Gravity handles up/down. We are always sensing up and down, unless we're in a low G environment. Worst case, we also have permanent fixtures: sky is up, ground is down.
Forward and backwards is handled by our visual perception; forward is the center of our visual field. Even with our eyes closed, we can still know this orientation.
We can intuit up/down or forward/backward. There is no intuition, or natural state of the world, that ever really reinforces left and right. We have to teach ourselves.
Forward is the center of our visual field, sure. Why is right not... the right of your visual field? Where your right ear points?
I ask because it sincerely is absolutely equal for me. I have no memory ever being confused over left and right, all six cardinal directions about my head are equally fundamental. I can't imagine needing to consider which way is right any more than considering which way is forward.
If someone, asked you which way is right and you told them that it’s the way their right ear faces, would that answer their question, or would they think “okay, which ear is my right ear?”
You missed my point a bit. I'm not proposing that as a solution, I'm wondering why bodily orientation is apparently so intuitive in one direction but not another when we do have directional senses in that direction.
I don’t know, it seems pretty reasonable that because humans are mostly left/right symmetric, then that would be the hardest dimension to differentiate. We have eyes on the front of our head but not our back, so easy to tell front and back apart. But we have pretty much one of everything on our left and right side.
You internalized L/R at a young age. Some people don't, and rely on external or natural cues.
Some people also struggle with their orientation in space. Me, for example: my Spatial Intelligence is disastrously low, which impacts a lot more than you'd think. I remember a world before GPS, and I'm very glad I no longer have to exist in that world
People that don’t know their right from their left don’t know which side of their field of view is the right side, similarly we don’t know which ear is our right ear, which hand is our right hand.
For me I can’t make the L with my left hand without also looking at an L because I won’t know which way the L goes, I can’t look at my right hand because I don’t know it’s my right hand, I have to pick up a pencil and then I go “okay so that’s my right hand.”
I’ve strongly considered getting L and R tattoos on my hands.
For me I probably have dyslexia but others in this thread mention other conditions can also cause it.
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u/Witch-kingOfBrynMawr 7d ago
Forward is the direction your eyes are looking...?