Depends on the kind of blindness. Most blind people aren't 100% blind, and can make out something, be it light or not light, or vague movement, or just typical vision but especially blurry.
Those with total blindness, such as those born without eyes or without an optic nerve don't "see" anything. Which is a really hard concept to grasp for people who can see because, well, they have always seen, and it's a fundamental part of their experience. But it's not really possible to experience it for a person who can see.
There's a really good way to illustrate to people with sight how people who were born blind don't even "see black."
Ask a person to close their eyes and tell you what they see. They will most likely say black (or red, if there is enough light hitting their eyelids).
Now ask them to open their eyes and tell you what they see in the direction that is 180° from wherever their eyes are pointing without turning their head, looking at reflections, etc. This is essentially asking them to describe the visual sensation of seeing out the back of their head.
There will be a clear difference between "seeing black/red" with their eyes closed and the sensation (or lack thereof) of "looking" out the back of their head.
EDIT: wow, didn't expect this to blow up like it did. Thx for all the upvotes, awards, and comments!
What a different world that would be, to just be made up of only touch, smell, noises, movement and feelings.
I imagine it'd be full of songs and bruises and the scent of flowers, birdsong, noises of neighbours going about their day, thoughts of friends, their lovely voices, and radio show plots, careful movement, wardrobe dust, the occasional fearful touching of a mysterious wet spot, and the familiar smell of daily poo
This is unrelated but related in a round about way.
People born def, who have never heard sounds, and learn sign language have sign language as their first and only language. It doesn't represent another language that's their language.
If that person then becomes schizophrenic, they don't hear voices. They see (hallucinate) disembodied hands signing to them.
Native signers who are born Deaf don't always have their local signed language as their "first and only" language, to clarify. Until more recently there was a big effort to get Deaf people to attempt to read lips and communicate in their local spoken language (oralism) no matter how difficult it was. And MANY Deaf adults have learned at least one other language besides their native signed language. Not all, and that's why it's vital to have sign language interpreting services because captions don't cut it if you can't read the local language, but it's perfectly possible for most Deaf people to learn to read and write other languages.
I have strabismus since birth so one of my eyes have been 'turned off' by the brain. Optically it's perfect, but it's the brain that's not recognizing much of vision in this eye. People don't understand what it feels like, so I explain it like this: look straight ahead, then take a book and hold it in your peripheral vision. Now try to read something from this page without refocusing your gaze. Impossible, right?
Same here! I have wildly different prescription strengths but I tell people the worse eye is actually my good eye because I can’t really use the other one at all. My vision is essentially everything I see from my right eye, and my left eye really is just peripheral. It would take me a good 5+ minutes to read a single page of a book, assuming I don’t give up first from the resulting headache. I like your description a lot
Reflections are fun though. I remember at work during covid they put up a sneeze guard. It was clear enough to see through, but reflective enough that I could see behind myself. I got to experience 360 degree vision, and it's way easier to handle than you would maybe think.
If I could think of a similar wearable setup I'd use it all the time, but I think it only worked so well because the sheet of plastic was so big.
Maybe something like smart glasses with a backwards camera?
I wish everyone had seen the same thing I did, it's pretty cool but I'm not describing it super well. It's fun to know where everything and everyone is without needing to look around.
For my vision, I don't even need to do that. Start with telling them to close both eyes and describe what they see, which will be something like a dark colour.
Now tell them to close only one eye but keep one open, and describe what they see with the closed eye. For me, it's literally nothing. I don't see the closed eyelid anymore. My brain just disregards any visual signal from that eye and only gets vision from the open one.
My doctor tells me that I'll eventually go blind and I've seen this question asked a lot of times and the "I see nothing" response is hard to grasp, but your explanation is the closest I've ever come to me understanding it. Thanks.
I’ve heard a different analogy: if you want to imagine what it’s like to be truly blind and not see, it’s like how you aren’t able to see out of your elbow. It’s just not there
I completely lost sight in one of my eyes due to nerve damage, and I have a hell of a time trying to explain what I see. I tried the "look out of your elbow", didn't work. I'm going to try what you're suggesting.
I've heard of another way to explain it that I think works as well. Have someone close one eye and ask what they see out of the closed eye. Your brain ignores what you normally see with your eyes closed when doing this. It's a good explanation of "seeing nothing"
I've tried explaining and questioning this thought to friends before and people have called me crazy. I usually ask, "Where is the edge of our vision, and why does it not fade to black its just nothing" or something to that effect
And people always say "It's because you dont see it, what you cant see doesnt exist" and that doesnt answer the question im trying to ask
It lowkey makes me panic, to try to focus on the edge of my vision. Riding passenger in a car and trying to follow the lights on cars in my peripherals leaving my vision, I cant figure it out
If you look through binoculars, or a telescope, there is a hard(*) edge to black, but not with vision. It breaks my brain
but because they saw once whats behind them they can still have the image in their mind. i find it so hard to understand how not to see or saw anything ever. i think that every person in this situation “sees” what their brains come up with.
