Does A Senseless Man Dream?

[dsliscoo]

Originally Posted by Izzy

But dreams don't actually have anything to do with senses themselves. They are just memories of senses.

How do you actually remember a taste or a smell? You don't need whatever you are trying to remember present at the time to remember it. Once it's a memory it is only produced by something in the brain. I'd like to think the brain is capable of creating these connections of memory even without the senses. Maybe somehow the brain can produce the memory of the taste of a banana in the exact same way someone with taste can just by accident or coincidence.

I think thats not true. If you eat a banana without a sense of taste you will still be able to call it a banana taste but it wouldnt taste the way it does to everyone ele. A brain isn't going to calibrate itself to right without sense. If you never tasted something you can only imagine what it tastes like. Never having taste you will only be able to use some other senses to imagine taste. difficult i think.

without any senses a person wouldn't be able to learn how to define themselves. Unless they were truly gifted, they wouldn't even be able to come up with words in their mind or ways to express themselves. It would be a very.. weird life. And with the case of helen keller well, somebody else had to define the world to her in order for her to understand anything. If you could find a way to communicate with essentially a corpse, it could live life.

[dore]

In Johnny Got His Gun (a novel later adapted to film and probably more well-known for inspiring Metallica's song One), a man who can only feel can dream/think with all his senses even though he only has one in real life. It's just a movie but it seems like someone who had and lost senses would still be able to imagine those senses even if he no longer had them. However, I doubt someone who has never had a sense (born blind, for example) could ever figure out what that sense is supposed to feel like. If you had the sense you have a reference point, but if you have never had it, all you can have are biased descriptions from people capable of sensing a dimension you will never know.

I think someone who never had any senses would not be able to sense existence. There's no way that someone could realize he's a part of this universe when he has no way to relate to that universe.

[richhhhhard]

Originally Posted by dsliscoo

I think thats not true. If you eat a banana without a sense of taste you will still be able to call it a banana taste but it wouldnt taste the way it does to everyone ele. A brain isn't going to calibrate itself to right without sense. If you never tasted something you can only imagine what it tastes like. Never having taste you will only be able to use some other senses to imagine taste. difficult i think.

without any senses a person wouldn't be able to learn how to define themselves. Unless they were truly gifted, they wouldn't even be able to come up with words in their mind or ways to express themselves. It would be a very.. weird life. And with the case of helen keller well, somebody else had to define the world to her in order for her to understand anything. If you could find a way to communicate with essentially a corpse, it could live life.

I think the point is that you can't communicate with them because they have no senses. There is nothing you could do (aside from medically manipulating the neuronal reactions in their brain that form memory. Perhaps how school could work in the future??????) that could cause a reaction from them.

[dsliscoo]

Originally Posted by richhhhhard

I think the point is that you can't communicate with them because they have no senses. There is nothing you could do (aside from medically manipulating the neuronal reactions in their brain that form memory. Perhaps how school could work in the future??????) that could cause a reaction from them.

its possible.. would you want to give him memories of something he could never experience. I think that would be an even worse torture., Being able to have conscience and realizing theres a world out there, but you are nothing at all. Ignorance is bliss I'd say in that situation.

[Brycexx]

What does a blind man see in his dreams?

I watched a show on a blind guy that was an incredible painter. He was born without any eyes at all so im assuming if he was able to paint some of the pictures he did his dreams couldnt be to far off from our own. that is just one guy so i have to clue if any other blind people have the same visions has he does.

[insanefreddy926]

Our senses. They're triggered by things happening in the outside world which stimulate neurons in our bodies. These then send an electric signal to the brain. There's a different part of the brain for each sense, which makes sense of these signals. Each center interprets these stimuli and turns them into something we can understand. A sound doesn't really "sound" a certain way, our brains just perceive a vibration in the air, and transforms it into an electrical signal.

This may be wrong, but if dreams are just random firings of neurons in those centers of our brains, I think an senseless man would be able to dream. Just because he can't sense the outside world, doesn't mean his brain can't still create these random impulses in his sleep. It would probably just be a whole bunch of colors and sounds and smells which make no sense at all, since his brain has never needed to make sense of them, but he would still experience them. And over time, his brain would try to make sense of these random things. He would recognize a random burst of "blue" light. He wouldn't actually think "that's blue light," he wouldn't know that it is called a color, but he'd remember that certain sensation from previous dreams.

