Seguridad en los procesos de desarrollo y soporte

In explaining why we count smell as a sense but not pain, Grice raises the idea that ‘painful’ is not a “relatively abiding characteristic which material things in general either possess or do not possess”,44 _{and goes on to say that “pains}

are not greatly variegated, except in intensity and location”, and that “almost any type of object can inflict pain upon us, often in more than one way”.45 In other words, pains tell us more about our own state than about the object.

These points are related to what was said above about feeling hot and a conservatism in the naive count based on separating the object of perception from the perceiver, but that suggestion of conservatism must be distinguished from, firstly, the idea that counting has anything to do with the simplicity or variegation of a range of sensations and, secondly, with the importance of the sensations for us.46

43_{O’Dea admits as “unarguable that our actual basis for judging of ourselves that we are} using one modality rather than another isexperiential”, and notes that “the idea is extremely common in the literature”; O’Dea (2010), emphasis original. So sensations clearly have a role, yet he offers reasons why the usual strategy cannot work and pursues an alternative. For an example of relying primarily on sensations and experience, see Nelkin (1990).

44_{Grice (1962, p. 134).} 45_{Grice (1962, p. 134).}

46_{The phrase “relatively abiding characteristic” is also misleading since it has nothing to} do with counting senses and little to do with sense experience. Although the colour of the teapot may be relatively abiding, the colours and smells and sounds of most of nature’s furniture are ephemeral, occasional and thoroughly contextual. Even so, it would seem that being hot, and painful to the touch, are abiding characteristics of glowing embers. They are at least as abiding as their colour and shape.

The idea that pains are not greatly variegated sounds like a remark from someone who has managed to avoid them. If pains truly have only one dimen- sion of variation, which is intensity, and otherwise differ only in location, how is it that we differentiate between a headache, the sting from a bull ant or a brush against stinging nettle? The differences here are evidently not merely the location of the pain, its intensity and time dependence. But even if these explained the spectrum of pains, then that is already variation aplenty to talk about. There is an enormous spectrum of different pain experiences telling us a great deal about the object or circumstance causing the pain. Still, even if pain, or the sensations of warmth and cold, did each have only one dimension of variation, would this be any reason not to count them as separate senses?

Attempting to answer this without resorting to Armstrong’s shortage of words suggests the idea that what matters is the importance of the particular spectrum of sensations. In his contribution to the debate, Richard Gray con- trasts how we separate taste and smell but not pressure and warmth.47 _The

idea is that it is to our advantage, biologically speaking, to count taste and smell as separate senses, but it is not perhaps as important for touching and feeling warm.

The trouble here is twofold. Firstly, pointing out that some behaviour is adaptive remains a platitude unless we uncover some evidence that the trait improves fitness without arguing in a circle. If we could determine, for exam- ple, that the Neanderthals died out because they neglected to find different words for odours and tastes then this would help, but the ethnographic evi- dence seems to go in the opposite direction, suggesting that humans can get by in all sorts of ways. Some, for example, have impoverished colour vocab- ularies and yet succeed in the business of communicating in very colour-rich environments.48 _{It is also a puzzling suggestion that separatingsensesis either}

a boon or an impediment to getting across what we wish to say. We do, as a matter of fact, separate feelings of heat from feelings of pressure, and we do not have any shortage of words which prevents us from saying that something is hot, even if we don’t count a separate sense for these sensations. Ordinary predication is all that is needed.

But the more serious trouble with this line of reasoning is that the exam- ples which Gray uses function much more effectively as counterexamples to his

47_{Gray (2010).}

48_{Instructive examples are again to be found in Everett (2008). For a basic introduction} to the vexed question of colour words and categories see Ings (2007, pp. 212–219). For much needed common sense on how naive linguistic assumptions have played into the debate see Lucy (1997).

claim. Long ago when humans first learned to use fire, it became imperative to warn infants off it, and feeling the radiant heat before touching the embers (analogous to smelling some food before tasting it) and communicating the anticipation separately from the injuring touch would, on the face of it, have high adaptive value indeed. Since avoiding burns is at least as important as avoiding foods which may be classified by smell to be rancid or poisonous—a task often accomplished by sight anyway—the separation of heat from pres- sure is a high priority. The basic mistake seems then to be tacitly assuming that when we don’t count a separate sense, the discriminations are either not important or may be difficult to communicate effectively. Both assumptions are plainly wrong.