A bat can hear and navigate in ultrasound, as can dolphins. Pigeons can navigate by sensing magnetic fields. Bees can see in ultra violet.
Trying doing that. You can't. Now you know what a blind persons sees.
FYI for anyone who is wondering, based on information from a friend who was rendered completely blind by a head injury that destroyed his optic nerves due inter cranial bleeding, that small percentage of individuals who are completely blind face some serious negative health consequences because our bodies maintain diurnal rhythms based on our perception of light and dark. If you cannot perceive day/night your sleep gets seriously messed up. My friend has to take a medication to help maintain his sleep patterns.
And yeah, for everyone else it depends on the type of blindness and possibly stage of blindness - for example, macular degeneration can start out barely noticeable and progress to massively obscured vision
He doesn’t see anything, his eyes and brain have zero connection.
If you are asking whether he still dreams or thinks in images then yes, he still does have the ability to conceptualize colors and objects because he developed those pathways during 30 years of work as a cabinet maker. He still designs clocks and cabinets in his head and has a wood shop with tools made for blind folks, such as a talking tape measure. He builds them in his shop and chooses finishes based on what he can feel of the wood grain. He does beautiful work.
Think about what you see beyond the edges of your vision. You don't see darkness behind you, or a black frame around your field of vision, There's just nothing.
Rather than involving your vision at all, I go with "what can you see out of your left elbow right now". With that level of blindness it's not seeing black, or seeing nothing, it's not seeing.
The human brain actually does a ton of work in creating our perceptive understanding of the world around us. Even normal vision is pretty flawed, and the brain is constantly patching holes, blind spots, obstructions, etc either with data from other senses or what it assumes to be there.
If you don't have vision, the brain probably just leans very heavily on other senses when creating your internal map of reality.
God I love this topic so much. I want to add for anyone reading your comment that while your whole eye can detect light and dark, your eyes can only detect color in the center ~30% of your vision. Any color you see surrounding the middle of what you see is filled in by your brain.
Thats also why in extreme dark it's easier to see stuff if you don't look right at it, the middle of your eye gives up some space that would detect light and dark to detect colors.
Also-also, at a certain dimness the color sensing part turns off because it isnt useful. If you pay attention in very low light, you can catch your brain filling in color (simply from what it remembers or expects) to objects that, once you notice, are in greyscale.
Because you only see brightness in the dark you tend to (even sometimes subconsciously) be able to see edges of things more easily than surfaces. Stuff like corners of walls, edges of furniture, etc. Firefighters train in very low light and part of that is training your brain and eyes to pick up on those edges to navigate.
I was checking to see if someone already said the elbow thing, because it's really fascinating how it's both such a descriptive metaphor, and simultaneously completely incomprehensible. It's one of those things where you have to experience it to understand it. It would be fascinating to try, but I'm sure not lining up to have my eyes ripped out in the near future
The best way I heard it described is that true blindness isn't what you see when your eyes are closed it's what your right eye sees with only your left eye open.
I once heard it described as, try to see out the back of your head. That's what true blindness is like. It's just nothing. More so than even just having your eyes closed.
Can you move your hand? Legs? Now try to move a tail...
You trying to move a tail is how a blind person without optic nerves would experience sight, they don't know, never had, and never will get that stimulus.
I've been to a "blind museum" twice - basically a place where you can experience an hour of total darkness and be faced with a number of real world challenges such as crossing a simulated "street", navigating a living room and ordering things at a cafe.
After the first fifteen minutes, your brain stops trying to see things. I can't even say whether my eyes were open or closed. All your attention goes into hearing and feeling. Basically, it's dark, but it no longer registers as dark, it's just the absence of meaningful stimuli.
Leaving the museum and seeing daylight for the first time again is the strangest sensation.
It's a complicated one for sure, because they would "see" the same thing that people born entirely without sight would see, nothing. But they would have a visual reference from when they were sighted, and so would still have a minds eye of what things visually looked like, and so I'd imagine would comprehend and experience the situation differently.
But this goes beyond my knowledge or experience of learning about this stuff, so someone else may have to go into more detail who is more educated on the subject.
