If you could keep only one of your five senses to live out the rest of your days with, which one would it be?

Sight.

My sense of decency.

Touch. I can use the tactile sense as a substitution for a lot of the others. Not to mention that I’m partial to it.

Sight.

I have a lot more than five senses…

Sight.

Sight, so I could read and write.
It’s a tough call, though, hearing would be good too, to be able to converse.

Sight – I need to read people and to see my children’s eyes.

Most certainly it would have to be sight.
I could always get a hearing aid for my ears, and smell, taste and touch I could hopefully tolerate.
In reality I would hate to lose any of my senses.

It’s nice to see that most people picked their dominant sense. By far vision is the one most responsible for our survival. So, naturally that.

You can learn to converse given whatever senses you have. Emotion and language adapts to the medium. Just look at ASL for instance. Neuroscience studies show the same areas for emotion through speech activate in emotion through sign language – only they have a different system to communicate it. You can have lots of conversation in absolute silence, without the noise! Look at the up side… Personally I’d like to be able to turn my hearing off at will. I get very easily distracted :)

I can imagine no insanity like the lack of touch-sense.

I think auditory is one of the most important senses you can have. You can live without too much trouble without taste or smell although you couldn’t taste your food it wouldn’t make you too miserable. Although eye sight is a huge one that ranks as one of the top, people manage quite well without it and learn to develop their auditory senses to compensate. Plus I think they “see” the world so much differently without using their eyes to tell them what is going on. I think that things are so much more meaningful to blind people after loosing their eyesight. Although touch is a huge one and would be frightening to loose, I still think auditory would be the most important to have. You can hear the sweet breaths of someone that you love, you can hear them talk to you, you can talk to them and have conversation.

I could make it the rest of my life without all the senses, except eyesight. since i am an older person, i already know what most things in life effect the other four senses. i have to see my sunshine each morning. its like natures beautiful wake up call for another blessed day.

@Tenpinmaster yes – in our world that takes provision for disabilities.
no – anywhere where disability provisions are not made, or in the wild.
You can hear a predator coming, but if you can’t see a way out you’ll be soon dead.
You can learn to check around at regular intervals to make up for your lack of hearing however. You’ll be mostly fine except for when you can’t see, but by then you should have a safe shelter anyway ;)

Sight

I don’t know. If I ever marry somebody special, I want to be able to see her…listen to her speak, smell her scent, be able to be feel myself hugging her, and I do want to be able to taste the food she cooks (um…maybe not the last one).

Sight, for me too.
I’d have to give up the internet without sight.

tactile! for loads of reasons, use imagination…..

Tactile sense in combination with sense of smell are most likely our first senses (two in one at first). Since we were… weee lil’ bacteria. But the world has changed a lot since.

Definitely my sight. I think becoming blind after seeing for so many years of your life would be just short of terrifying.

my deduction sense

My sense of humor.

This question has been done to death, even twice in one day on one occasion.

At this point in my life, taste and touch are disposable. Hearing would be difficult to live without, especially living in a deep rural area. Without sight life would not be worth living, as I would be dependant upon others. I decided long ago that if my existance becomes a burden to others, it’s time to check out.

I would say I want to keep my ears.I enjoy music too much. (assuming that you can not fix the other senses hence the question says you will ONLY have one)

But sight just makes more sense to keep in the long run, so logic would take over and I would go with sight in the end…

I lost my sense of taste and smell for almost 2 years and got by fine without…hearing would not be fun to lose but touch and sight are 2 toughies to choose from. My sense of touch brings so much to my heart and soul that I can “see” things by mere touch. It would be a flip of a coin to decide that one between touch and sight.

No sight, no Fluther. I need my eyes.

(I’ve said this about a million times, but since I met my fiancee, I have lost my fear of blindness. She can’t see a thing, no light, no color, no nothing, and she does pretty much whatever she wants except maybe drive, and I expect to see her doing that some day.)

My common sense and sight.

@dpworkin- ”...she does pretty much whatever she wants except maybe drive…”

Maybe?

@Silhouette Only one Silhouette only one ;) hehe

Common sense.

@Silhouette Good choice :D lol

Sight

Definitely would have to be Sight.

Touch. If you don’t have touch, you’ll probably die very soon due to loss of blood. You won’t know when you’ve been cut or hurt.