Of course this is assuming his disability does not damage those parts of his brain which process the senses....

[Cavernio]

"Just because he can't sense the outside world, doesn't mean his brain can't still create these random impulses in his sleep."

As has been the general consensus in this thread, what you said here is wrong. Our brain develops only because we sense things. As it senses things, it structures the information in ways that are useful. If it never, ever receives sensory input, it will never actually form beyond what genetics make it form. And even then, our genes tell neurons to form and make connections only when they're stimulated, or else they're told to die. You may have heard that babies and kids actually have more neurons than adults. That's because their brains haven't been organized enough to prune out cells which aren't part of that organization yet...they've got hardware laying around so to speak.

If, of course, what you said is about people who have had sensory development as usual for most of their lives, and then they somehow lose all their senses later in life, yes, I agree that they will be able to dream and 'sense' in their heads.

[Izzy]

Originally Posted by Cavernio

Our brain develops only because we sense things. As it senses things, it structures the information in ways that are useful. If it never, ever receives sensory input, it will never actually form beyond what genetics make it form.

Why exactly are you giving your opinion in the form of factual information?

[windsurfer-sp]

So in other words this thread is asking if there are more senses then the basic physical ones (proper list of senses not the "5" we are taught in school)?

Personally I say yes. ESP to me has some validity, it would take a good degree of close mindedness to say we know it dosn't exist or to say we know exactly how it works.

[MrRubix]

Blind people do dream, but the nature of the dreams depends on exposure to given senses.

If you were born without eyes, you wouldn't be dreaming with images. Dreams usually build themselves from your experiences/senses.

It would be like asking if humans can dream in sonar or can dream in ultraviolet. If you don't have the sense, you simply don't have much idea what it means or feels like. If a blind person is used to experiencing the world through sound, touch, smell, taste, etc, then those are the senses that would be put together to form dreams.

If you want to know what it "looks" or "feels" like to have no eyesight, think about what you see with the eyes in the back of your head. Or how about the eyeballs that you have in your arm? What, having trouble? You can't do it because you don't have those senses there. If you're trying to imagine "what the eyeballs in your face would see if they happened to be in the back of your head or your arm," you're still synthesizing an experience based on what you've already felt. If we haven't been exposed to a certain sense at all, it's not going to be something our dreams are going to readily build from.

[windsurfer-sp]

Originally Posted by richhhhhard

From a religious standpoint would such a person, that could never be reached, be able to be saved? They could never sin because they could never act. On the other hand, they could never choose to believe in God because they could never experience the world. This person could live a full "life" if kept alive, but never experience anything.

There quite a lot of problems with this and is really a seperate argument here.

Agian lets not turn this into a disprove Christianity thread we are simply trying to see how religion (assumedly Christianity judging by the context given) would relate to the senseless man.

If the Christian God (along with living Christian Theoology) and a senseless man exist do they contradict?

Well if the senseless man can think then he can sin and thus will have a need for salvation. He can not obviously be told anything about God or Jesus etc. so if he was to be saved it would require a pagan salvation (savlation of someone who does not know about Jesus or Christianity).

The bible does say (in Romans I belive) that all men know of God and of good and evil. Thus even a senseless man will have an ability to love God even if he knows no theology. Many people belive this is enough for salvation.

No one knows for sure who is saved though but I do not see it as an impossibility.

So in conclusion the idea of a senseless man does not seem to directly contradict God. Really the root of this question lies in the ideal of pagan salvation etc...

[RangerPete]

Hello, I am new to this site, and don't exactly know quite how the system works, so if I am doin' anything wrong just let me know. I have been glancing through some of the critical thinking posts and I think that yall have some really interesting debates going on.

I was a preacher for 13 years up in Montana, so I can't say that I necessarily agree with everything yall have been posting, but I try to keep an open mind. My grandson recently told his parents that he no longer believes in religion, and we had a long talk. He showed me some old posts on this site that had influenced his opinion. Now I do not blame anyone or hold any kind of grudge, but I thought that I might try putting in my two cents on a few of these debates and see what thoughts I might get in return.

