All distinctions human beings are able to make concerning our environment and our behavior can be usefully represented through the visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory senses
This is one of the many NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) presuppositions and one of the original 8 of Richard Bandler.
What does NLP mean with the presupposition?
This presupposition is rather long and uses a lot of difficult words. To translate it into easier language: “Humans observe (changes in) behavior and environment by using the five senses (seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting).” It’s not exactly the same, but similar and easier to understand (and remember).
The key elements of this presupposition are our five senses, and they are used a lot in NLP. The first three (visual, auditory and kinesthetic – seeing, hearing and feeling) are the ones that are used the most.
Why is it necessary for NLP to believe this?
As people we need to have a common ground on which we can synchronize. Words might have different meanings between people, but when we get down to observations related to our senses, we often find this common ground.
When we get to descriptions that are based on sensory experiences, we have a means to really calibrate our meaning. If someone talks about yellow for instance, we can calibrate whether we are talking about the same thing by pointing at a yellow object.
This doesn’t mean that yellow is the same for everybody. There’s a long standing philosophical discussion about it: How to tell if the colour yellow I see, is the same as the colour yellow you see? One can only be sure when looking through other people’s eyes, and (besides a corneal transplant) that’s not possible yet.
Can I find proof or personal experiences that support the presupposition?
Well I do have those five senses, and they are the main way of observing the world. And most of what I experience can ultimately be described by using descriptions based on sensory perception.
Can I find proof or personal experiences that undermine the presupposition?
Here comes the so-called “sixth sense” to mind. What about precognition, telepathy or extra-sensory perception and the likes? They might not be proven, but are they untrue because of it? Hard to tell.
But even more commonly accepted phenomenons as intuition and synchronicity might not be directly related to the five senses. They have something mysterious about them, we know or believe they exist, but we don’t quite understand how they work.
In conclusion, how do I feel about this presupposition?
I’m inclined to believe this, but as a presupposition. I have a feeling that there might be more out there, that may or may not be directly related to these five senses. Who knows?
Time for you to talk
What do you think of this presupposition? Does it make sense to you? Do you have experiences or examples that might undermine this presupposition?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Lodewijk,
Have you seen the movie What the Bleep – Down the rabbithole? This movies hints at some scientific explanations for things such as telepathy and precognition.
Personally I found this movie very complementary to ‘the secret’, which was a bit too magical to my taste.
I did see the movie What the Bleep. ‘Down the rabbit hole’ is the extended version I think, and I haven’t seen that one yet. But I definitely have to see the movie again, it made quite an impact already and I’ll be watching with different eyes now…
Interesting post. I have been under the impression that the sense of touch was distinct from the kinesthetic sense – which was described to me as being more the sense of body position/orientation, which makes it a “sixth” sense. I am also a believer in “intuition” which a very smart man once told me was a sub-conscious ability to correlate seemingly un-related inputs into a synthetic gestalt. There are simple examples of this, such as being able to catch a thrown object (which involves fairly complex differential equations to teach a computer how to do it!) and more complicated examples such as recognizing repeating patterns in complex arrangements (music, numbers, letters, tiles on a mosaic, etc) or predicting the behavior of an individual in a particular situation.
As for “extra-sensory perception”, our planet is awash in electro-magnetic energy from a variety of sources in the solar system. There are large areas of the human brain that seem to be “un-used” most of the time. It is a certainty that our bodies and minds are able to distinguish variations in this field, but this particular sense is overshadowed by the much more powerful and immediate “concrete” senses in the traditional count. The ancient Chinese art of acupuncture comes to mind as an example.
Wow, there are a lot of ideas in your comment Stephen!
There seems to be a distinction between the sense of touch and the sense of position/orientation you describe. However it’s a very subtle one. If the sense of touch is related to the skin and the nerves beneath it, things like soft/hard, dull/sharp, warm/cold, coarse/smooth and so on come to mind. But balance is not controlled by that part. It is controlled (or measured?) in the inner ear, but felt in other parts of the body. Yet we can feel warmth by touching something, but we can also experience warmth as a wholebody experience. I think both are part of the kinesthetic sense. The sense of touch is a part of it, as is balance.
What you describe as intuition, a subconscious ability to correlate seemingly unrelated inputs, sounds plausible to me. The examples you give are great examples of one of the brain’s abilities: Nexting. I read about this in Daniel Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness. Nexting is a mode in our brain that predicts what is going to happen next. But most animals can do that too. But Nexting and Intuition are not necessarily the same I think. Need to think about that some more.
Put me down for a more scientific approach. To me the What the Bleep Do We Know uses a couple of the few scientists they could scare up for their piece. There was one scientist in there that plainly opposes the way they portrayed his views. The wikipedia article on it explains acadmia’s general reaction to it. It was filmed in my hometown by the way.
Your post hits on an interesting philosophical question.
Michael@ Awareness * Connection’s last blog post..Hamsterbilities: Preparing Kids for Responsibilty