"Tastes like chicken."
"Smells like crap."
Why do we not have more words for tastes and smells? Typically our only means to describe them are by comparison. We give words to the other senses... We don't (usually) say "it was the color of dead grass." We say "it was brown." We don't (usually) say "it makes the sound of a baby bird." We say "it chirps." There are probably hundreds of words to describe the color blue in various tints & hues, so doesn't it seem like there should be at least one word for the taste that chickens, most reptiles, and thousands of other critters all around the planet share, instead of saying they all taste like chicken? Why isn't there a word for the taste that tastes like chicken? Why isn't there a name for the smell that smells like sulfur or rotten eggs?

 

Because our senses are subjective.......and your chicken isn't quite like my chicken. I don't agree with anybody about flavor and taste.

We name things for the way they act or relate....not for what they truly are.

Mass is defined for the way it acts.......not for what it is.

 

Because our senses are subjective.......and your chicken isn't quite like my chicken. I don't agree with anybody about flavor and taste.

We name things for the way they act or relate....not for what they truly are.

I agree our senses are subjective. What I see as blue, if I could look through your eyes, might be purple. Yet since we were born we've been in agreement that blue is blue and purple is purple. We have names for these things. I don't see why the subjectivity precludes the naming of tastes and smells but not colors.

 

It's also they way our hardware is wired. Sight, hearing, touch and temp have immediate interrupts.

Oder has a secondary interrupt and usually needs to be re-sampled and compared.

 

I think a, "professional" taster or smeller has more vocabulary than I do. Eskimos have what...46 words for snow? That's because the variations of snow are a matter of life or death to them. One who smells coffee, wine, or perfume has a lot more reason to have a better vocabulary. What I'm saying is your definition of, "we" is at question right now.

 

I think a, "professional" taster or smeller has more vocabulary than I do. Eskimos have what...46 words for snow? That's because the variations of snow are a matter of life or death to them. One who smells coffee, wine, or perfume has a lot more reason to have a better vocabulary. What I'm saying is your definition of, "we" is at question right now.

It's like you can see where I'm going with this...

This is part of a larger pondering process that I've been revisiting for several years now... The extent to which language affects our acuity.

Some cultures actually do have words for words for tastes and smells (and even within cultures, such as when you mention (without calling out) beer/wine snobs). These cultures have been tested and found to have a much sharper sense of smell. Imagine having heightened bloodhound-like olfactory powers, just because you have words for smells. I would not expect that.

Another curious case... there is a tribal people on some island somewhere that I read about (and now can't remember who/where) that don't have words for left/right/forward/backward. They identify every direction in cardinal directions. "I was holding the hammer in my east hand and smashed my south foot." These people have been tested and found to have internal compass/navigation abilities (even at night) that previously were thought to exist only in migratory animals. Again, very surprising.

How intelligent could humans possibly be, in the absence of language? If The Jungle Book were non-fiction, would Mowgli be as smart as the average man? Or would he be a tall ape? Have we really evolved to be smarter than cavemen? Or did the tool of language allow us to make such strides with the same given intelligence?

The most intelligent creatures aside from humans, are also the creatures the most advanced communication.

 

"I was holding the hammer in my east hand and smashed my south foot." These people have been tested and found to have internal compass/navigation abilities (even at night) that previously were thought to exist only in migratory animals. Again, very surprising.

The absence of....

I had sinus surgery about 10 years ago, they removed my olfactory, I don't smell, I taste things maybe more like a snake. Today is a good example some burnt caps or components, I asked my director to follow me into the shop area, my thinking was lets unplug what ever is burnt up.

He quickly said yes I smell it, but what ever burnt up has been removed earlier. The only thing I can smell is baked bread, don't know why? but still not sure if I'm actually smelling it or tasting it.

kv

 

Interesting conversation. The Japanese already had a word for a recently discovered new taste bud. We call it savory, they call it Umami.

 

Interesting conversation. The Japanese already had a word for a recently discovered new taste bud. We call it savory, they call it Umami.

Who already knows what savory even means? I didn't. Am I the only one? Does everyone know what "Savory" means except me? To me, it's always been just a word that companies put on food wrappers to make it sound yummy.

I learned a bit in googling "umami+savory+tastebuds." I'm more educated now than before, thank you for the google fodder.

What I learned though, is a bit distressing and totally in line with the original topic. Savory/Umami is only the fifth of recognized tastes in western science, coming late in the game after sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Are there really only 5 tastes? I think we can all agree that there are more, way more than that. Starting at the highest level, why isn't spicy in the list? What about the face-kicking flavor of horseradish? Which of the 5 groups should I put wasabi in?