I'm legally blind but my vision is hard to describe. I can only read the top line of a eye chart which is typically the cut off for legal blindness but my vision is more based on distance and detail. I could see a brick house from the road, tell it's brick but not see the individual bricks. That sort of thing. Enlargement isn't always a helping factor either.
Humans meet an alien race, and this alien race has telepathic powers and use it regularly to communicate and interact with their surroundings.
You never had any telepathic powers, so you have absolutely no idea what they are experiencing. This is how the blind (probably) experience imagining sight. If they never had it, they have absolutely no concept of how it works or what things look like.
Can I just piggyback on your comment to say I heard recently that Stevie Wonder has synesthesia--when he hears a certain note, he sees colors. And I can't stop thinking about what, why, and how. Like how does he know the B-flat or whatever is *green.* He has no point of reference.
I once heard it described as, try to see out the back of your head. That's what true blindness is like. It's just nothing. More so than even just having your eyes closed.
Being blind in one eye is hard to describe but you don't see anything, no light or dark, like the above post.
To describe 'nothing' is something that I haven't tried to do.
If they were born blind then they just do not have the concept of sight at all. It's just nothing. Their brain either doesn't know how or cannot process it.
I see people try to explain it as "what was it like before you were born?" Which you obviously cannot know because you did not exist.
if someone is truly blind, then the answer can be illustrated as such:
what do you see out the back of your head? it's literally nothing. not darkness, or blackness, but literally nothing. no matter how much you try, you get no image out of there. that's basically it. whatever you "see" out of the back of your head is what thorough, true blindness is.
you might be like "oh but that's different," but there are creatures (mostly prey) who can literally see behind them because of eye placement. compared to such creatures, we are also blind (behind us), and it's a similar point of comparison: it's not like we see things like a deer except the part of our vision extending behind us is black; rather we literally see nothing behind us.
If you want to feel it yourself in a more tangible way close one eye but not the other and ask yourself what you are seeing out of that eye that's closed.
This is what made sense to me. You don't see half vision and half black when you close one eye. There's just nothing where your closed eye would see. Close both eyes and there's suddenly a field of black on the 1st closed eye side. Really made me realize we can't really know what it's like
People are saying the analogy is to look out of your elbow or the back of your head or something, but I don't think that's really helpful because it doesn't make any sense as an exercise.
Here's an easier way to conceptualize what a completely blind person "sees": close one eye, and while keeping the other eye open, describe what you see out of the closed eye.
You don't see darkness. You "see" nothing.
Darkness is zero light. But that's not what's entering their brain. Blindness is null light. The absence of any stimulus, even darkness.
Here's a secret... most blind people aren't totally blind, some couldn't read ANY of the letters on an eye chart, but could still make out shapes like a stop sign. Some could make out light or dark. Kind of like some people have to walk slow, some with a cane, some with a wheelchair.
But if you're totally blind... like a pirate and there's just no eyeball there
Put one hand over one eye. It's kinda like that. Not that it's darkness... it's more... nothing.
And some people who are blind can read large print! I have friends who rely upon braille and others who will read their uno cards albeit more slowly. The spectrum of ability is very wide and interesting!
A surprising number of you who have been trying to explain this have actually gotten it right. We... do not see. It's not that we see black. It's not that we think everything is dark. We have no idea what light is. We have no idea what darkness is. There is no blankness where we expect something visual to be. That's because ... there is nothing visual at all in our frame of reference. I am totally blind and have been so since around the time I was one year old. I, of course, have absolutely no memory of what seeing was like. The world for me is only perceived with my remaining four senses. I am aware of the existence of my eyes as part of my face, but beyond that, my eyes do nothing for me, except of course water due to allergies, sadness, or itch because of an eyelash caught in one.
Neat. I learned something today. Sounds like closing one eye means you see something similar to the non-awareness that we don't see. I'll have to tell the next sighted person about that trick when they ask me this question. So yeah. Asking what we see is actually an oxymoron. We don't see nothing even. We... do not see. We feel, taste, smell, hear, but we do not see even nothingness. Seeing nothingness would be seeing something. The presence of nothingness is still something perceived.
I'd be more interested in how people who are blind from birth leverage the senses they can experience to create a "picture" of the world and how that differs from those who can see. Presumably their interpretation of touch and hearing is much richer and more encompassing.
We see darkness because our eyes are always 'looking', like radio static it's still trying
Someone born completely blind cannot see darkness the same way we cannot see from the back of our skulls, there's nothing there to get that input to begin with
I'm blind. But blindness isn't all or nothing, it can vary.
