Hyperphantasia and Aphantasia 8+ Senses |
Regardless of whether you laugh about it or fuss about it, "Words do not mean the same things to different people." (Word Meanings Change, Always)
From Xunzi Book #6 Correct Name - Commentary and Translations: "The common use of incorrect names in modern societies is not a new phenomenon. Xunzi's chapter 22 provides historical evidence that it has been very common throughout all known cultures and eras for general populations to use words incorrectly and improperly."
Regardless of how common a word might be, the popular meaning can change practically overnight. The term "sensory perception", apparently, no longer means what it used to mean. Similar is the word 'irregardless' having been socially popular for decades; suddenly the word was no longer listed in dictionaries, and now today many people say that 'irregardless' never existed, and that 'regardless' is the only word that implies 'without regard'. Similar has happened to 'sensory perception'; it is no longer listed in dictionaries, and, humorously enough, neither Wikipedia nor Wiktionary list 'sensory perception', but both list "extrasensory perception". The question here is to ask: if 'extrasensory perception' is a valid term, then why is 'sensory perception' no longer a valid term? How can 'extra-sensory perception exist if there is no 'sensory perception'? (Ah, but, laughably, that is the norm of all generations always changing word meanings.)
After writing the articles Hyperphantasia to Aphantasia - Self Test and Hyperphantasia Versus Aphantasia - Which Is Better?, both of which speak of intricately describing at least seven sensory perceptions ("Self Test #3 - Seven Sensory Perceptions"), it was brought to my attention that some individuals are claiming to have the normal five sensory perceptions of sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touch, plus three 'senses' of [i] "proprioception" (also known as kinesthesia, which infers a self-sense of self-movement and body position), [ii] "motor simulation" (the act of imagining bodily movements), and [iii] "emotional replay" (the remembering of one's emotions that were felt in past experiences).
According to what I was told, some individuals believe that the three 'senses' are 'sensory perceptions', and that the senses are related to hyperphantasia. Unfortunately, it seems as though there is a growing belief amongst the public that hyperphantasia is directly related to superior mental qualities, while the belief also claims that aphantasia is of inferior mental qualities. The beliefs are fully false, and verifiably so. The following information is intended to help dispel some of the rapidly growing myths (and wrong words!) about hyperphantasia and aphantasia.
I had originally written a sizable response, but I then chose to condense the wording down into a few core concepts. Too, all languages of the world have always had word meanings changed from generation to generation, and since the term 'sensory perceptions' is also changing definitions, then it is mete to give a brief definition of what the term 'sensory perception' implies within this article.
[1] As a law of Nature and agreed upon by science's physics, all objects everywhere in the universe exist on the same principle of 'feeling' (reacting to) different frequencies of external analog waves.
[2] Technically, there is only one 'sensory perception': tactile. Eyes detect (react to) light frequencies, ears detect (react to) wave frequencies of air pressure, the nose detects (reacts to) its specific wave frequencies, the tongue detects (reacts to) its specific wave frequencies, and body tissue detects (reacts to) its specific wave frequencies. The different terms given to 'sensory perception' (see, hear, feel, taste, smell) point at the perceptions (reacting to) of different groups of specific wave frequencies.
[3] The three so-called 'senses' of proprioception, motor simulation, and emotional replay are mental constructs. They do not 'feel', detect, nor react to external analog frequencies as like what the normal five sensory organs do, and thus they are not 'sensory perceptions'.
The following is a quote from the 2017 article Pathological Science #6 Animal Migration:
"As a teenager I sometimes drove about forty miles out into the country late at night where I would stop beside the road, go stand on the ground beside the road, close my eyes, turn, and then verify that I could still feel directions and locations. I was born with the sense of location and direction, but the increasing EMF within cities had somewhat dulled the perceptions. Having reconfirmed the perceptions to be correct, I would pause and analyze how the perceptions were perceived, weighed, and judged relative to other perceptions (I have been told that it is not normal for other teenagers to do similarly). The three dominate perceptions were of , , and , with each related to and . To me, locations and distances are as obvious as sight, and much more descriptive. To me, the science of animal migration as taught in the schools was nonsense, and the science remains to be nonsense. (Sciencians 'go bipolar' and scream that no living being can feel locations — regardless of the fact that the same Sciencians claim that living beings migrate to sensed locations..."
