Types of sensations in humans

All kinds of sensations in man are the product of his historical development. They are very different from the sensations in animals. In the process of development of labor and constant communication, a person developed precise and subtle touch, musical and speech hearing, color vision.

It is customary to distinguish between types of sensations in psychology. The materialistic, scientific view of sensations has always been opposed by idealistic, unscientific points of view. Such subjective idealists as Mach and Berkeley, as well as their followers, deny that the sensations originated from some material source. They do not recognize the existence of matter in general, arguing that the objects surrounding us are nothing more than complexes or combinations of human sensations. It turns out that in the world there is nothing but a subject with his sensations. That is, different kinds of sensations give us different information about our environment.

The so-called agnostic views are also idealistic, they do not deny the existence of the material world around us, as well as its impact on the human senses and organs; however, they doubt whether the true properties of objects are truly reflected by the sensations obtained.

For example, the scientist Helmholtz, based on the fact that the sensation of some property and the property of the object itself are not the same, called sensations conditional symbols or signs of things. By means of symbols it is possible to designate as something existing in reality, and something that in fact is not present. The theory of symbols becomes the cause of the emergence of agnosticism, that is, the doubt that the person correctly reflects the entire world around him. In fact, sensation is a true reflection of reality. In this case, different kinds of sensations are questioned, since they can misinform a person about his surroundings.

The views of the scientist Johann Müller are known much more. He argued that a person does not feel the properties of various objects that really exist, but only the state of their own senses.

To confirm the correctness of his view, Mueller relied on such well-known facts: when one stimulus acts on different stimuli, the sensation arising in it is always the same, that is, what is specific for this organ. For example, if you act on the eye with an electric current, light or mechanical irritation, then the types of sensations are always the same, they are visual.

If we look from the other side, then, when the same stimulus acts on different senses of the person, we get different sensations, which are specific for these sense organs. If you have an impact on the eyes, skin and ears with electric current, then there are different sensations, visual, tactile and auditory. It turns out, if we proceed from the logic of Mueller, our sensations become the consequence of not the action of any material objects that exist independently of our consciousness, but a kind of energy of the human senses. Here, in front of us, appears what is called the "properties of sensations" in psychology. In accordance with Mueller's views, we are not dealing with the properties of objects in the material world, but with the reflection of the state in which our own senses are located.

One of Müller's many critics on this occasion jokingly said that if he is right, then the cat in front of which the mouse is located must not miss it, but cling to the paws in his own eyes. If we rely on all the facts mentioned, then we are dealing with Mueller's false conclusions. They have a different explanation. From the history of the development of the animal world, we know that the specificity of the sense organs is the result of their continued biological adaptation to the conditions of the surrounding world. It did not exist at the lower levels of development.