We humans are capable of identifying and appreciating as many flavors as grains of sand in a bucket, and are we content to sift that sand with a mesh as coarse as the five fingers on one hand? Come on, we can do better. If this were anything else, the scientific community would have categorized and named things with a tree down to the Nth level, finer and finer meshes of categorization. What's the deal? Why hasn't this happened? Since when is science content to categorize a whole world of elements into only 5 basic groups?

And what of smells? What are the named smells? I can think of only a handful of smell words, and I don't even think they're scientific; colloquial at best, and cross-contaminated with taste words. Pungent, sweet, sour, musky, ... my vocabulary in this area is as crippled as the next guy's. WHY?

 

Putting language to sensations/perceptions is, as you have noted, insufficient. Some of it was done along the lines of the discovery of the sensors and the notation of a differential response. I think most of it is done on a common denominator need for verbal communication, also as you have noted.

Here is a fun article that you might enjoy as it has several interesting videos https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/making-sense-world-sveral-senses-at-time/

Also, some people make a big point that people have dominant senses and we should use that information to communicate with them more effectively (sell them crap that they don't need?) - There certainly is some data to support the idea, but the presentations usually stimulates my BS detectors.

 

This is part of a larger pondering process that I've been revisiting for several years now... The extent to which language affects our acuity.

It blew my mind to learn that ancient peoples had no words for "blue".

https://thedoctorweighsin.com/evolution-of-the-color-blue/
https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-didn-t-see-the-colour-blue-until-modern-times-evidence-science
https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2?r=UK&IR=T

 

It's like you can see where I'm going with this...

This is part of a larger pondering process that I've been revisiting for several years now... The extent to which language affects our acuity.

Some cultures actually do have words for words for tastes and smells (and even within cultures, such as when you mention (without calling out) beer/wine snobs). These cultures have been tested and found to have a much sharper sense of smell. Imagine having heightened bloodhound-like olfactory powers, just because you have words for smells. I would not expect that.

Another curious case... there is a tribal people on some island somewhere that I read about (and now can't remember who/where) that don't have words for left/right/forward/backward. They identify every direction in cardinal directions. "I was holding the hammer in my east hand and smashed my south foot." These people have been tested and found to have internal compass/navigation abilities (even at night) that previously were thought to exist only in migratory animals. Again, very surprising.

How intelligent could humans possibly be, in the absence of language? If The Jungle Book were non-fiction, would Mowgli be as smart as the average man? Or would he be a tall ape? Have we really evolved to be smarter than cavemen? Or did the tool of language allow us to make such strides with the same given intelligence?

The most intelligent creatures aside from humans, are also the creatures the most advanced communication.

My thinking is that for the most part, once you start accepting people from other cultures into a society things start to change. yous talked about Eskimos, native people and to a certain point it includes the Japanese, they haven't accepted or taken hold of "foreign" cultures as long or even as much as the US or Europe. So they have a different way of experiencing the world around them. One that is only theirs and not a mishmash.

 

It blew my mind to learn that ancient peoples had no words for "blue".

https://thedoctorweighsin.com/evolution-of-the-color-blue/
https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-didn-t-see-the-colour-blue-until-modern-times-evidence-science
https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2?r=UK&IR=T

This is precisely what I'm talking about.

he conducted an experiment with the Himba tribe, which speaks a language that has no word for blue or distinction between blue and green.

Namibian tribe member participating in a research project.
Vidipedia/Himba color experiment
When shown a circle with 11 green squares and one blue, they could not pick out which one was different from the others

How crippled are we by our failure to classify tastes and smells? These people have no word for blue and therefore can't even see the color. We can taste the difference between different foods and smell the difference between different smells, despite not having words to describe them. Imagine the possibilities we could unlock by spending more time using our other senses instead of spending all of our time coming up with names for every wavelength of light.

I think in 1000 years we may look back and say "people 1000 years ago literally could not differentiate between the smell of cabbage and farts. They subsequently ate tripe and menudo."

 

I have often wondered if we all perceive senses the same. A big one is color (assuming all things are equal and we are talking about people with normal sight.). When I look at something blue I know what that color is because someone told me it is blue. But how do I know they are seeing it in the same way? If I could look through theirs eyes would I see a green, orange or red color?

I would need to think about it but I suppose colors could be compared scientifically but even then, I am not sure that changes how we all individually percieve colors in the first place.

 

It's like you can see where I'm going with this...

This is part of a larger pondering process that I've been revisiting for several years now... The extent to which language affects our acuity.

Some cultures actually do have words for words for tastes and smells (and even within cultures, such as when you mention (without calling out) beer/wine snobs). These cultures have been tested and found to have a much sharper sense of smell. Imagine having heightened bloodhound-like olfactory powers, just because you have words for smells. I would not expect that.

Another curious case... there is a tribal people on some island somewhere that I read about (and now can't remember who/where) that don't have words for left/right/forward/backward. They identify every direction in cardinal directions. "I was holding the hammer in my east hand and smashed my south foot." These people have been tested and found to have internal compass/navigation abilities (even at night) that previously were thought to exist only in migratory animals. Again, very surprising.

