# Are the blind human? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 21, 2009, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801 "2009-07-21T23:58:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bootis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e8c25b/32.png) [@Bootis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootis)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/21 "2009-07-22T03:08:30Z")
I don’t the the OP is asking if blind people are less than human. Or lacking humanity in a sense that should be insulting to blind people. Is a blind person’s experience so fundamentally different from a seeing person’s that it should be labeled something different than a "human experience? The problem is that the OP’s question is rooted from the fact that he “can’t even imagine what the reality of a circle is for a blind person, and this makes their thought processes alien to me.” Using that logic, I can’t even imagine what the reality of _life_ is for a woman, and this makes their thought processes alien to me. So of males and females, who gets claim to the term “humanity”, and who is deviated from it? Instead, I’d say humanity, in the sense that the OP is talking about, is the kingdom that encompases all who have an ego.with phylums male and female, and then broken down from there into infinite classes and orders and whatnot of which blind, deaf, little people, left handers, all are groups whose members have exclusive rights to claim a human experience from that group, and with it the right to roll their eyes at anyone who claims they know what it’s like to be like them. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/22 "2009-07-22T03:13:02Z")
> [@Bootis](#): > > I don’t the the OP is asking if blind people are less than human. Neither does anyone else. \*\*Indistinguishable \*\*nailed it. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/23 "2009-07-22T03:28:23Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > Of all our senses, vision is arguably the most important to us in terms of interaction with our environment Interacting with our environment isn’t the key thing separating us from other animals. Communication is. If a kid, abandoned in the middle of the forest, is somehow able to make it to maturity, he’ll still be essentially an animal. Humans need other humans to achieve the basic ability to think and act like a human. Blindness isn’t particularly a block to this and probably never has been since verbal communication is 95% as good as reading. I have heard some horror stories (from oldentimes) about poor education for the deaf or other handicaps that likely resulted in producing people less developed, and blindness might have been one of those, but in modern day I don’t think that there’s any particular reason to think that any other physics book or book poetry might not be written by a blind man. ---
**Author:** ![Bootis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e8c25b/32.png) [@Bootis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootis)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/24 "2009-07-22T03:33:28Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Neither does anyone else. \*\*Indistinguishable \*\*nailed it. Agreed. And the quoted statement was geared to the posters who seemed either seemed annoyed at the question or defending the blind from being considered less than human ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/25 "2009-07-22T03:58:45Z")
In my opinion, the defining characteristic of humanity is the functioning of the mind. Blind people, like sighted people, are rational thinking beings. The blind and the sighted share the same thought patterns. So blind people are human. Now if you want to argue a newborn baby or a person with senile dementia or a person in a coma is not human, I might accept your argument. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/26 "2009-07-22T04:30:52Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > In my opinion, the defining characteristic of humanity is the functioning of the mind. Blind people, like sighted people, are rational thinking beings. The blind and the sighted share the same thought patterns. So blind people are human. Yes, what sets us apart as human is our unique type of consciousness, not our ability to see. > [@](#): > > Now if you want to argue a newborn baby or a person with senile dementia or a person in a coma is not human, I might accept your argument. We have to include anyone born from a human. To the OP: So much of what we do, unique to humans, involves our hands. Would you say that someone without hands is not human? ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/27 "2009-07-22T10:01:38Z")
Most of the greatest debates and arguments in human history have started with “Wait, I’m not trolling. Hear me out” ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/28 "2009-07-22T13:03:52Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > Chances are, when you think of a circle in your head, there is a visual representation. What does a blind person perceive when they think of a circle? The fact is, I can’t even imagine what the reality of a circle is for a blind person, and this makes their thought processes alien to me. I’ve often wondered how people who have been blind since birth perceive shapes and objects in their head without any sort of visual reference. But if you want a blind person to understand the concept of a “circle” give them a circular shaped object to play with. The answer to your question is “yes”, by any common definition of the term “human”, blind people are human. Lacking vision does not make them less than human in any way that matters. > [@SenorBeef](#): > > Most of the greatest debates and arguments in human history have started with “Wait, I’m not trolling. Hear me out” I thought it was “Wait, I’m not that stoned. Hear me out.” ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/29 "2009-07-22T13:09:54Z")
