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this thought came to me. if your alive, psychologically functioniang/not sedated/thinking/AWAKE, and yet if sumhow, u lost copletely, the ability to touch, see, hear, smell and taste? would you be able to live{lets assume that your biological needs are being met completely in a hospital bed and you are out of harm's way}or be ALIVE? {this also includes ANY and all input concerning sensation to the brain by nerves} based on just your thoughts or metal processes?{lacking the physical component of emotions as you can not feal them}.

what kind of existance cud such a person have{if at all?}


please do remember that much of the SENSATION OF EXISTANT is actually physically based even though we think its our soul.

yes

there experience would be dependent on how whether they were born with the condition or not.

How can you be fed if you can't feel or taste?

You can put food into a person

Clearly someone wouldn't be able to fend for themselves in this situation, but the scenario is that the person is being kept alive in a hospital.

Originally posted by inimalist
You can put food into a person

Clearly someone wouldn't be able to fend for themselves in this situation, but the scenario is that the person is being kept alive in a hospital. Okay. Well, since the person has no awareness of the outside world, and considering that person was born this way, he would probably know nothing. Not even English.

Then again, if that person became that way through an accident, they will have memories, but only themself is the only character in their life.

but really, im beginning to wonder, even the process of RECOLLECTION or thought which isnt based in relying onexpiriences coming in senory input form the outside world is inevitably connected with our sense of EXISTANCE, ann fealing based in the senses. its like fealing like you cant breathe yet still biologically breathing and being concious to have that fealing{like suffocating in your mind}. in this scenario you cant even tell whether your lung is filled with breath or not or ef u even have breathed{but u are being kept alive by a ventilater as in such a case u cant be relied on to instinctively do the action by sending and receving signals called BREATHING}. think of it as a brain and nothing else being lkept alive.

If a person doesn't have any of their senses and can't even feel touch by another person, they may become plant like. It would be very sad.

The five senses are specialized functions, but they are not necessary for awareness of the outside world. An amoeba has no formal sense of sight, touch, etc, yet it can respond quite well to what's going on around it on a simpler, biochemical level.

A person, say, developing in utero and then being born w/o use of his 5 senses wouldn't be able to navigate the world, and to us would be a mass of tissue kept alive artificially. But with the brain still being active, he would process what he is aware of: the biophysical activity of the living body, and on levels much subtler than we can detect (as we have the "noise" of the 5 senses).

It would be interesting to see how an intelligence would understand this sort of world. This person's consciousness would be very alien to ours: his mental map would be nonverbal and nonsocietal. But there may not necessarily be an absence of logic nor of the predisposition to see relationships between impressions, for building patterns and understanding into the field of awareness.

Then again, without the need for taking care of basic physical needs (it all being done for this person), the brain would have less impetus to be active and organize information.

Just my guesses.

im also trying to understand how with any type of sensory input, a person would have CONTEXT to add CONTENT into. if that is thought can exist completely seperate from sensation to begin with.

Originally posted by leonheartmm
if that is thought can exist completely seperate from sensation to begin with.
Thought is its own sensation, just not a physical one. You are directly experiencing this subjective reality. It is the reality the so-called objective world is processed through. You may be able to eliminate input from the outside world, but the person will still be able to process information (if he's being kept alive and otherwise healthy); it will just be different information, even if what he processes is his own existence.

Would a self-aware egoic mentality inevitably emerge? I think the predisposition would be there, but there'd be no environmental incentive for it to engage. So offhand, I'd say no...unless there really is some transcendent form of self, which can manifest its presence despite the biophysical obstacles.

Yes. Lack of awareness of one's surroundings doesn't stop you from living. The body's functions still operate properly and nothing prevents you from being given nutrients. Of course without the 5 external sense there would be no way to judge time and such so either every moment would stretch into an eternity (in which case you'd wish you were dead) or no time at all would seem to pass.

if others percieved them they would exist by default



heeheehee

NO, NO, NO, NO........They would be plant like.

Homo Vegetus?

Originally posted by Mindship
Homo Vegetus?

Mixing gays and evolution? *whacks upside the head*

Originally posted by Mindship
Homo Vegetus? Sadly yes. And we will love to water them..

Probably.

I mean, sensory input takes affect as "experience" in the brain anyway. We don't hear, see, feel, etc. anything until our mind processes it. Sans outward senses, the brain would still produce signals, albeit very very stunted ones due to lack of outside input.

