Comments on Bunkersofism: An epistemology of the sense of taste

Yes sure taste is a particular sense. You can repr...

2010-01-27T08:58:19.722-08:00

Yes sure taste is a particular sense.
You can reproduce more or less a kind of sort of object that embeds the same visual information as what you say at originally, based on a drawing.

The same thing for sounds. You can use your voice by uttering something that is similar to the original sound.

The same thing for the touch. I can pinch your arm and reproduce a similar feeling as what you felt when you were struck at the beginning, right?

But as for taste and smell (they are linked), you have basically to use molecules and cast them inside the nose and on your tongue.
We don't have yet that ability...

If I define Virtual by whatever physical stimulus...

2010-01-27T08:32:48.372-08:00

If I define Virtual by whatever physical stimulus converted in electrical signal and interpreted by the brain, then Taste is no more no less virtual than any other sense;

What I think you wanted to mean is the fact that Taste is a particular sense in that it seems to float ambiguously, vaguely up out there ; the Brain does not have a detailed image of what it is, nor a precise feeling of it etc...
And I think it's all on purpose from Evolution.

You mean that it's difficult to cheat on taste...

2010-01-27T04:30:32.144-08:00

You mean that it's difficult to cheat on taste but easy to cheat on sound and other senses, relatively?

Why do you it's virtual? What do you exactly m...

2010-01-25T01:05:30.798-08:00

Why do you it's virtual? What do you exactly mean by that?
I don't think that's the right word.

What distinguishes TASTE from all other senses, is these 2 points:
1) you only perceive a narrow range of stimuli.
2) you feel it quite far away, vague, ambiguous, difficult to manipulate, difficult to describe linguistically.

And I think it makes sense. Because if not for these 2 points, you will be able to dupe easily your brain to make you love and eat something un-nutritious at all... and Human Kind risks extinction...