're walking, and use their hearing more then any of us would.

And of course, I can't trace Matrix philosophy without pointing out that senses are electrical pulses interpreted by our brain. Balance is an overall equilibrium that can't be attributed to specific parts of our bodies like the other five, like i said before, our brains produce balance by interpreting what is preceived.

[Mitera Nikkou]

But that's exactly what the vestibular sense does. Sound is a sense, right? Hairs catch vibrations, and transmit the information. The vestibular system also uses hairs, but instead of vibrational movement it transmits how the liquid moves around, by how it moves them when it does.

In fact, the vestibular system does help us to perceive the world around us. Try to make it to the path that you managed to spot when it's hard to stay focused on it because of your movement disrupting your vision and also because you can't walk (much less stand) in a straight line. It plays a role with your sense of perception between where you are and how you move relevant to something else. (See why here.)

Really. Without this sense our perception of the world would not be the same. It would effect our language because it'd make it harder to read; it'd effect what we're capable of doing because it'd be a challenge to stay upright, perhaps even on our hands and knees. Among many other things. It's simply an invaluable sense in and of itself, and our visual sense just wouldn't be as good without it.

It's fine to go without it when you're in space, though.