1) Changing the Frame: Not “Sense Organs,” but Modes of Distinction
The term “sense organs” is useful in biology, but does little to describe the act of perception itself within an ontology of distinction. More precise terms are:
- sensory modalities;
- channels of perception;
- modes of distinction.
Key formula:
A sense is not an organ but a way of distinguishing a particular type of difference.
An organ (eye, ear, and so on) is a physical node within a system. A modality is a functional mode in which the subject discovers differences.
2) Basic Set of Modalities
The classical five:
- Vision: light, color, shape, movement, distance.
- Hearing: rhythm, pitch, timbre, direction, temporal structure.
- Touch: contact, pressure, texture, vibration.
- Smell: chemical distinction in an airborne environment.
- Taste: chemical distinction through bodily contact.
A minimal extension, crucial for a precise description:
- Vestibular modality: balance, acceleration, tilt, rotation.
- Proprioception: the position of the body and its parts relative to one another.
- Interoception: internal states: hunger, fatigue, heartbeat, breathing, tension.
Additionally, one can distinguish:
- Thermoception: distinction of temperature.
- Nociception: distinction of injury/pain.
- Sense of time: duration, sequence, rhythm.
- Social perception: intonation, facial expression, intentions, status signals.
In conclusion, this is not a matter of “five senses” but of multiple channels of distinction associated with the external world, movement, the body, and internal states.
3) Sensation and Perception: Different Levels
- Sensation provides a primary distinction.
- Perception assembles distinctions into a whole (an object, event, or state).
One possible way to consider the process:
sensation → perception → recognition → comprehension → interpretation → action
This sequence does not establish an obligatory division of experience into completed stages. The subject may simultaneously hear a change in someone’s voice, recognize the speaker, and understand the intonation. The sensory and the meaningful are connected in a single encounter with what is happening.
A difference discovered through the senses can remain without a name, classification, or explanation. Memory allows one to return to it, even if no explanation has ever been formulated. Here “sensory” designates the way a difference is given to the subject; classifying what has been distinguished as physical or material concerns a further question about its nature. This clarification is developed in “Sensory Distinction and Determinacy of Meaning”.
In brief:
- sensation answers: “what has become distinguishable?”
- perception answers: “what is this as a whole?”
4) Flow and the “Ticks” of Distinction
Living experience is perceived as a continuous flow. For analysis, however, it is useful to introduce conditional “ticks”: minimal acts of updating the distinguished field.
It is important not to substitute the model for reality:
- in experience, continuity;
- in analysis, discretization into steps.
A precise formulation:
Distinction in experience is continuous, but analytically it can be decomposed into a sequence of conditional acts of updating.
Examples of conditional “ticks”:
- visual: a change of outline/movement;
- auditory: a change in rhythm/tone;
- bodily: a change in tension;
- interoceptive: a change in breathing/pulse;
- meaningful: the emergence of a new distinction within a situation;
- attentional: a shift in focus.
5) Spatial and Temporal Distinction
- Spatial distinction more often forms objecthood (shape, boundaries, location).
- Temporal distinction more often forms eventhood (change, sequence, action).
Modalities commonly combine both aspects:
- vision is predominantly spatial;
- hearing is predominantly temporal;
- touch is spatiotemporal;
- proprioception is bodily-spatial;
- interoception is processual-temporal.
6) Final Formula for the Ontology of Distinction
Sensory modalities are fundamental modes of distinction through which the subject identifies differences in the external world, the body, and internal states. Perception is the assembly of those differences into stable objects, events, states, and meanings. Experience is given as a flow, while analysis may present it as a sequence of conditional updating steps.
In the briefest form:
Sensation distinguishes. Perception assembles. Consciousness comprehends meaning. Attention selects the route of distinction.
