What does a blind person see?

[corra]

a person born blind cannot tell you since he has never seen black.
a person who becomes blind... what does he see?

does he see black?... and if so.. why?

if a person has absolutely no nerves going from the eye to the brain.
does the brain register that as black? and why?

black is supposed to be the sum of all colors. if you take all colors of the rainbow and mix them together. do you not get black?
so black is not the lack of color but all colors seen at the same time.

 

[cristo]

I have no idea about the actual question, but:

black is supposed to be the sum of all colors. if you take all colors of the rainbow and mix them together. do you not get black?

No. Light coming to you from the sun is a mixture of "all the colors of the rainbow." Is this black?

 

[paralith]

Objects are certain colors because they reflect those colors. For example, when viewed under normal unrefracted light, a rose will appear red, because it absorbs all the other wavelengths, but reflects red back to our eyes. A red rose viewed under a blue light will look black, because it absorbs the blue, but there is no red to bounce back. Therefore, black objects absorb all colors and reflect none. And white objects reflect all colors.

 

[OSalcido]

completely blind people see nothing. they don't see black or gray or white... just nothing. i know it's hard to understand and I don't even pretend to understand it but that is what blind people respond with. I guess its like tetrachromic people... some things you have to experience yourself to understand.

 

[Xezlec]

a person born blind cannot tell you since he has never seen black.
a person who becomes blind... what does he see?

Depends on how he becomes blind. I think if your eyes get messed up the right way, you do indeed see black at first. Gradually I think your brain would adapt and you wouldn't see anything anymore. If the nerves or parts of the brain get damaged, weirder things happen.

What do you see in your blind spot? There is a spot in your eye with no ability to detect light. It's toward the middle of your visual field so it should be obvious. But your brain fills in the spot as best it can. I know it sounds hard to believe that you would not be aware of a significant blind spot in the middle of your vision. Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_%28vision%29" . The sudden realization of the blind spot is shocking!

Some people who get damage to only some part of their vision actually get an effect like a blind spot, and things get "filled in" by their brains. Some people who are totally blind hallucinate. The brain is weird, wild stuff. Check out some books by V. S. Ramachandran. I promise you won't be disappointed.

 

[Mallignamius]

Tell me if this isn't close.

By closing one eye for a bit, your vision seems to be entirely diverted to the other eye. I'm thinking what you see with the closed eye (nothing, not even blackness) is approximately what it's like.

 

[Cincinnatus]

A congenitally blind person sees the same thing with their eyes that you see with your elbow.

 

[moe darklight]

Tell me if this isn't close.

By closing one eye for a bit, your vision seems to be entirely diverted to the other eye. I'm thinking what you see with the closed eye (nothing, not even blackness) is approximately what it's like.

I don't know... the seems brain to still fill the gap with whatever the surroundings are (invert the colors of your screen, and the blind spot is no longer grey).

A congenitally blind person sees the same thing with their eyes that you see with your elbow.

another great thing to try with that demonstration is slide your finger on the screen up through that O. suddenly the tip of your finger disappears! then as you keep sliding it out of the blind spot, there is a grey are cutting your finger into 2 pieces! ... using a ruler you can measure exactly how big the blind spot is (it increases with distance)... all this is not reassuring at all: were a truck approaching you through that path, you would certainly not see it until it's too late (assuming your eye is fixed on something for some reason... and it was a really silent truck... and you were covering your other eye— still better chances than winning the lottery).

Does anyone know a blind person who was born blind? asking is the really only way to settle this. The closest I know is a friend of mine who's legally blind... but he can still see (poorly) out of one eye and he wasn't born that way either so it's no use asking him.— come to think about it I know two people who are blind out of one eye... three actually!: I remember my middle-school french teacher would go blind on one eye sometimes (I don't remember why; it was some sort of medical condition)... I guess I attract half-blind people?

 

[madphysics]

Wouldn't someone who was blind simply ignore the sense that they do not have?

By closing one eye for a bit, your vision seems to be entirely diverted to the other eye. I'm thinking what you see with the closed eye (nothing, not even blackness) is approximately what it's like.

I was under the immpresion the you were actually seeing the under side of your eyelid without light, so it appears black.

 

[neutrino]

some things you have to experience yourself to understand.

I know what black "looks" like, so I don't think I a person born with vision can really experience it to understand.

 

[jety]

One see with one's brain, not the eyes. Eyes only provide input.

 

[AyazM]

A blind person sees absolutely NOTHING! It's another matter that nothingness gives the impression of being black but it's just no colour and it's nothing.

