What sense can you imagine the easiest?

[SOSU]

For me it would be touch, i can close my eyes and imagine walking around my house and can feel everything i touch, imaginary sight isn't my specialty and everything is rather foggy and dream like, i struggle with hearing as i tend to have "music in the background" all the time and can't really stop it for imaginary hearing, smell is pretty difficult too and so is taste but that's because i don't really use them as much as the others as they are only used in more specific circumstances :'')

[continuum.mid]

Probably the mind's eye when I think about it, I can imagine images pretty easily. Though I can also play songs in my head pretty easily, even really long ones.

[Xyzzу]

Common.

[Koko Ricky]

Sensory information such as touch and sight is very strange to contemplate. The content of the experience is certainly real, because experience is a form of information, and all phenomena could be said to be comprised of information.

 

That said, whereas most phenomena seems to have a somewhat explicit location in spacetime, experience lacks both an identifiable fundamental component (such as atoms or quarks) as well as a location, as there is no fuzzy cloud of sight or touch somewhere in our heads.

 

Now, the catalytic parts can be identified; bundles of nerves, neurons, their electrochemical messages...but the emergent phenomenon of experience is never identified, except anecdotally by the individual. This makes it impossible to describe experience in a structural or quantum manner, as any attempt to imagine it--which itself is a brilliant example of how metaphysically complicated this all is--results in topological descriptions. Sensory information is possibly embedded with surface properties, but that might only make sense because the scale we evolved on is so surface-oriented. 

[out_of_service]

For me it has to be sight and sound.

[SOSU]

18 minutes ago, GoatLord said:

Sensory information such as touch and sight is very strange to contemplate. The content of the experience is certainly real, because experience is a form of information, and all phenomena could be said to be comprised of information.

 

That said, whereas most phenomena seems to have a somewhat explicit location in spacetime, experience lacks both an identifiable fundamental component (such as atoms or quarks) as well as a location, as there is no fuzzy cloud of sight or touch somewhere in our heads.

 

Now, the catalytic parts can be identified; bundles of nerves, neurons, their electrochemical messages...but the emergent phenomenon of experience is never identified, except anecdotally by the individual. This makes it impossible to describe experience in a structural or quantum manner, as any attempt to imagine it--which itself is a brilliant example of how metaphysically complicated this all is--results in topological descriptions. Sensory information is possibly embedded with surface properties, but that might only make sense because the scale we evolved on is so surface-oriented. 

Let's just say we live in Malkuth but our mind is in Yesod ;)

[Snark]

Pain...

[SOSU]

16 minutes ago, Snark said:

Pain...

Sorry to hear that :(

Though that's not a sense... :'')

 

2 hours ago, Xyzzy01 said:

Common.

What do you mean :O?

[Pechudin]

Touch is the easiest for me.

 

Although, you can train yourself to imagine others more vividly. There was a period when I was very interested in this kind of stuff, and managed to significantly improve my capability of imagining sound, sight and even smell.

 

Lost it now through inaction quite a bit though.

 

EDIT: if you want to improve, all that's needed is really just work. This was my "idea":

 

When we imagine something, we need to "load" it into our RAM from our memory. This is spotty and imperfect, depending on the person. But what if I, for example, one morning decided to eat my breakfast while paying special attention to how it tastes, its texture, what the sounds it makes are, the color? Then my brain would remember it more vividly, and "improve the load time" when I recall it next time.

 

Why would this work? Well, when we do something absent-mindedly, then we only conciously percieve a small amount of information (e.g., eating while watching YouTube). But paying attention to something would make you focus on it, remembering more.

Edited May 21, 2021 by Pechudin

[magicsofa]

This is weird because I was just talking about this with my co-worker

We were discussing how strange it is that we can remember sounds. I feel that sound is very easy for me to imagine, possibly because I'm a musician and remember imagining music in my head since I was 5

[Pechudin]

1 minute ago, magicsofa said:

This is weird because I was just talking about this with my co-worker

We were discussing how strange it is that we can remember sounds. I feel that sound is very easy for me to imagine, possibly because I'm a musician and remember imagining music in my head since I was 5

 

This makes sense, recalling stimuli is just like any skill, improves with repetition.

[DNSKILL5]

For me it is mostly sight and sound. My scent is way off. Sometimes I can’t smell anything and other times it feels like I can smell... everything... even the stuff you really don’t want to smell that could be far away even. I can’t imagine “touch” unless I’m dreaming, and something I learned in dreams is to try to force yourself to look at your hands in your dream, and it usually gives you more control over the dream because you are now in control, but if you let your mind wander off, then you will probably start having random dream crap happen instead. Then again, I know not everyone dreams the same or even can dream form what I’ve heard, so maybe it’s just me. 

[Koko Ricky]

1 hour ago, SOSU said:

Sorry to hear that :(

Though that's not a sense... :'')

 

What do you mean :O?

Physical pain is a category of touch sense. Touch includes not just tactile feedback, but nerve feedback, to indicate how safe or dangerous a given surface or gas/liquid is. 

[esselfortium]

Sound and music are easy (and seemingly omnipresent), but visuals are difficult to keep a firm grasp on in my head.

[CorndogScammer]

ur mom

[Skeletonpatch]

55 minutes ago, Gerolf said:

For me it is mostly sight and sound. My scent is way off. Sometimes I can’t smell anything and other times it feels like I can smell... everything... even the stuff you really don’t want to smell that could be far away even. I can’t imagine “touch” unless I’m dreaming, and something I learned in dreams is to try to force yourself to look at your hands in your dream, and it usually gives you more control over the dream because you are now in control, but if you let your mind wander off, then you will probably start having random dream crap happen instead. Then again, I know not everyone dreams the same or even can dream form what I’ve heard, so maybe it’s just me. 