How intelligent could humans possibly be, in the absence of language? If The Jungle Book were non-fiction, would Mowgli be as smart as the average man? Or would he be a tall ape? Have we really evolved to be smarter than cavemen? Or did the tool of language allow us to make such strides with the same given intelligence?

The most intelligent creatures aside from humans, are also the creatures the most advanced communication.

You are very possibly (I would say probably) confusing correlation with causation.

Let's say that the people from one region genetically have a much sharper sense of smell. Would it not then be reasonable to expect that they would be much more descriptive in how they describe smells and that this would influence their vocabulary and their behavior?

Let's say that a tribe of people on some island somewhere have the internal compass/navigation abilities you describe. Would it not then be reasonable to expect those abilities to influence how they describe the world about them?

 

You are very possibly (I would say probably) confusing correlation with causation.

Let's say that the people from one region genetically have a much sharper sense of smell. Would it not then be reasonable to expect that they would be much more descriptive in how they describe smells and that this would influence their vocabulary and their behavior?

Let's say that a tribe of people on some island somewhere have the internal compass/navigation abilities you describe. Would it not then be reasonable to expect those abilities to influence how they describe the world about them?

Careful, you're implying genetic difference as a reason for one group of people being "better" at something than another, which is obviously the sentiment of a racist and has no place in science.

</sarcasm>

But seriously, is that what you're implying?

 

This is precisely what I'm talking about.



How crippled are we by our failure to classify tastes and smells? These people have no word for blue and therefore can't even see the color. We can taste the difference between different foods and smell the difference between different smells, despite not having words to describe them. Imagine the possibilities we could unlock by spending more time using our other senses instead of spending all of our time coming up with names for every wavelength of light.

I think in 1000 years we may look back and say "people 1000 years ago literally could not differentiate between the smell of cabbage and farts. They subsequently ate tripe and menudo."

I think the Himba example is still likely a case of confusing correlation with causation. If the Himba people a genetically blue/green color blind, then it is not surprising that they don't have different words for them. If they genetically have higher sensitivity to shades of green, it's not surprising that they have more names for them. If the rest of us don't perceive the distinctions, it's not surprising that we don't have as many names nor is it surprising that we can't see the distinctions when we are tested.

There are people (I think only women) that can see well into the ultraviolet. We don't have names for the colors they see -- this doesn't stop them from seeing them. I would imagine that throughout history the fact that they could see colors that the rest of humanity couldn't went largely unobserved until we developed instruments that could detect that portion of the spectrum.

 

Careful, you're implying genetic difference as a reason for one group of people being "better" at something than another, which is obviously the sentiment of a racist and has no place in science.

</sarcasm>

But seriously, is that what you're implying?

Primarily I'm just saying that just because A occurs with B does not mean that A caused B (or that B caused A, though that is what my counter examples are using). My counter-examples are really just that -- alternate explanations that would account for the same observations. I'm certainly open to the notion that some segments of the population are genetically different than others, but I also have no problem with an explanation that would say that, for whatever reason, a society of people develops a skill to a high level and that that impact their vocabulary. It could be anything -- say a society grows to highly value some art form that involves very subtle ways of positioning the hands and virtually everyone in that society has to develop a high degree of skill at it otherwise they will be outcasts. It would not be surprising for them to come up with a lot of descriptive terms for how people position and move their hands. It would also not be surprising for people in other societies not to have those skills, but the reason wouldn't be because they don't have the vocabulary.

 

/--/
There are people (I think only women) that can see well into the ultraviolet. We don't have names for the colors they see -- this doesn't stop them from seeing them. I would imagine that throughout history the fact that they could see colors that the rest of humanity couldn't went largely unobserved until we developed instruments that could detect that portion of the spectrum.

I have never heard of people who "can see well into the ultraviolet". It is true that if you remove the lens on the eye (which filters UV, something will be perceived suggesting that the sensitivity range for cones can go higher than around 700nm (edited to add or below ~380nm). But, I am unaware of there being any examples of humans that can see well into the UV range - If you have a cite, I would like to read that.

You may be referring to women who are tetrachromats, that is, who have a fourth cone (some kind of mutation and it is somehow related to also carrying a color-blindness gene). They can "see" many more colors than normals, but it is not from an increased sensitivity range. If I recall, the fourth cone is most sensitive to the yellow-green range.

A famous one who has been studied quite a bit is Concetta Antico https://concettaantico.com/ she is an artist who produces some very interesting work.

 

It's quite possible my memory is intermixing the two. But for the purposes here, it still applies. Remove the lens and we can see beyond the range that we have names for colors, yet the fact that we don't have names doesn't prevent us from perceiving them.