For me, when I don't wear my glasses, everything is blurry. This also applies to up close. I took my glasses off typing this, and while I can tell partially what I'm typing, it's just blurry and smeared. Think of writing something with a pencil and trying to erase it with an eraser that is terrible.
But my experience isn't representative of everyone else's.
It’s different for everyone. The YouTuber Molly Burke is blind and has talked about this. A lot of blind people still see some things. Like colors, shapes, or shadows. I think Molly Burke said she also sees random bursts of light that aren’t really there, so it’s not just darkness for her. There’s a couple Paul and Matthew who have a YouTube channel. Paul is blind and iirc his vision is like looking through a little peephole and it’s blurry and I think fuzzy around his field of vision
They don’t see. And it isn’t similar to when you close your eyes. They don’t see black - they see nothing. A common way to get a sighted person to understand this is to ask them what they “see” out of their elbow.
What do you see out of your elbow? Well that’s what blind people see.
I personally think the best way to actually visualize it is to look straight, take your hand, and slowly move it from your peripheral vision toward behind you. It disappears into nothing. Not black.
I'll say this while we wait for a genuinely blind person to weigh in, or at least someone who's medically qualified to discuss it:
It depends on the level of blindness, many clinically blind people aren't actually 100% blind, but rather functionally blind, they can't see detail far enough away from them to be able to even navigate a well lit and highly contrasted room.
But they do see stuff, it's mostly just blurry lights and shapes.
Then there are fully blind people, I only know one personally who was completely blind from birth, he see's nothing, not black, not white, nothing, the entire idea of seeing anything just doesn't exist to him, it was a concept I couldn't actually fully understand, but from what I understand that's not the most common kind of blindness.
I've heard it described as something sighted individuals can't comprehend. The darkness you and I experience when we close our eyes is different from the nothing a totally blind person "sees," and it can't be described without experiencing it first hand.
I really like his videos because he doesn't just try to explain his world to us, but he also tries to understand concepts that sighted people take for granted. He's got a great curious personality too.
I highly recommend his YouTube channel, The Tommy Edison Experience.
When I went blind in one eye from a concussion to the retina, I thought I was seeing, but the left affected eye seemed like translucent water. When I looked at my phone, I could read it fine. Put a hand over my right eye and the everything was blank translucent.
The brain patched in what it thinks the left eye should see when the right is open. But the left sees nothing. Not blackness.
But my optical nerve etc was intact. Took about an hour to go away.
Also had this happen to half the left eye with a visual migraine about 2-3 times. Upper left diagonal half with a flowing bubbly translucence.
I want worried about it any of the times, which shows the brain was acting concussed. Normally sick a thing world freak me out!
I heard of a great analogy that really made me think about this very question. When we close our eyes we “see” black. Without the optic nerve, a blind man sees nothing.
It would be the same thing as asking you what you “see” when using your big toe to look at things.
I ended up about 90% blind for two months. My blindness affected my central vision in the form of dark spots, kind of like when someone takes a picture of you with a flash and you get those after images of the flash.
I could see out of my peripheral vision only, so I could navigate the world ok, I could pretend to look people in the eyes while talking to them, but if I needed to use a public bathroom, I'd need to ask someone which door to use, stuff like that.
Here's a good experiment. Take one hand and hold it directly in front of your face, about 2 inches away. Stare only at the palm of your hand and then look around using your peripheral vision only. That was my life for a few months!
Most blind people are not 100% blind, there is normally a tiny bit of vision remaining, but it depends on how they went blind or if they were blind from birth. Some blind people see through a kind of really dense fog others lose all peripheral vision and only see a small window directly ahead others see only peripheral vision and have a blank spot directly ahead.
Not an expert so feel free to call me out, but I'm going to say that "what do blind people see" is the wrong question, because there's literally no visual information going to their brain. Light enters their eyes, but it doesn't get processed by the brain in the same sense that if your hand goes numb you lose your sense of touch because the signal isn't reaching your brain. I guess blind people just have numb eyes in a sense.
I would also say we don't see darkness with our eyes closed, we just see the back of our eyelids and without light the back of our eyelids are very dark. If we could backlight our eyes, closing our eyelids would just look very fleshy and close-up all the time which would kinda suck.
Also as an aside, do darker skinned people see "more" darkness with their eyes closed than lighter skinned people? Like does the pasty ginger kid's eyelids let in more light than someone with vanta black pigmentation? Thin curtains compared to heavy blackout curtains?
I'm currently able to see quite well with one eye, functionally blind in the other. I have been completely functionally blind following complications from surgery. I was using a white cane and other aids for a year.