The quote briefly points towards a type of sensory perception that is not included within science's lists of sensory perceptions. The sensory perception's specific 'wave frequency' is not one that the common five sensory organs are able to detect (react to). Therefore, the sense of global location is a sensory perception of it own.
From the 2017 article Pathological Science Experts #3 is a fun example of how sensory perceptions are sometimes able to perceive wave frequencies that are uncommon. "Some individuals do feel x-rays and other frequencies from the sun and medical equipment, and the waves are sometimes reported to feel like tiny little particles penetrating through the body at high speed. As I have spoken of for over two decades, at the moment that the pre-dawn sun's radiation is felt to bounce down to the ground from the upper atmosphere — feeling like little particles traveling through the body at high speed — it is also when roosters begin to crow. During times of thick clouds or other weather patterns, of when the sun's intensity of radiation is delayed, again the roosters delay crowing until when the radiation is felt. Similarly, some of the individuals report the sense of microwaves as being felt to be dense fields of erratic electromagnetic radiation that are mixed with particle-like projectiles (the particles are felt to be similar as radioactive minerals' particle emissions). All waves become particles relative to the objects that the waves touch, including microwave radiation."
The feeling of solar radiation waves is not a 'sixth sense'; it is merely a more sensitive sense of touch than what is common for the human specie.
The following items are extraordinarily simple, and yet relatively few people are able to mentally grasp what the items imply. If people were able to mentally grasp the items, then people would not be behaving as they do.
[1] Most everyone on earth believes the science that states that all organic bodies function electrically.
[2] Most everyone on earth believes the science of physics that states that all electrical current produces electromagnetic waves.
[3] Most everyone on earth believes that it is normal for a person to make a telephone call with their cell phone while the person is in their home, and the cell phone's electromagnetic wave output will be detected (reacted to) by cell phone towers miles away.
[4] Most everyone on earth believes science's first law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy: energy can change form, but energy cannot be created nor destroyed).
[5] Most everyone on earth believes in mathematics, including the math of converting horsepower to electrical wattage (1 horsepower = ~745 watts).
[6] Most everyone on earth believes in the math that lifting 50 pounds 3 feet distance within about 1 second requires about 200 watts of energy.
[7] Most everyone on earth believes the science and the math that the human body must continuously produce and consume several hundred watts of energy for the body to maintain a ~98.6 degree body heat.
[8] Surely most everyone on earth knows that the 2 to 5 watts output of a cell phone is less wattage than the ~200-600 watts output of a human body's.
[9] Most everyone on earth believes that feeling another person's body radiance (or one's own) from a distance is 'extrasensory perception' 'psychic powers'.
[10] Almost no one on earth ever cross-lights and correlates their beliefs in science with the people's beliefs of 'psychic powers'.
[11] Many hyperphantasia, phantasia, hypophantasia, and aphantasia people believe in science, believe in mathematics, and believe in 'psychic powers', thereby contradicting and denying their belief in science's laws of physics (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, and #9).
[12] Most everyone on earth believes in science's laws of physics about analog waves, but almost no one on earth is able to describe what an analog wave is. The people believe in a thing that they do not have knowledge of, and the people invent imaginary claims about the thing that they know nothing of.
[13] The inability to recognize one's contradictions of beliefs and logic is a thinking problem. Some hyperphantasia-phantasia-hypophantasia people and some aphantasia have the thinking problem.
[14] Neither hyperphantasia nor aphantasia signifies a mental advantage.