I can't figure out how to work yall's fancy quotation system, so I apologize for doing it the old fashioned way:

"From a religious standpoint would such a person, that could never be reached, be able to be saved? They could never sin because they could never act. On the other hand, they could never choose to believe in God because they could never experience the world. This person could live a full "life" if kept alive, but never experience anything."
-richhhhhard

Now what I think you are trying to argue here is not that a senseless man and God "contradict" as Mr. windsurfer-sp suggests. My interpretation was that you were suggesting that a senseless man would not experience anything at all. Which would be a contradiction to Mr. windsurfer-sp 's claim: " that all men know of God and of good and evil"

If a senseless man does not experience anything without external stimulus than I believe Mr. richhhhhard's argument is that he cannot experience good or evil. However, though this makes logical sense, there is no proof to support that a senseless man would have no knowledge.

"No one knows for sure who is saved though but I do not see it as an impossibility. "
-Windsurfer-sp

Though it is true that no man knows who is saved, I think if you read the Good Book it is made very clear what is required for salvation. This is clearly stated in the most well known Bible verse: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." -John 3:16

Given this criteria, I believe that a senseless man could not be saved. It is my belief that in order to be saved you must truly believe, and to truly believe you have to experience things and make a conscious choice. With no senses this does not seem as if it would be possible, but when has there ever been a man born without any senses?

I am very eager to hear your thoughts on the matter Mr. richhhhhard, and Mr. windsurfer-sp, and of course anyone else who has a thought on the matter.

[Reach]

The correct answer is you only dream with the senses you use in the real world. We know this from research.

Also, if you go deaf/blind/etc during your life, you can still dream, but usually only after a certain critical period age (e.g. about 7 for deafness and perceiving sound during dreams).

If you completely lacked any sensory input processing it would be equivalent to being dead. Assuming the brainstem is still intact, you would still be alive (see babies with anencephaly), and would maintain your posture and react to things that poke you and things like that, but you would not be in any way, shape or form aware of your existence. It's not just the presence of the material brain that makes us who we are, it is the experiences we have that take that brain and shape it into it's current form. Without experience we have nothing, as the material brain never develops properly.

[devonin]

Hey Korny, you know what's not a good idea? Ban evasion.

[richy:]

Originally Posted by devonin

Hey Korny, you know what's not a good idea? Ban evasion.

First off, ban evasion is not a good idea, that is correct.
However, it is also not a very good thing to accuse someone of something that they are innocent of (ironic I know cause that is basically what I was banned for).
Unless you were were writing this to korny to warn him that it is not a good idea in general, that is exactly what you have done too.
I am Richard, richhhhhard, and though I am tempted to say that my grandfather is RangerPete, I will not do that because that would detract from the fact that this is one of my first *completely* honest posts.
I am also RangerPete, and all of this has basically been a game to me.
However, in *my* being banned, korny was also banned, called a jack ass, and accused of ban evasion. In reality what did he do?
Look up his latest posts and see if he has done anything ban-worthy.
If you believe that me and korny are the same person you could say that he has, because I have done plenty of things that are ban-worthy.
However I think it can be shown pretty easily that me and korny are in fact two separate people if you search the threads by post for "richhhhhard" and see me and korny's interactions a few years ago, or even a few months ago.

I made that account 3 years ago to join his super smash bros tournaments. If you read any thread that we both talked in (there are not that many, I don't think i had more than 90 posts total) we are usually arguing. If I was korny why would I sign in as a different user to argue with myself? I think this is most clear in the critical thinking thread entitled "economy fix or fail".

A few months ago, korny was taking that debate very seriously, and I made only one comment, and it was just to piss him off. (go look i think it is post #35 or close to it). If you can think of one rational explanation to why korny would have signed out of his account, signed into one that had been inactive for at least a year just to say that, and then signed back into his normal one and continued the debate I would love to hear it.

If I was a new user, who's only posts were in the critical thinking forum, I could understand how korny would be accused, but since there is a 3 year history in the threads that shows pretty clearly that me and korny went to high school together, and are friends (*not* the same person) I don't get why he is repeatedly being blamed and punished.
In all reality the only crime korny committed to be banned was using my computer the day that I decided to go out of my way to try to get banned.
Did he know when he signed on that I was going to do that later?
No.
Have any of you ever signed onto your ffr account at a friends house?
Would you be upset if you did and then tried to sign on the next day and couldn't simply because you had used their computer before they did something really dumb?