It wouldn't be much more than a vegetative state, but something would be going on cognitively, and it's likely some of the electrical signals would overlap with the processes used dring sensory interpretation. The person would be smelling, feeling, tasting things for brief (and very diluted) moments without even knowing what it is that they are experiencing....and it wouldn't even require outside input.

Much of this is speculation, but it seems like the most reasonable response to me.

Originally posted by Mindship
Thought is its own sensation, just not a physical one. You are directly experiencing this subjective reality. It is the reality the so-called objective world is processed through. You may be able to eliminate input from the outside world, but the person will still be able to process information (if he's being kept alive and otherwise healthy); it will just be different information, even if what he processes is his own existence.

Would a self-aware egoic mentality inevitably emerge? I think the predisposition would be there, but there'd be no environmental incentive for it to engage. So offhand, I'd say no...unless there really is some transcendent form of self, which can manifest its presence despite the biophysical obstacles.

Similar description, different conclusion. But to the overriding logic of it, though I can't fully agree.

Originally posted by Mindship
Thought is its own sensation, just not a physical one. You are directly experiencing this subjective reality. It is the reality the so-called objective world is processed through. You may be able to eliminate input from the outside world, but the person will still be able to process information (if he's being kept alive and otherwise healthy); it will just be different information, even if what he processes is his own existence.

Would a self-aware egoic mentality inevitably emerge? I think the predisposition would be there, but there'd be no environmental incentive for it to engage. So offhand, I'd say no...unless there really is some transcendent form of self, which can manifest its presence despite the biophysical obstacles.

i get where your coming from. but i think we are underestimating just hw much of a component SENSATION is, of thought. at first glance this sounds wierd because we think of thought as a discrete phenomenon different from sensation. but really the sense of SELF, existant, spacial or chronological, is dependant on the senses. so i doubt a person without any sensation can even sense TIME passing. also, an EXPIRIENCE at the mental level is what we call thought{although pure thought is literally different} and even in that purely mental expirience, various EMOTIONS and FEALING{even if not purely sensational} are involved to a great degree not to mention the fealing of EXISTANCE which is necessary. {for instant your eyes are literally taking in everything you see right now, in form of sensory input but you are really interpreting/seeing/making sense of only 2% or sumthing like that of that total information. your mind can not process anymore or retain it . therefore the rest is useless to you and you might as well not know about it. this is mainly because this excess information has no EMOTIONAL attachement to it or significance. also what you remember most is the physical stimulii with the most EMOTION attached to it}

part of what im saying is, that without sensation to give rise to emotions or FEALING, would the motivation to continue on with or give significance to pure thought processes even exist. or in other words, would you as a BEING, "EXIST" at all without physical sensation and not be reduced to sumthing like an inanimate computer with no "SOUL"{figuratvely} which can only process information{also kinda impossible as without sensory input youd have no CONTEXT or content to put into that context. and if it can happen at all, youd be literally thinking of completely ORIGINAL things of your own making. which paradoxically are not based on anything else. sorta like creating concepts like "existance" out of nuthing} at a very basic computative level?

summary, i have a fealing that "EXISTANCE" as we define it, has both a non sensory "intellectual" component to it, as well as a "sensory" component to it.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Mixing gays and evolution? *whacks upside the head* What about a certain DBZ character coming out?

Originally posted by DigiMark007
Much of this is speculation Absolutely. Though as a vague approximation of this thought experiment, I would recommend the novel/movie, Johnny Got His Gun.

Originally posted by leonheartmm
part of what im saying is, that without sensation to give rise to emotions or FEALING, would the motivation to continue on with or give significance to pure thought processes even exist. or in other words, would you as a BEING, "EXIST" at all without physical sensation Well this is the $64,000 Question: what are the components of consciousness? Is it entirely a construct of outer-world impressions, or is there some other fundamental aspect to it which may exist independent of sensation-constructs? How would the brain react to this deprivation of stimuli, a brain which was never exposed to something which it evolved to process?

Would they even know they had no senses? Would it be like if you were asleep, just all the time and with no dreams...meaning, would they basically be in a coma without even knowing it?

It wouldn't be like Helen Keller. There would be no sensation at all. It may become like a dream state for these type of people.

Originally posted by debbiejo
It wouldn't be like Helen Keller. There would be no sensation at all. It may become like a dream state for these type of people.

Right, but something would still be happening. All sensation is is neural synapses firing in the brain, and this wouldn't stop completely just from lack of outside stimuli. It would limit the brain's funtioning severely but wouldn't halt it entirely, simply because certain functions need to continue to happen if the person is to remain alive (which he is in this scenario).