"Emotional replay" is said to imply the remembering of one's emotions that were felt in past experiences. Apparently, some individuals are unable to mentally observe, mentally store, and mentally recall their own emotions, but the mental ability is (hopefully!) common for most people, but, the more important item for the moment is that "emotional replay" is not an eighth sensory perception.
Related is the 2014 article Alzheimer's Symptoms, Stages, Memory Loss and Cures: "...and as I drew another breath to begin going into the in-depth details that would describe each thought's emotional tenses and relationships to all other thoughts, plus the spatial locations and durational relativities of each thought held in the consciousness while all other thoughts in chronological order were being analyzed relative to the stationary thoughts...". That which is extraordinarily simplistic to some of us, is literally impossible for other people, and, neither hyperphantasia nor aphantasia hold a monopoly on any talent of thinking.
From the 2015 article Love: "Emotions flow, with depths and widths and speeds and intensities and hues, and memories are formed within the emotional tones. For the man who feels with the heart, his memories and thoughts are fluid, deep, stable, and creative, but the man who thinks with academic knowledge, his thoughts have no depths, and his memories can be changed willy-nilly to conform to any new knowledge. ...The man of heart, his knowledge is formed upon firsthand experiences, his memories are as oceans of waters, fluidly interacting with all others, with depths of calmness, and his mind glows of consciousness." Quality emotions, quality thoughts, and quality memories are birthed within quality hearts. A person's memories will always be poor if his heart is poor.
For some of us, our memories are deeply fluid of textures, aromas, flavors, warmths, emotions, thoughts, and gentle sounds, accompanied with the sights that occurred while sensing the things that are inwardly beautiful. To some of us, it would break our hearts and destroy our souls if our eyes-closed thoughts were reduced to merely seeing surface-imagery, and to not relive the beautiful moments of life as they were perceived.
Almost all academic and online claims about hyperphantasia and aphantasia were invented without evidence and without rational thinking. Almost all claims about hyperphantasia and aphantasia are invented myths.
The article Myths Facts and Lies about Prodigies : Historiography of William Sidis was created in part for the purpose of helping to reduce the myth that William Sidis was the world's smartest person. During the years that the article was well-ranked on search engines, the quantity of myths about William Sidis had slowed, but once the article was removed and placed on a different website, thereby losing search engine ranking, the myths about William Sidis quickly grew again, to where now today, almost all websites about William Sidis are of lies and myths.
The topics surrounding hyperphantasia and aphantasia are similar; the misinformation from unqualified scientists and academicians has fueled the public's imaginations, resulting in an exploding array of wildly insane claims which have rapidly become urban myths that may never fade.
For over twenty years I've whined about the nonsense of sciencians claiming that animals navigate by stars, compass, etc., but as the years went along, the sciencians have continued inventing more and more myths about animal migration. One of the more recent scientific myths is that animals are able to feel the gravity waves where the waves exit the ground at a very specific location, and, somehow, an animal over 2,000 miles away is able to 'feel' that one specific group of gravity waves which are of the same type of gravity waves that arise from the ground throughout the world. And, somehow, the sciencians (as well as all science believers) actually do believe that their silly fantasy is true truth science.
As always, scientists never discover anything until after someone else has already described what is to be 'discovered'. For as long as people never describe a thing (such as the sensory perception of location), scientists will never be able to know that the thing exists.
Similar are all known '-phantasia' projects: the scientists and academicians assembled comments from people who were unable to describe their own minds, and the scientists and academicians then claimed that the 'non-descriptions' were actual descriptions of '-phantasia'. All of today's myths about 'hyperphantasia-aphantasia' are also based upon the non-descriptions.
Although most -phantasia theories are based upon imaginary philosophical inventions instead of firsthand observations, one advantage is that the theories are good examples to learn from, specifically that of myself being much more careful to describe what my own words mean, rather than my incorrectly assuming that the words still mean today what they meant yesterday.
Related articles are on the HHAP Home Page.