What do blind people see?
Ok, so before you say 'nothing' ...i think this should be considered.
It can be easy to assume that a blind person does not actually visualise anything in the visual modality...some may also say 'they see darkness' ...but do they? darkness is the opposite of light, and if you're blind, light cannot be seen, so to distinguish the opposite of light, you need to have first experienced light. Maybe a blind person DOES see purely darkness, but doesn't actually realise it because they can't compare it with light. Maybe they say green, blue, orange, red, yellow or all the colours of the rainbow...but because they've never experienced light, they cannot compare it.
I imagine it would depend on why they are blind in the first place. I don't know much about the reasons behind blindness but I imagine it can either be caused by damage in the eyes or damage in the brain. Maybe if it's the eyes that are the problem, it'd be the same as being in a dark room...or if it's the brain...well...who knows, it's easy to say blind people see 'nothing' but it's hard to imagine 'nothing'. One can assume that a lot of this all has to do with light receptors...but let's forget those for a second and think about our brains.
The brain of a blind person must be very interesting, their brain will be more active than ours i think, being able to visualise anything they want, of course, they'll have nothing to really base this (their visualisations) on without sight to begin with...but i imagine the rest of their senses will be hightened quite a bit and from touching, smelling and specifically hearing things they may be able to visualise things us sighted people may not be able to visualise at all. Visualisation may be more vivid and original as they don't have the reality of sight to distract them. Which brings me to my next point...what if a blind person were to start experimenting with psychoactive drugs like marijuana and acid? would they visualise anything at all? What about their dreams? what would they consist of? Would they hear more and thus visualise newer things, would they be able to draw it? convey it with sound? music? even so...without psychoactive drugs, this is already an amazing gift to have. This also reminds me of this.
I saw a pretty interesting post a while ago about how colour blind people see things differently to none colour blinded people (see link) that helped to put things in to pretty good perspective and has been very thought provoking yet again...What if the way i see red, is the way someone else see's blue...it would be impossible to tell, because from the ripe old age, someone would point to the colour and say 'this is blue' ...they would visualise and interpret that as blue and when they see that colour they would know it's blue, but what if we all seen colours differently...what if the way i see blue is the way you see red, we'd NEVER be able to tell, but due to the fact that we would have been taught all the colours at a young age, or any age, it wouldn't cause any complication because we wouldn't be able to visualise the colours in a different way...it's impossible to prove and disprove.
A lot of this is all very complex for me to imagine myself, it's difficult to imagine not having any sense of sight or visualisation within the brain, sure, if i were to be blinded now i'd be able to visualise, but it's baffling to imagine not having visualisation or anything to base our mental visualisations on other than using other senses, sound is what interests me the most...experiencing the world phonetically, connecting sound with vision and colour. This being the case, blindness could be classed as a gift in it's own right, as there would be ability to experience the world in a completely different way than most of us do, without reality's main distraction; television.
I've found few links on the internet that touch on this topic and i simply wanted to ask some questions about it myself, this post is merely speculation and definitely had no intentions to offend anyone.
It can be easy to assume that a blind person does not actually visualise anything in the visual modality...some may also say 'they see darkness' ...but do they? darkness is the opposite of light, and if you're blind, light cannot be seen, so to distinguish the opposite of light, you need to have first experienced light. Maybe a blind person DOES see purely darkness, but doesn't actually realise it because they can't compare it with light. Maybe they say green, blue, orange, red, yellow or all the colours of the rainbow...but because they've never experienced light, they cannot compare it.
I imagine it would depend on why they are blind in the first place. I don't know much about the reasons behind blindness but I imagine it can either be caused by damage in the eyes or damage in the brain. Maybe if it's the eyes that are the problem, it'd be the same as being in a dark room...or if it's the brain...well...who knows, it's easy to say blind people see 'nothing' but it's hard to imagine 'nothing'. One can assume that a lot of this all has to do with light receptors...but let's forget those for a second and think about our brains.
The brain of a blind person must be very interesting, their brain will be more active than ours i think, being able to visualise anything they want, of course, they'll have nothing to really base this (their visualisations) on without sight to begin with...but i imagine the rest of their senses will be hightened quite a bit and from touching, smelling and specifically hearing things they may be able to visualise things us sighted people may not be able to visualise at all. Visualisation may be more vivid and original as they don't have the reality of sight to distract them. Which brings me to my next point...what if a blind person were to start experimenting with psychoactive drugs like marijuana and acid? would they visualise anything at all? What about their dreams? what would they consist of? Would they hear more and thus visualise newer things, would they be able to draw it? convey it with sound? music? even so...without psychoactive drugs, this is already an amazing gift to have. This also reminds me of this.
I saw a pretty interesting post a while ago about how colour blind people see things differently to none colour blinded people (see link) that helped to put things in to pretty good perspective and has been very thought provoking yet again...What if the way i see red, is the way someone else see's blue...it would be impossible to tell, because from the ripe old age, someone would point to the colour and say 'this is blue' ...they would visualise and interpret that as blue and when they see that colour they would know it's blue, but what if we all seen colours differently...what if the way i see blue is the way you see red, we'd NEVER be able to tell, but due to the fact that we would have been taught all the colours at a young age, or any age, it wouldn't cause any complication because we wouldn't be able to visualise the colours in a different way...it's impossible to prove and disprove.
A lot of this is all very complex for me to imagine myself, it's difficult to imagine not having any sense of sight or visualisation within the brain, sure, if i were to be blinded now i'd be able to visualise, but it's baffling to imagine not having visualisation or anything to base our mental visualisations on other than using other senses, sound is what interests me the most...experiencing the world phonetically, connecting sound with vision and colour. This being the case, blindness could be classed as a gift in it's own right, as there would be ability to experience the world in a completely different way than most of us do, without reality's main distraction; television.
I've found few links on the internet that touch on this topic and i simply wanted to ask some questions about it myself, this post is merely speculation and definitely had no intentions to offend anyone.
5 Comments:
I could talk about this for hours. The visual system is something I've got a decent memory of. In terms of colour, everyone sees the basic colours roughly the same. The difference occurs in our interpretation of things, and genetic / gender variations. TTYT!
I often think of these things. i cant even begin to comprehend how a blind person thinks, or what they see. but im so curious.
blind people do not see anything, not even black, the same way you cannot see behind the back of your head. when you close your eyes, you cannot see due to their being something in the way. now turn your eyes as far as you can left/right and you do not see a black spot, you simply see nothing, the same way blind people see nothing.
before i googled this, i was thinking this: what can a blind person see? nothing. wait, then the "nothing" is something. so what color is the "nothing"? is it white or black? it cant be neither black or white because them blind people DO see black or white, so blind ppl wouldnt be "blind". -3 secs mind silence- Damn.
what they see can not be spoken or turned into a thought. this is the must logical conclusion i arrived. i think is impossible to imagine or think about not seen any colors or visuals. the "nothingness" can not be grasp by mind.
@quantum77 Right. i have done this. and u cant define it. it cant be imagined because the imagination requires colors and u see no colors at the back of your head. trying to imagine or think about nothing is like trying to jump without jumping.
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