So we have no way of knowing what the experience would be like....but there would be experience. It's just a biological inevitability.

Descartes suggests that sensations could be fake...a hallucination of a mind. As far out as it seems, there is no reason to think it is impossible.

Under the same line of thought, there is no reason to assume you can't exist without the five senses.

Originally posted by debbiejo
It may become like a dream state for these type of people. Not only would it be interesting to know what dream content would be (after all, most if not all of what we dream reflects sensory experience), but how would one, in this instance, even differentiate between a dream and waking state (assuming this person still had biorhythms of sleepfulness and wakefulness, which, offhand, I think he would)?

helen keller had the sense of touch, smell, taste. just no hearing or sight. its different.

Originally posted by The Black Ghost
Would they even know they had no senses? Would it be like if you were asleep, just all the time and with no dreams...meaning, would they basically be in a coma without even knowing it?

Yes, but in this case, you would have no connection to the real world...nothing. Except direction, knowing the feeling of being upside down or not...even if you didn't know what the feeling meant. Which brings up the question: why isnt our sense of up/down a sixth sense? Its practically a different sense from all the others.


My assumption is, without contact with the world, there would be nothing to make the brain feel much of anything. Chemicals/hormones could really not be triggered for anything, because they are not defined to any specific thing. For example--if you lived in a cave, in the dark all your life, you would never feel the sensation of fear because it was dark. But if you lived in the light, like humans, and then go into a dark place for the first time, we have something to compare it to, therefore we see it as an "unknown" and very different from what we know. That "unknown" is what causes fear in that situation. But to someone who has never experienced anything but the virtual nothingness that they live in, they would probably be emotionless and mostly thoughtless...for as long as they lived.

TIme would probably be nonexistant after a while, the brain would shut down and just give up on your consciousness, so you would be in an eternal coma/dreamlike state. You could not dream though, so, if you know anything about sleeping without dreaming, you know that you basically just fall asleep and wake up feeling different. No sense of time or place while your dreaming.


Now if this person had ever previously had their senses...that would be a different story. It would be the ultimate torture...nothingness.

no means no though. that includes the fealing of being upside down.

Originally posted by leonheartmm
no means no though. that includes the fealing of being upside down.

actually, not exactly. This is what you said was removed from people:

Originally posted by leonheartmm
and yet if sumhow, u lost copletely, the ability to touch, see, hear, smell and taste?

The sense of being upright or whatever comes from small cavities of fluid in our brain. Within these cavities, there are receptors that work almost identically to the way the air bubble in a level works. As we tilt our head, the fluid moves, and we perceive ourselves as being prone.

However, if we never had sensory input from the other senses, it is entirely unlikely that we would understand the stimulation from the receptors in the cavities relates to our body's position in the universe.

The absolute answer to your question is that it depends on what physical structures formed during development and whether or not the lack of sensation was from conception or learned later in life. It is also highly dependent on what causes the lack of sensation, and this would be particular to each sense. For instance, losing the V1 of the visual cortex would be much different from losing the eyes, much like losing your somatosensory cortex would be far different from not having any tactile receptors in your skin. Give a specific situation with a specific injury or deficiency and it would be way easier to talk about. For instance, if from birth a child was missing eyes, ears, tactile receptors, a nose and tongue (ie, the physical receptors are gone) the brain would just never develop the areas responsible for that, and likely the only neurons that would survive into adolescence would be those in the brain stem that control autonomic processes. However, if instead of the physical receptors being gone, it was something like the thalmus or the primary sensory cortices being damaged, much of the brain would still physically develop, though still not nearly as much as normal, and much of it would just be useless matter.

However, it seems you are more interested in the philosophical "consciousness" question, which I'm not getting into, simply because it confuses a fairly straightforward answer.

Originally posted by leonheartmm
helen keller had the sense of touch, smell, taste. just no hearing or sight. its different. Aren't we talking about people that have no sense of touch also? At least Helen Keller had that, if not she wouldn't have become the person she became.

If someone had no feeling of touch (any conscious nerve stimulation) they could not move, because without the sense of sight, they would not know they were moving, they would only know---maybe if at all---that they are excerting effort and basically doing nothing. That would suck.

Maybe it would be what we experience as a dream world.

Isn't what you described in the first post like being on a life support machine?
Technically you are alive, but in a non-scientific way I would say you are not living; you just exist.

Sure, but in a dream state. They may be injoying themselves in there....lol

but when you FEAL like ur exerting effort, u feal pressure in bones/tendons/ligaments/muscles. however, my situation refers to NO such sensation.