My right eye gets some muted and very blurred vision, and it's missing 80% of a standard field of view. As such I can see light and colours, can sometimes pick movement, but n detail at all. So no capacity to read, some capacity to not walk into walls, but no ability to see steps if walking.
But I think your main question relates best to that 80% of my field of vision that is missing. I'm only aware this is the case from eye tests, to me those parts I'm missing simply do not exist. My brain considers the blurred out muted vision I get to be my whole field of view. So I don't see a black zone then a 20% patch of light.
Like all our senses, our brains filter and interpret the inputs to give us our vision, hearing etc. Our brains cut out all the bits that aren't important, including seeing our noses and skipping the in between parts when we move our eyes quickly to focus on something else.
For people with zero sight at all, it's akin to what you "feel" when you touch a completely numbed part of your body - you don't even feel at all. There's simply no sensation.
Not blind nor am i qualified to speak on it but id guess it's as if you see nothing because there is no "vision" signal at all coming to your brain.
Think of it like a desktop PC with a webcam attached. Before you plug in the webcam does the PC know what it's looking at or even what vision is? no. It needs the webcam to even have the concept of "vision". the webcam converts analogue data to a digital signal. That signal is what the brain recognises and understands as "vision".
No webcam = no eyes = no signal = no concept of vision for those born blind.
Sharks have special sensory organs that let them sense electrical fields. This is called electroreception. What do you sense with your electroreception? That's the same thing as blind people see.
I am assuming you're not a shark, if you're a shark this analogy kind of falls apart.
Close one eye and use your other open eye to see out of the closed eye. That’s what total blindness is. You see nothingness. There is NO there! It’s nothing. Not black. But nothing.
Will heavily depend on the type of blindness. Some types of blindness are just severe near-sighted/far-sightedness, some people have a black spot in the center of their vision (common with macular degeneration), some people who have a brain side problem causing their blindness might see swirls of color or have their vision appear warped.
For total blindness though, especially total blindness from birth, it's hard to explain it in a way that makes sense. I've heard though that it's like trying to see out of your elbow, or the back of your head. It's not blackness, it's just... Nothing.
My right eye hasn’t ever work, so I can only half answer. But imagine trying to look out of your elbow. You cant see with it, so you can’t see black, red, or blurriness. It’s just nothing.
If they're truly blind and have never seen before and don't have the capability, then they don't see anything, not even nothing. It's not a sense that they have. It's like asking you what you sense with echolocation. Not even nothing, because it's not a sense that you have.
Close your right eye, then place your hand tightly over your left eye. Reopen your right eye. What do you see out of your left eye? That’s what totally blind people ‘see’.
Understanding not seeing is not that difficult. Close your eyes and focus your attention in front of you. You see the "darkness" you mention. Widen your focus to your whole field of vision. Then focus your attention outside of it. Like behind you. What do you see behind you? Nothing.
But when we “think” or imagine something we do it in our mind so that makes it really hard to comprehend a blind person isn’t visualizing it behind their eyeballs. I know that sounds simple but it explains why a “seeing” person can’t understand the concept.
I’m not sure if I saw it shared here, but people who are blind at birth see nothing. So, to imagine this, you can close your eyes and try to see out of your elbow.
See how impossible that is? Or how blank? That’s how it is to be completely blind.
I’m not sure if I saw it shared here, but people who are blind at birth see nothing. So, to imagine this, you can close your eyes and try to see out of your elbow.
See how impossible that is? Or how blank? That’s how it is to be completely blind.
Generally? It depends on how it progresses, but the main thing would be as follows:
If it's macular degeneration, they'll be able to see peripherally but not centrally until gradual blindness to hand motion/light perception.
If it's glaucoma, they'll see centrally but not peripherally until it becomes a pinhole, then hand motion/light perception.
If it were an untreated retinal detachment, it will depend on where it's located and if it involves the macula. It may be partial field blindness or full field.
If it's diabetic retinopathy, you'll see stationary black spots where blood vessels have burst and/or where lasers have treated.
If it's keratoconus, the vision just gets increasingly blurred/hazy until hand motion/the cornea is compromised enough to necessitate transplant.
If optic nerve destruction or they just aren't present (of whatever origin), there's literally no neurological connection to "see" out of anymore so you just...don't. Hard to explain when you can't experience it.
These are the most common things bringing people in for treatment to prevent blindness. There are a variety of ways to go blind, but thankfully most are treatable well before that point. GET YOUR EYES CHECKS KIDS.