To answer your question from a different perspective, it depends where has the person gone blind actually. If the person has gone blind by suffering a lesion of posterior cerebral cortex, he's not completely "blind". Light perception exists as well as SOME patterns of movements that are associated with light. That's because visual information is also processed in midbrain, not just the brain.

Try closing your eyes and you have come slightly close to being blind. But not close enough because by closing eyes, you are irritating the peripheral rods and providing some stimulatory input. When you close your eyes forcefully and roll them, you can even perceive the retinal arterial bifurcation patterns. You also retain the residual stimulation from the visual input you were receiving when eyes were open.

Just minus all of these, and the person is blind.

 

[AyazM]

Wouldn't someone who was blind simply ignore the sense that they do not have?



I was under the immpresion the you were actually seeing the under side of your eyelid without light, so it appears black.

True, but your eyelids cut off the light. To see anything (or in other words, to NOT be blind), you have to view the light. The other way around is IRRITATING the rods and cones. Imagine a situation in which 100% light is cut off (I know this is not possible in real life but just assume). In that case, you are as good as blind other than the residual photoreceptor irritation that might be present.

 

[sponsoredwalk]

If you asked a person who lost their sight what do they "see" isn't that the best chance at understanding what a blind person "sees".

I don't think the fact that they had sight previously disqualifies them from the chance to answer the question.

I bet it's the same as we experience. I read somewhere that when you close your eyelids to blink a message is relayed to the brain to shut off that particular sense for the millisecond you are blinking, everytime! It does this because it would get crazily annoying & distracting to have to deal with interruptions every few seconds.

A person who never seen in his/her life would have no appreciation of what light is (in terms of vision) - I assume - and would not have developed that part of their senses - I assume, but to assume that they experience something alien to what we understand is a bit...

Visionopocentric, or maybe oculopocentric lol

My intuition tells me that these people are just more mentally & unconsciously involved with their other senses, as it's a question of life & death in a sense & humans are known for adapting to particular situations when it's that important. Maybe blind people do feel an emptiness in that regard, I could be wrong, but I think that the nothingness we imagine them to experience is just us extrapolating from our heavy reliance on sight.

 

[elect_eng]

I can't answer for a blind person because I see perfectly fine. However, I do a weird thing that can give some insight here. When I read or use a computer, I shut my left eye completely. I do this unconsciously because of a slight nerve damage in the left eye that makes it hard to turn that eye inward. This, combined with poorer vision in the left eye, has triggered my brain to shut the left eye without even thinking about it. I don't even notice it, even after working all day on a computer.

The critical information here is that I don't see black in my left eye. I have no sensation of anything from the left eye when it's closed. When I lift my head from a book, or computer, my left eye opens and i see fine with both eyes. If I shut both eyes, I see blackness.

 

[MHD93]

Imagine a sixth-sense that you don't have, you know nothing about it, you receive nothing from it, when some body misses his vision sense, he no longer receives or feels it, so I think he doesn't see blackness or any thing else.

 

[lem09]

Yeah another sense organ does seem possible...

But... I thought that maybe there was something peculiar about touch and sight. We feel [I take this to mean we are embodied in] and see empty space and IMVHO the space that these senses engage with cannot be done away with...

What would it mean to be walking along from A to C and when we get to B we are not in space? Errr, don't answer that...

And what would it mean to see absolutely nothing in an area in our visual field: I can imagine not being conscious of it but it's still there; even if whatever integrates the information from two eyes does not know that it has a blind spot it is still effected by it... and it seems to me that that would be visual. See, you can't stop someone seeing something or other [even darkness that we don't pay attention to] where some space is, whereas sound can be blocked without using sound.

I actually think this is a metaphysical [I think that's the right word] fact, that there is something about visual space that means it can't be destroyed. Kant might mean something like this

Such a priori origin is manifest in certain concepts, no
less than in judgments. If we remove from our empirical
concept of a body, one by one, every feature in it which is
[merely] empirical, the colour, the hardness or softness, the
weight, even the impenetrability, there still remains the
space which the body (now entirely vanished) occupied, and
this cannot be removed.

but it seems unlikely as he does not give the consequence that we can't really die. But that's the sort of thing I mean, something that would make it so that we don't stop seeing something even when dead.

 

[Dremmer]

A totally blind person sees the same thing that we see out of the back of our heads, nothing. Not blackness, but nothing.

 

[lem09]

i congenitally blind person maybe but i think that yeah i don't normally "see" out of the back of my head but I'm still aware of if visuospatially.

 

[Rob060870]

I wonder if blind people during REM sleep experience something other than nothing if nerves in the optic nerve fire?( that's if they do fire however) :-)

 

[Lsos]

What does sweet taste like?

It's not something you can understand or explain unless you're experienced it...or haven't, in this case.