Actually blind people, even totally and congenitally blind people, are capable of understanding (and imagining) spatial relationships just about as well as sighted people (for various reasons they do not _all_ get that good, but just being blind, in itself, is not what stops them). This has been demonstrated in numerous experimental studies [I could give cites, but they would be to stuff you wont be able to access without a university library], but it should not be a surprise. After all, we can perceive spatial relationships through touch, proprioception (body position sense), hearing, and even, to an extent, smell. Those senses may not get us the spatial information we need quite so quickly or easily (and, sometimes, so safely) and as sight, but they still get it. About the only things you cannot perceive without sight are color and brightness. I do not think not knowing about those is enough to make you non-human, even in the rather special sense of “human” used by the OP. (There is reason to believe that some women can see colors that cannot be seen by men, or the majority of women. [[PDF](http://www.klab.caltech.edu/cns186/papers/Jameson01.pdf)] Does this make them superhuman? No, it just means that it takes them even longer to find clothes that match. Color vision is really not all that important. Nobody even noticed that color blindness existed until [John Dalton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalton#Colour_blindness) realized he had it in the late 18th century, and many color blind people are still not aware of their condition. We probably only have our color vision capabilities because our monkey ancestors needed them to spot fruit amongst leaves.) ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/30 "2009-07-22T15:14:25Z")
This thread is a good example of why I’ve never been to get into philosophy. So much of it seems to boil down to semantics. The OP, from where I sit, seems to be merely a squabble about how we define “humanity”. Define it however you want, says I with a shrug. All that really matters is what you do about it. If you decide you can treat blind people poorly because they’re not human, I’ll think you’re a dick. If you treat them like anyone else, who cares about your personal definitions? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/31 "2009-07-22T20:56:11Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > The overwhelming supermajority of the human race has vision, and, more to the point, relies on vision as the dominant sense. The blind are excluded from this set of shared experiences. While the taste of pineapple is a fairly minor part of the human experience, I think we can agree that vision is of paramount importance. We may indeed agree on that particular case. Where we may differ is in the matter of whether that distinction means anything at all - either in a general sense, or in the specific context of ‘humanity’. I can’t see why it should. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/32 "2009-07-22T21:13:11Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > This is not to say that their experience is any worse (or better), simply different. If you’re still having difficulty understanding what I’m talking about, consider a very simple Platonic ideal, the circle. Chances are, when you think of a circle in your head, there is a visual representation. What does a blind person perceive when they think of a circle? The fact is, I can’t even imagine what the reality of a circle is for a blind person, and this makes their thought processes alien to me. > > Is there anyone out there who has been blind from birth? I’d be interested to know what your perspective is on this. Ved Mehta, who wrote for the New Yorker, published several volumes of memoirs, all of which I read after seeing him speak at Princeton. He was blind from near birth, came to the US to a school for the blind in Arkansas, then went to Harvard. He wrote extremely visually of things he clearly never saw in the traditional sense. I suspect we don’t understand shapes just because we’ve seen them, but that we’re hardwired to understand shapes, from evolution. Now he wasn’t quite blind from birth, but close enough. ---
**Author:** ![Heart\_of\_Dorkness](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/4bbf92/32.png) [@Heart\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heart_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/33 "2009-07-22T21:36:25Z")
Esref Armagan, blind from birth, can draw using three-point perspective. There are some examples of his drawings at the end of [this paper](http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~kennedy/Kennedy-Juricevic.pdf), which also makes note of other blind individuals making use of one-point perspective or other spatial properties in their drawings. There’s more information about him, and discussion of the “mind’s eye” in [this article](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524841.700-senses-special-the-art-of-seeing-without-sight.html). In short, there’s evidence that you don’t need to be able to actually see the world in order to “picture” it. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/34 "2009-07-22T21:38:38Z")
Personally, I think the defining characteristic of being a ‘human’ is the ability to communicate with others of the species. If one can effectively communicate in some fashion and connect to and with the mass of humanity then you are a human. So, someone who is blind would certainly so connect, and there for would be human. Same with someone who is deaf, or even someone who is mentally impaired. -XT ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/35 "2009-07-22T21:49:05Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Personally, I think the defining characteristic of being a ‘human’ is the ability to communicate with others of the species. If one can effectively communicate in some fashion and connect to and with the mass of humanity then you are a human. So, someone who is blind would certainly so connect, and there for would be human. Same with someone who is deaf, or even someone who is mentally impaired. > > -XT Also, several quadrapedal animals are included. I believe it’s it’s based on being of human genetic origin and “perception of humanity”. Thus we elimintate pets, humanoid robots, aliens, and rocks right off the bat with the first criteria, and with the second we eliminate things like tumors. (And possibly black people and/or used-car salesmen, depending on who you ask.) ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/36 "2009-07-23T07:57:25Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Originally Posted by **xtisme** > > Personally, I think the defining characteristic of being a ‘human’ is the ability to communicate with others of the species. If one can effectively communicate in some fashion and connect to and with the mass of humanity then you are a human. So, someone who is blind would certainly so connect, and there for would be human. Same with someone who is deaf, or even someone who is mentally impaired. > > Also, several quadrapedal animals are included. Oh get real. Just try having a conversation about this topic, or anything else on these boards; indeed anything above the level of “Want food” and “I love you” with your dog (or any other “quadrupedal” animal). Yes, there is a minimal level of communication between humans and animals, and a slightly more than more than minimal level between each other within certain animal species (some monkeys can tell the difference between a cry meaning “Look out, there is an eagle!” and one meaning “Look out there is a snake!”), but, pedantary aside, to all intents and purposes, **xtisme** is right. Perhaps we need to make a distinction, however, between being _people_ and being _humans_. If we did encounter another species with which we could communicate at the sort of high level that we can communicate with each other (space aliens presumably, since we have had no luck so far with other species on Earth) then I think we would effectively want to count them as people, but not as humans. “Human” often is, indeed, used to mean “member of our species,” but _people_, in the sense I am using it here, means part of our moral community. That is, it is reasonable to judge what they do as good or bad (and to respond appropriately), and they get to judge us in the same way. We don’t (if we are sensible) judge animals that way because we cannot communicate with them about motives and reasons and principles, and so we have no reason to believe they know the difference between right and wrong. Animals do not really have obligations to us (such as an obligation not to kill us needlessly) because they can’t (so far as we know) understand the idea of obligation. Presumably the **OP** did not mean to ask whether the blind are human in the sense of being members of the species _homo sapiens_. He meant to ask whether they are people, in the sense of being enough like the rest of us, psychologically, to be counted as part of the same moral community. The answer, of course, is yes they very certainly are. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/37 "2009-07-23T15:10:25Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Personally, I think the defining characteristic of being a ‘human’ is the ability to communicate with others of the species. If one can effectively communicate in some fashion and connect to and with the mass of humanity then you are a human. So, someone who is blind would certainly so connect, and there for would be human. Same with someone who is deaf, or even someone who is mentally impaired. > > -XT So we are human, not in and of ourselves, but only in relation to each other? Does a marooned individual, unable to communicate with humanity, cease being human? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/38 "2009-07-23T15:46:00Z")
I’m sure you could special case and one off me to death, finding caveats and exceptions right and left. But the essence of being human, IMHO, isn’t how we relate to each other, but how we communicate. Communication is really what sets us apart as a species, IMHO. So, your stranded human would still be human, even if s/he is never in contact with another human again. Perhaps s/he painted on the walls, or created a totem out of an old volley ball, or piled rocks together in a certain way, or collected sea shells. Whatever. -XT ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/39 "2009-07-23T21:35:55Z")
I would point out that in the animal and insect kingdoms troglobitic blindness often _speciates_ animals. Perhaps it could be said that blindness makes for speciation or a “race” of beings seperated by specialization. That someone or something perceives differently doesn’t necessarily change their nature, only their perception of the external. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801/40 "2009-07-23T21:47:35Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > I’m sure you could special case and one off me to death, finding caveats and exceptions right and left. But the essence of being human, IMHO, isn’t how we relate to each other, but how we communicate. Communication is really what sets us apart as a species, IMHO. So, your stranded human would still be human, even if s/he is never in contact with another human again. Perhaps s/he painted on the walls, or created a totem out of an old volley ball, or piled rocks together in a certain way, or collected sea shells. Whatever. > > -XT Given that blind people _themselves_ are a special case, I’d say that special cases matter in this discussion. Which would make me leery of adopting a definition that essentially says that newborn infants aren’t human, and calls that a ‘special case’. So personally I’ll stick with definitions that are, to my knowledge, special-case free. Admittedly the one I gave prior begs the question somewhat, but as far as I know it’s pretty accurate to how we actually define humanity. “If everybody thinks its a human, then it’s a human, until we learn something about it that definitely defines it as _not_ being human.” And in my perception lacking sight or hearing or limbs or language is not, itself, enough to disqualify a person from the title. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-blind-human/503801.md?page=3)