One myself (not blind): I took some blood pressure lowering meds once and was sitting around (more low pressure) and the blood to my optic nerve was not quite getting there. The result was the nerve started shutting down and I had what I can only describe as a “two foot hole” in my vision. No matter where I looked, from my right eye there was this silvery blackish-blue blot in my line of sight, roughly where you’d call left of center and down a little bit. Completely terrifying. Immediately jumped up started doing jumping jacks, then called doctor — too low blood pressure and we stopped the meds lol.
Other account: I knew a kid in high school who was born blind, still had optic nerves but couldn’t see/process anything visually except when he got lights REAL close (like a bulb right in front of him or looking into a microscope) he could see sparkles of red and blue. Otherwise he didn’t describe it as black. He called it “nothing”
For some of those who have never had sight in one or both eyes and I’m sure for many more.
Imagine the phrase “he has eyes in the back of his head”
Imagine the whole world has a third eye in the back of their heads, but yours never worked.
Take a moment and focus your attention on what your left eye is seeing.
Now move that focus to what your right eye is seeing.
Now move your focus to the eye in the back of your head. Do you see a spot of blackness? Nope, on that spot is “nothing” you don’t see darkness back there, there is just “nothing”.
If you want to experience seeing nothing. Close your one eye and cover it with your hand. Keep the other eye open. Now what you see with your closed eye is what total blindness would feel like.
I feel like this has either already been asked before , or maybe should be posted elsewhere or by itself , but ... :
Do people who were born blind dream ? Is it all auditory and feeling sensations, or is there any sort of visual aspect (I just wonder if something like, just for example past lives, could be potentially proven or disproven by studying the answers to questions such as these) ?
Something I’ve also wondered is where completely blind (since birth) people locate themselves. Usually we locate ourselves somewhere behind the eyes, but that is only because the world mostly seems to flood in via the eyes, and other people always face us - and look into our eyes - when communicating.
So would a blind person locate themselves somewhere closer to the mouth or the nose, assuming those sense organs are functioning?
My mom was blind due to a brain injury, so nothing wrong with her eyes themselves.
She said everything was "dark-ish" and people/objects were solid black figures.
Oddly, the one thing she could always see was the color red. So it was her favorite color. I'll never forget she had a pair of earrings she always wore that were big red lips, her absolute favorite, she would never leave the house without them and I would help her put them in every morning as a child. It's one of my fondest memories; making sure her ears were never "nakey" without her kisses. 😭
If someone is blind from birth, they typically have no real concept of sight. They are unlikely to have random colours/sparkles/noise-patterns the way that sighted people do when it's very dark.
So I began to think: some animals have senses that we don't.
How would we describe it if:
a bird asks us "what's it like having no (built in) sense of magnetic north/direction"
a shark asking "what's it like not detecting bio-electrical impulses of nearby animals"
Other things that some animals detect, that we can't sense:
UV Light, Infrared light, polarized light,
There are also senses that vastly improve on what humans can do:
echolaction in bats
Lateral line sense in fish (precise imaging of surroundings via water pressure variations)
Vibration sensing (eg spiders in webs know where the vibration is coming from)
You ask 10 blind people what their vision is like you will get 11 answers. Varies wildly person to person and it often changes with time depending on the condition.
Like pretty much all of our sense, you can't describe them without using information about experiences you've had with that sense.
Its a definition that requires you to use the word in its own definition. Try to describe to me your favorite colour, but pretend im blind.
Once you try, you'll realize that not only can we not describe colour to the blind and vice-versa, but we can't even know if what others are seeing is even what we are seeing.
there are animals that have senses we don't. sharks, for example, can sense electrical fields in the water.
imagine a shark asking you what you electro-recieve. what would say to that?
that's basically what you're asking. at least for the congenitally blind.
most "blind" people actually do have some visual capacity. light/dark, shapes or colors, heavily restricted or obstructed fields of vision. perception that simply isn't sufficient for the mundane tasks of life.
I am nearly blind in just one eye and well, you just don't see. Like with both eyes open I see the same as if I have my bad eye closed. It's not there.
At least for truly blind people, think of it like trying to see out of your foot. You can’t, you quite literally don’t see anything because you physically can’t see anything
I was told the closest a sighted person can experience is having both eyes open, but cup a hand over one of them. The lack of sensory input you're getting from the covered eye is essentially what blind people "see"
Depends on the kind of blindness. Most blind people aren't 100% blind, and can make out something, be it light or not light, or vague movement, or just typical vision but especially blurry.
Those with total blindness, such as those born without eyes or without an optic nerve don't "see" anything. Which is a really hard concept to grasp for people who can see because, well, they have always seen, and it's a fundamental part of their experience. But it's not really possible to experience it for a person who can see.
There's a really good way to illustrate to people with sight how people who were born blind don't even "see black."