I can't even imagine what it would be liek to see from the back of my head. How could I see forward and back at the same time...without seeing the middle? It just doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Pallazzo]

A totally blind person sees the same thing that we see out of the back of our heads, nothing. Not blackness, but nothing.

Now, how does one see "nothing"? It is a logical paradox to say that one sees nothing. If one sees nothing, then what is the experience of "nothing"?

To say that being blind is like seeing with the back of our heads disregards the fact that even when the eye-organ is damaged, we still have a visual cortex. When we sleep we still "see" perfectly well in a dream. Of course, we all know that the eyes (usually) are closed when sleeping. This happens because the senses implode into the mental consciousness.
This means that visual cortex (and auditory cortex) still is active during sleep - even with the eyes closed!

How the subjective experience of blindness is, may vary between subjects, depending on when the person was blind.

This is not easy, however. For say, that a person who is blind from birth, experiences "seeing" when dreaming, but has no words to express what is seen, because an unability to relate visual experiences with names. If you never been learned that the form of an apple is called "apple", how could you describe it? "Oh, but it is red, and round." Yes, but if you don't have the word for red or round, how could you describe it?

 

[wazani]

hi
we must look for the subject through the mechanism of vision mediated by the eye nerves to access the result

 

[Xezlec]

Now, how does one see "nothing"? It is a logical paradox to say that one sees nothing.

It certainly is not. A logical paradox is something which directly contradicts itself.

If one sees nothing, then what is the experience of "nothing"?

Nothing. No experience whatsoever.

To say that being blind is like seeing with the back of our heads disregards the fact that even when the eye-organ is damaged, we still have a visual cortex.

It disregards nothing. Blindness doesn't necessarily always trace back to damage to the eye, and even if it does, that doesn't mean the visual cortex would somehow be active and recognizing patterns (that's what neurons do) in no signal input at all. No signal is not the same as blackness. Look at something through the blind spot in your eye, and you'll see nothing. Not black, just nothing. You do have visual cortex for that part, but that piece of visual cortex simply continues whatever pattern it can recognize in nearby regions. People with long-term retina damage report a similar phenomenon.

If you've never seen anything at all anywhere in your visual cortex, there are no patterns to recognize, no signal to analyze, and therefore nothing to compare "black" to. The concept of black would never have even obtained a set of neurons in your frontal lobes to identify it, because there's nothing to discriminate it against. Instead, in blind people, that piece of cortex is either adapted and repurposed for other things (like touch) or simply not used at all (in which case it does not generate any perception, because it has never produced any signal to train the rest of the brain to pay attention to it in any way).

When we sleep we still "see" perfectly well in a dream.

Because you've seen things before. Dreams are based on random combinations of things you've experienced -- patterns that have meaning to you. You never hear anyone speak (at least, not correctly) in a language you don't understand in a dream, for example, because that language is not known to your mind. Similarly, the patterns of stimuli we describe as vision are not available to someone blind from birth. People blind from birth don't normally see things in a dream. We would know because they can talk about their experiences, and they don't usually describe experiencing some unknown sense when dreaming.

These are generalizations, obviously. Some blind people might see something sometimes. But there's no reason to expect them to in general.

 

[GODISMYSHADOW]

Persons totally blind since birth don't notice they're blind. They don't see with their eyes. What does it mean "to see" anyway? The blind use cruder methods to get information about their surroundings; like probing with a cane and using the other four senses. In this way they see but they don't have visual sight, that's all. It takes a good brain and a lot of skill not to be handicapped by blindness. Sometimes they find other ways, that's all.

 

[Dollars]

I don't know if this is entirely relevant, but I have a question. Some are arguing that blind people see nothing, and that some see blackness or pure darkness. There are other ways for blind people to "see". such as through the other senses like touch. blind people can read using braille, my question is for those blind people who read using braille. How do they memerize that this formation of dots mean this letter or this word? I know it comes from what they feel but in their head they must have some "image" that they refer back to that tells them "these dots mean this, these dots over here mean that."

 

[thesparrow]

I just wanted to pitch into this conversation.

When I was little (about 7 years old), a completely unrelated surgery left me temporarily blind, if that even makes sense. For approximately a month, I remember being able to see nothing but blackness. At first, it was blackness, but then it soon became simply emptiness. Even when I opened my eyes, I saw nothing.

My parents don't know what happened (they don't remember the details of it), but all I remember was waking up after the surgery and thinking 'Why is it so dark in here?' then realising, 'I can't see!'

A couple of my other senses became extremely vivid, like my sense of touch, and hearing. I don't remember much about my other senses, but I think it's a safe assumption that they were somewhat enhanced as well.