 

I can vividly remember certain dreams, barely remember others, and do not remember most of them at all. I think the most complete memory I have from any dream was the sensation I felt after being shot in the chest. I don't remember anything else from that dream other than I got shot and did not wake up immediately when it happened. I remember the intense pain felt all around the wound, and the unpleasant burning sensation from where the bullet stopped in the clavicle. I was probably like twelve at the oldest when I had this dream. You'd expect that to be traumatizing, but I was pretty much unphased once I woke up and realized it was just a dream. I actually don't remember really reacting within the dream itself, more just acknowledging that it was painful. Fortunately I've never been shot in real life, and I do not have any recollection of any other times a firearm of any kind has ever appeared or even been mentioned in any of my dreams. Strange, considering how much of the media I consume features guns quite prominently.

 

When I imagine things most of the time only sight and sound factor into my mind. Touch, smell and taste pretty much only factor into my dreams. I have a weak nose, so the quality of aromic information to my brain probably isn't very refined and easily misplaced anyway.

[SOSU]

9 minutes ago, GoatLord said:

Physical pain is a category of touch sense. Touch includes not just tactile feedback, but nerve feedback, to indicate how safe or dangerous a given surface or gas/liquid is. 

I was thinking emotional pain :'')

[Telemassacre]

4 hours ago, northivanastan said:

Probably the mind's eye when I think about it, I can imagine images pretty easily. Though I can also play songs in my head pretty easily, even really long ones.

Me too!

[TwinBeast]

Maybe touch and sight. Touch could be easy to imagine because of judo training when I was a child. Maybe the sight is easy too because of having done 3d modeling for years. Smell and taste seems most difficult. Sound/hearing somewhere in the middle.

[Arrowhead]

I've always found it easy to imagine images in my mind's eye. I'm also pretty good with sound - though I can't play songs in my head like @northivanastan ! That's pretty cool. I can get little snippets of songs stuck in my head, (earworms) but couldn't play a whole song in my head to save my life!

[Nine Inch Heels]

I haven't really asked myself this question, but on a hunch I'd say sight, followed closely by sound, which is then closely followed by touch and taste...

[ax34]

Am i the only preson who can imagine smells?

[Jacek Bourne]

Pain. Interpret this information however you wish to.

[Lippeth]

Sound for sure. I can correctly imagine virtually every characteristic of someone's voice while their face may be a blur, even if I know them well. I have a good sense of relative pitch, and can remember specific rhythms and timbres of many sounds, almost as if they're in the room when I imagine them. Imagining full songs is difficult because I'm easily distracted by other thoughts most likely due to a mild case of Tourette's syndrome, but I can imagine any sound I've committed to memory very accurately.

 

Sight can be really vague to imagine visually. Though I can easily recall the visuals of events and even imagine hypothetical images, but I wouldn't say that it's specifically visual when I imagine it. I may physically see the image for one fleeting second, then it's more like I'm imagining a written description of the image, but in grey matter instead of actual words. An interesting phenomenon to think about. Though I rely on sight the most to navigate through the world, I don't pay very close attention to it most of the time, at least compared to sound.

 

Imagining taste is about on par with sight, I can do it, but it's not entirely accurate.

 

I can't relate to imagining touch. I've got muscle memory for many things, but I don't think I can imagine the feel of anything unless I'm experiencing it. Same goes for smell, though certain smells can trigger visual memories very strongly.

 

This has been a fun exercise, thanks for the topic!

[hybridial]

I'd say I find emotional feelings easier to imagine than sensory input, at least when I'm writing and trying to imagine scenes and things. 

[Doom_Dude]

18 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

I haven't really asked myself this question, but on a hunch I'd say sight, followed closely by sound, which is then closely followed by touch and taste...

 

What NiH said. :)

[Biodegradable]

This is such an interesting question and I've been mulling it over for the past day since I read the original post and I STILL can't decide, honestly. I've never once thought of this in the slightest and I can't come to a conclusion. Someone's going to have to devise some kind of elaborate test to put me through for us to know the answer, I guess.

[Taw Tu'lki]

A sexual fantasies

[Doom_Dude]

3 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

This is such an interesting question and I've been mulling it over for the past day since I read the original post and I STILL can't decide, honestly. I've never once thought of this in the slightest and I can't come to a conclusion. Someone's going to have to devise some kind of elaborate test to put me through for us to know the answer, I guess.

 

A doom map... get the question wrong and end up in a pit of viles. :D

[Final Verdict]

Sight and sound are probably the two I find easiest to imagine. Taste and smell are fairly easy for me to imagine as well. Not much to say about them other than that.

 

That's the 4 senses that I can easily imagine with little effort. I'll spend some time on imagining touch because I'm so hilariously bad at it. Picture the average person trying to understand Quantum Mechanics and you'll get the idea with this next one.

 

Touch is something I really struggle to imagine in my head.

 

It takes real effort to even get an idea of it. For example I'm looking at my coffee cup but even though I have touched it a thousand times I really can't imagine what it feels like to the touch. That sense works fine, I just struggle to imagine it in my head unless it's something really obvious like fire/burn. Which is just as well because you know, it's kind of needed for basic survival.

 

I know that sounds weird but that's just how bad I am at this one. My brain throws up a barrier with a big 'nope, access denied' sign on it. I can stare daggers at that sign all I want but I'm not getting inside. For reasons beyond me my mind really doesn't want me going in there. I actually feel dumber the more I try to imagine it.

 

My brain just keeps knocking IQ points off until I'm sufficiently dazed and confused enough to simply give up on that task. It leaves me utterly baffled and befuddled.

 

I can't stress enough how terrible I am at imagining touch.