Ask a person to close their eyes and tell you what they see. They will most likely say black (or red, if there is enough light hitting their eyelids).
Now ask them to open their eyes and tell you what they see in the direction that is 180° from wherever their eyes are pointing without turning their head, looking at reflections, etc. This is essentially asking them to describe the visual sensation of seeing out the back of their head.
There will be a clear difference between "seeing black/red" with their eyes closed and the sensation (or lack thereof) of "looking" out the back of their head.
EDIT: wow, didn't expect this to blow up like it did. Thx for all the upvotes, awards, and comments!
Damn thanks
Another one I like is “what do you see out of your elbow?”
Less than nothing, you just don’t see outta your elbow. Wild concept!
What a different world that would be, to just be made up of only touch, smell, noises, movement and feelings.
I imagine it'd be full of songs and bruises and the scent of flowers, birdsong, noises of neighbours going about their day, thoughts of friends, their lovely voices, and radio show plots, careful movement, wardrobe dust, the occasional fearful touching of a mysterious wet spot, and the familiar smell of daily poo
Poetry right up until the end there
Ponyponyta the poet
bows and curtseys
poos just a little
Another one, is to close one eye.
Yeah
This is unrelated but related in a round about way.
People born def, who have never heard sounds, and learn sign language have sign language as their first and only language. It doesn't represent another language that's their language.
If that person then becomes schizophrenic, they don't hear voices. They see (hallucinate) disembodied hands signing to them.
The human brain is wild.
Native signers who are born Deaf don't always have their local signed language as their "first and only" language, to clarify. Until more recently there was a big effort to get Deaf people to attempt to read lips and communicate in their local spoken language (oralism) no matter how difficult it was. And MANY Deaf adults have learned at least one other language besides their native signed language. Not all, and that's why it's vital to have sign language interpreting services because captions don't cut it if you can't read the local language, but it's perfectly possible for most Deaf people to learn to read and write other languages.
We the hearing community communicate at the speed of sound. The deaf communicate at the speed of light.
The simple way somebody once said it to me was "try and see out of your elbow" and man, yeah that made sense lol.
It seems to be a popular example
I have strabismus since birth so one of my eyes have been 'turned off' by the brain. Optically it's perfect, but it's the brain that's not recognizing much of vision in this eye. People don't understand what it feels like, so I explain it like this: look straight ahead, then take a book and hold it in your peripheral vision. Now try to read something from this page without refocusing your gaze. Impossible, right?
Same here! I have wildly different prescription strengths but I tell people the worse eye is actually my good eye because I can’t really use the other one at all. My vision is essentially everything I see from my right eye, and my left eye really is just peripheral. It would take me a good 5+ minutes to read a single page of a book, assuming I don’t give up first from the resulting headache. I like your description a lot
Reflections are fun though. I remember at work during covid they put up a sneeze guard. It was clear enough to see through, but reflective enough that I could see behind myself. I got to experience 360 degree vision, and it's way easier to handle than you would maybe think.
If I could think of a similar wearable setup I'd use it all the time, but I think it only worked so well because the sheet of plastic was so big.
Maybe something like smart glasses with a backwards camera?
I wish everyone had seen the same thing I did, it's pretty cool but I'm not describing it super well. It's fun to know where everything and everyone is without needing to look around.
Maybe that's the next stage of human evolution.
Yeah. Hard to get it unless you have seen it
For my vision, I don't even need to do that. Start with telling them to close both eyes and describe what they see, which will be something like a dark colour.
Now tell them to close only one eye but keep one open, and describe what they see with the closed eye. For me, it's literally nothing. I don't see the closed eyelid anymore. My brain just disregards any visual signal from that eye and only gets vision from the open one.
Oh yes
My doctor tells me that I'll eventually go blind and I've seen this question asked a lot of times and the "I see nothing" response is hard to grasp, but your explanation is the closest I've ever come to me understanding it. Thanks.
Good luck and happiness, friend
I’ve heard a different analogy: if you want to imagine what it’s like to be truly blind and not see, it’s like how you aren’t able to see out of your elbow. It’s just not there
This doesn’t do it for me. I just think about what my elbow would be looking at.
Its more right now, this second, try to see out of your elbow. What do you see?
Trying to see from the back of my head was exactly what I came up with as a kid trying to understand what being totally blind was like.
I completely lost sight in one of my eyes due to nerve damage, and I have a hell of a time trying to explain what I see. I tried the "look out of your elbow", didn't work. I'm going to try what you're suggesting.