The blackness wasn't 'nothing' to me, because I knew what 'black' was. I had experienced colours, shades, and depth before that 'blind' incident. It was definitely black (though I guess one can argue that it differs from person to person).

 

[turbo]

A brother of a neighbor and close friend in college was congenitally blind. He (the blind brother) and I used to play guitar and sing, and he was undecided about what blind people "see" because he had never had seen the way we take for granted. One night, his wife and my neighbor's wife decided to blind-side us guys with a night of bourbon, scotch, etc. I woke up the next day naked in my bed with a killer headache, and the stories (from my house-mates) of two slim ladies lugging me upstairs to my bedroom.

 

[zoobyshoe]

In Musicophilia Oliver sacks reports that some congenitally blind people may experience synesthetic sorts of color displays without knowing these are elements of vision.

 

[Kinase]

In Musicophilia Oliver sacks reports that some congenitally blind people may experience synesthetic sorts of color displays without knowing these are elements of vision.

I've heard the same thing too. Also that certain people sense other types of radiation, probably only UV and infrared but that seems odd to me.

Maybe we should get a blind person? then again, asking them what they see might as well be an insult.

 

[griffkim]

I am a 45 year old woman and I've been fighting blindness for the last 9 years. I have a genetic disease called Pseudo Xanthoma Elasticum, www.PXE.org. There is no cure for this disease, yet. This is a race against time with stem cell research. I need new retinas. There is no such thing as a retina transplant.

What does blind look like? I will convey my experience but by no means am I the expert when it comes to this.

There is 'black' blind. This can happen when you're born or it can also happen when a retina full detaches. A retina detaching can definitely make a person see black for the rest of their life.

There is all different kinds of blindness but in the USA, when a person's visual acuity reaches 20/200 you are legally blind. This can not be corrected with prescription glasses. There are so many different diseases out there that can cause blindness that blind people can see things differently.

My left eye is 20/400 (beyond legally blind). I have a 'blank' (not black) spot, thus a blind spot, that covers the central vision. I can see peripherally. What this means is that I can see colors, shapes, movement, shadows. If you were in front of me I could see your hair color and perhaps your color of clothing but I couldn't make out your eyes, your nose, your mouth or even if you were male/female. This of looking at a clock on the wall and not being able to tell the time. Losing central vision is one type of blindness. Other people lose their peripheral vision and can only see centrally. Sometimes, on really bad vision days, I have an entire solar system of debris floating in my eyeball as if there was a blizzard going on.



My right eye is 20/25 corrected, but I'm fighting with everything I have to save my vision. In addition to PXE, my retinas are very fragile and tear and want to detach. I have had countless surgeries. I also have a colon cancer drug ( Avastin, Lucentis, Eyelea, etc) injected into my eye to help keep the offending hemorrhaging blood vessels at bay.

I've kept my disability quiet at work but I now only have 50% of my right eye left that can see. As my doctor said to me, you're working on one spare tire and it's running out of air. If I go blind in my right eye, I will no longer be able to drive a car or read a book. Thank goodness for audio books.

What does blindness look like? The words isolating and loneliness comes to mind.

 

[Evo]

I am a 45 year old woman and I've been fighting blindness for the last 9 years. I have a genetic disease called Pseudo Xanthoma Elasticum, www.PXE.org. There is no cure for this disease, yet. This is a race against time with stem cell research. I need new retinas. There is no such thing as a retina transplant.

I am so terribly sorry to hear of your condition. I hope that you can retain some vision.

 

[Skepticus]

a person born blind cannot tell you since he has never seen black.
a person who becomes blind... what does he see?

does he see black?... and if so.. why?

if a person has absolutely no nerves going from the eye to the brain.
does the brain register that as black? and why?

First we have to consider whether SEEING is a perception process by the brain and the mind; independent of signals from the eyes. If this is true, then a born-blind person or a blinded one will all "see" blackness. Otherwise, if seeing is a perception process which depends on signals from the eyes to exist, then a blind person and a blinded one will response by asking: "What does seeing means?" Buddha stated that the first case is true, the same with hearing, the sense of hearing does not disappear with no input (still hear, but hear nothing), and hear something again once there is a noise. You decide.

black is supposed to be the sum of all colors. if you take all colors of the rainbow and mix them together. do you not get black?

so black is not the lack of color but all colors seen at the same time.

No, the opposite. We get white light from the sun because of all the colors at once. Black is the absence of light, as when we see an object as black is because instead of being reflected, all light colors are absorbed by that object. The more absorption, the blacker it will look. If the absorption is selective, such as all but red is absorbed, then the red light will reflect out to our eyes to see the object as red.