I was wondering about this. Do blind people see black like when you close your eyes or do they just not “see” anything.
I figure there are little to no blind dopers but maybe someone knows the answer to this.
Even if there were a hundred blind dopers… .how could they tell you what color they “see”.
I would have to bet they just do not see, period. No blackness not spots… nothing.
Maybe if we found a man who once could see but now is blind, then he would know what colors look like and he could tell you what he is “seeing” now that he is blind.
What do you see with your elbow?
Or…
Since you were born fleg, can you describe just what it is you ptaav?
When you are looking straight ahead, it is not the case that you see blackness behind you. You simply don’t see.
you all seem to be forgetting that eyes aren’t the only things involved in seeing. you have something called a brain. putzi.
do you have anything to receive sight input from the back of your head, or your elbow? no. that is why “You simply don’t see.”
but you do have something in your brain to receive input from your eyes.
the question i have, is this part of the brain still active when one is born blind? what about when someone becomes blind?
as for me, i have friggin’ clue.
Well, I am not really blind and please the IPU I never will be.
I am however past legally blind, and have been since I was 14 (sigh, I’m much older now). I think a lot of people are legally blind actually. For most of us it is correctable. I am heavily myopic, and can almost see to the end of my nose. (-11.5)
What I see is akin to a camera lense that is twisted completely out of focus. Basically I can see color and motion, but not much resembling shape. If this were a hundred years ago I would be in a school for the blind or something like it. Glass glasses would be so thick and heavy that the bridge of my nose could not carry them. Thank science for contacts too, I treasure being able to have peripheral vision. Also, depth perception is different when wearing glasses vs. contacts.
A blind friend from college can see the sun. “Well, It’s pretty damn bright!”
She lost her sight as a small child and “sees” in dreams. I would think that something like that would really hack one off, but I never asked about it and she moved away many years ago.
Well, I think this question can only be answered by someone who was able to see and has learned their colors, but then went blind at a later age.
But, just a WAG, I think they would see all black, since black is the absence of all color.
It depends on the cause of the blindness… If a person doesn’t have lenses in their eyeballs, or has lenses which are extremely misshapen, then they’ll be able to see one big blur of color (or maybe if it’s not so bad, two or three smaller blurs of color), but no shapes or details, similar to what aenea is describing. The retina in that case is still detecting light, it’s just not focused properly into an image. On the other hand, a person might have cataracts covering the entire eye, in which case what the person sees would be much like what you see when you’ve got your eyes closed: Mostly just darkness, but they might be able to tell when they’re looking at the Sun or something similarly bright. If a person doesn’t have eyes at all, or has damage to the portion of the brain that interprets sight, though, I have no clue what they would “see”, and I’m not sure if it’s possible to find out.
I think in people with brain damage the ‘back of the head’ analogy is the most accurate. I’ve heard of one interesting case of brain damage-caused blindness. In this case multiple regions of the brain were damaged to the effect that the man who had grown up fully sighted became not only stone blind but forgot what it was to see. This poor soul could not understand what he had lost as he could no longer think in visual terms. He not only lost his vision, he lost all conception of vision. Getting back on topic, the hardest thing in the world is to try and describe a sense you have to someone with no knowledge of that sense. It is describing a daffodil to a blind watersnake. What common ground do you stand on? What knowledge, what shared experiences can you assume as basic and build from? Obviously, communication is very much based on knowledge held in common. Without such knowledge all attempts to communicate ideas break down. Which is why this question cannot be answered in exact terms. I still think the ‘back of the head’ analogy is very good, though. Kudos to Kilgore Trout.
uhhh…
It’s a candy bar, Kilgore, just eat it and shut up!
–Tim
What’s the problem, Kilgore? I said that the question cannot be answered in exact terms. As in one cannot give a description of the scenario without making analogies. And your analogy is the best I’ve seen.
On a related note:
A good friend of mine works with blind children and routinely uses the following process to teach these kids about colors:
If he wants them to understand what “blue” is about he’ll have them hold onto a piece of ice, “red” is touching something hot, “green” is going outside and listening to the wind in the trees. He has s few others but I can’t recall them. He also has the patience of Job.
Well, I’d imagine that if one were blind due to having one’s eye’s ripped out somehow, or a non-functional set of retinas or optic nerves, one would “see” black. When you cover your eyes completely so that you can’t see anything, you see black because the photoreceptors (you know, rods and cones) in your retinas aren’t firing (due to lack of light hitting them). If one’s retinas don’t function, then one’s photoreceptors won’t fire; no message sent to the brain, so no color, just black. If one’s optic nerves don’t work, then even if your photoreceptors do fire, the message won’t reach your brain; same effect. What was I talking about? Oh, yeah. Basically, if the part of your brain that interprets sight works, but can’t recieve information, then one would see black (I’m 98% sure about this).
If the part of the brain responsible for interpreting sight doesn’t function properly, I have no idea what that would be like.
If one’s retinas, optic nerves, and brain work fine, but the light entering one’s eyes doesn’t focus properly (due to problems with the lens, eye shape, cataracts, or damage), then one would most likely just see a big blur.
I’m not blind in any way, so I’m just basing this on what I learned in high shcool biology class. You can trust me on this, though.
sparks.
“Blindness” is a generic term (like deafness) for not being able to see well enough to function. There are different types with different symptoms. Someone with severe cataracts will see blurs, although if it’s bright enough, they may be able to make out different colors. Someone with RP gradually loses the sight right in front of them, but retains peripheral vision. Think of a donut.
My mother in law recently suffered a stroke that has severly damaged her field of view. Now she simply has no vision on her left side. It’s not “black”, it’s simply not there.
2 things - when I sighted person is in total darkness ( & I mean total, not just really dark but street light outside), after a while, they start to see patterns, or flashes of light, because (if I remember the reason right) their brain is used to receiving input from their optic nerves & “tries to fill in” - so someone fully blind who was sighted, might see something like this (at least for a while until the brain adapts).
The other thing - “If the part of the brain responsible for interpreting sight doesn’t function properly, I have no idea what that would be like.” - there was a TV series about how the brain works on recently & when they covered sight, they had a specialist who works with people who suffer from this. One of them could see, but could not identify shapes/items without touching them, or “remembering” what that image meant before - ie a visual image & then identifying it. He could draw an item (in absentia ie not an observation picture) well if asked to, but could not then recognise the shape that he had drawn if later shown it. They said that it proved that the part of the brain that stores/interprets images is different from the part that actually receives the information, but they still don’t fully understand the interaction between them.
Sorry if this is a bit long…as one of my friends says “if I’m typing, they think I’m working!”
I once knew a blind man who could see the shadows, or outlines, of certain very light or very dark things, allowing him to detect some movement. Does this still make him completely blind??
You see, Red 2, I am as much in the dark as you are on this issue.
MU AHAHAHAHAHAHA… Gee I’m funny. 
:rolleyes:
that would make him legally blind