I don't know, I know no matter how you look at it, it is at the very least *mostly* if not completely my fault that he was banned, but after it happened I had a long discussion with one of the moderators that had been involved in the whole situation and he seemed to be sympathetic to korny's situation. He said he would forward the conversation to the one that controlled korny's ban, but nothing ever came of it.

Devonin, I messaged you my complete thoughts on the situation, as well as Tasselfoot.

Before I am banned yet again I hope you will read it.

And if you want to delete this post feel free, but I hope you will also remove the one claiming that korny is responsible for this.

Oh, and thanks to everyone who contributed to my threads when I took this seriously, it really did open my eyes to a lot of new ideas.

[MrRubix]

Originally Posted by Reach

(see babies with anencephaly)

Holy crap O.O

[windsurfer-sp]

I was hoping someone would post something like that. Is there actually any examples of adults with no senses? I highly doubt it.

[Necros140606]

Originally Posted by Brycexx

I watched a show on a blind guy that was an incredible painter. He was born without any eyes at all so im assuming if he was able to paint some of the pictures he did his dreams couldnt be to far off from our own. that is just one guy so i have to clue if any other blind people have the same visions has he does.

blind people recognize objects by touch

that's why he can be blind *and* a good painter.

[Seefu Sefirosu]

Originally Posted by richhhhhard

What does a blind man see in his dreams?
Does he experience his dreamworld in total darkness?
What of a deaf man?
In his dream does he read lips?
Does a man that lacks all 5 senses dream at all?
Does he even perceive that he exists?
What if [Helen Keller] had not had those senses either though?
From a religious standpoint would such a person, that could never be reached, be able to be saved?
From a philosophical standpoint would such a person even exist?
But do they perceive that they exist, and that they are a part of the universe?
Do they have any thoughts at all?
Does anything, aside from anatomy, separate them from a plant?
Does anything make them more than an aggregation of biological building blocks?

1. This depends on whether or not the aforementioned blind man ever had sight.

2. Again, depending on whether he ever had sight, he may or may not.

3. Depends on whether or not that man has ever been able to hear.

4. Again, depending on whether he was ever able to hear, maybe, maybe not.

5. Those who lack all 5 senses generally die before we can really ask them objective questions, or pull any information out of them at all. Seeing as they cannot taste, feel, hear, see, or smell, we have no way to get information or response from them.

6. Probably not. The subject is most likely dead (literally) before reaching the age at which most humans start to perceive existence.

7. She probably would have died long before she did.

8. From a religious standpoint, I tend to doubt the logic of most religious people, however, I doubt that a person with no sensory input could get enough information to make a choice.

9. Yes, but they would never attain any enlightenment or achieve any answers, since answers generally require sensory experience (reading, speaking, etc.).

10. Doubtfully. Such thoughts REQUIRE sensory input.

11. I'd bet they did, but you'd never know of them. They would have no way to communicate them. Sign language requires sight, braille requires touch, and English (or any spoken language) requires at least sight to learn (by reading lips), but hearing is preferred.

12. Yes, from certain plants. Certain plants can feel, in a way, most notably ivy and vine-type plants.

13. Not really, in any way I can see.

[Reach]

Originally Posted by windsurfer-sp

I was hoping someone would post something like that. Is there actually any examples of adults with no senses? I highly doubt it.

Not really. Babies with anencephaly have no senses, but they always die. Usually in a few days or weeks. There would be no way to keep somebody alive that had no senses, for reasons I already stated, unless they were hooked up to a machine 24/7. There would be no point though. They wouldn't be able to do anything, and they'd quickly lose the ability to think at all given the lack of any sensory input and output to their brains.

(I should note there is one sense that requires a bit of expansion - feeling. For example, pain - even with the brain removed, an individual could have nociceptors, receptors used to pick up pain stimulus. However, in say, babies with anencephaly, they would not be able to experience that pain, because without the material brain to process that pain information there is no conscious perception of pain, only mere reaction to it from the spinal cord/brain stem. It's the same reason you wouldn't really argue a fly could feel pain - it lacks a properly sophisticated brain to process that pain information consciously, despite having pain receptors.)