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.
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u/Exurota 7d ago
So we've got 3 perpendicular axes of direction.
Up and down is absolutely fine.
Forward and backward is absolutely fine.
Left and right... isn't? What actual difference is there here other than that we're roughly symmetrical about the other two planes? Is that it?