I've heard of another way to explain it that I think works as well. Have someone close one eye and ask what they see out of the closed eye. Your brain ignores what you normally see with your eyes closed when doing this. It's a good explanation of "seeing nothing"
I've tried explaining and questioning this thought to friends before and people have called me crazy. I usually ask, "Where is the edge of our vision, and why does it not fade to black its just nothing" or something to that effect
And people always say "It's because you dont see it, what you cant see doesnt exist" and that doesnt answer the question im trying to ask
It lowkey makes me panic, to try to focus on the edge of my vision. Riding passenger in a car and trying to follow the lights on cars in my peripherals leaving my vision, I cant figure it out
If you look through binoculars, or a telescope, there is a hard(*) edge to black, but not with vision. It breaks my brain
Wow
Is this really a thing or did you just make it up? Because that’s a really good example if it’s true.
They see exactly what a seeing person sees in the back of their heads. Not black, just nothing. Null input.
Holy shit this comment made me get it
Ask them what they see out of their elbow.
but because they saw once whats behind them they can still have the image in their mind. i find it so hard to understand how not to see or saw anything ever. i think that every person in this situation “sees” what their brains come up with.
A bat can hear and navigate in ultrasound, as can dolphins. Pigeons can navigate by sensing magnetic fields. Bees can see in ultra violet. Trying doing that. You can't. Now you know what a blind persons sees.
I was told to close one eye, you don’t see anything out of it, not black or red. That is what I was told it is like
Aphantasia. Varies by person but I just see the redish black glow from the inside of the eyelids. * Normal eyesight is 100% ok
FYI for anyone who is wondering, based on information from a friend who was rendered completely blind by a head injury that destroyed his optic nerves due inter cranial bleeding, that small percentage of individuals who are completely blind face some serious negative health consequences because our bodies maintain diurnal rhythms based on our perception of light and dark. If you cannot perceive day/night your sleep gets seriously messed up. My friend has to take a medication to help maintain his sleep patterns.
And yeah, for everyone else it depends on the type of blindness and possibly stage of blindness - for example, macular degeneration can start out barely noticeable and progress to massively obscured vision
But what does he "see"?
He doesn’t see anything, his eyes and brain have zero connection.
If you are asking whether he still dreams or thinks in images then yes, he still does have the ability to conceptualize colors and objects because he developed those pathways during 30 years of work as a cabinet maker. He still designs clocks and cabinets in his head and has a wood shop with tools made for blind folks, such as a talking tape measure. He builds them in his shop and chooses finishes based on what he can feel of the wood grain. He does beautiful work.
Damn. That's what I find so hard to wrap my head around
Think about what you see beyond the edges of your vision. You don't see darkness behind you, or a black frame around your field of vision, There's just nothing.
Rather than involving your vision at all, I go with "what can you see out of your left elbow right now". With that level of blindness it's not seeing black, or seeing nothing, it's not seeing.
The human brain actually does a ton of work in creating our perceptive understanding of the world around us. Even normal vision is pretty flawed, and the brain is constantly patching holes, blind spots, obstructions, etc either with data from other senses or what it assumes to be there.
If you don't have vision, the brain probably just leans very heavily on other senses when creating your internal map of reality.
God I love this topic so much. I want to add for anyone reading your comment that while your whole eye can detect light and dark, your eyes can only detect color in the center ~30% of your vision. Any color you see surrounding the middle of what you see is filled in by your brain.
Thats also why in extreme dark it's easier to see stuff if you don't look right at it, the middle of your eye gives up some space that would detect light and dark to detect colors.
Also-also, at a certain dimness the color sensing part turns off because it isnt useful. If you pay attention in very low light, you can catch your brain filling in color (simply from what it remembers or expects) to objects that, once you notice, are in greyscale.
Because you only see brightness in the dark you tend to (even sometimes subconsciously) be able to see edges of things more easily than surfaces. Stuff like corners of walls, edges of furniture, etc. Firefighters train in very low light and part of that is training your brain and eyes to pick up on those edges to navigate.
I was checking to see if someone already said the elbow thing, because it's really fascinating how it's both such a descriptive metaphor, and simultaneously completely incomprehensible. It's one of those things where you have to experience it to understand it. It would be fascinating to try, but I'm sure not lining up to have my eyes ripped out in the near future
Yeah, and it would still be hard because you already know what things look like
The best way I heard it described is that true blindness isn't what you see when your eyes are closed it's what your right eye sees with only your left eye open.
Hold one eye closed and tell me what you see out of it
Okay!
Okay I see it now
I see what you did there.
You are visible to me as well.
Great analogy
Saw it once described as "try to imagine there's an eye in your elbow. Is it seeing black right now, or nothing?"
I once heard it described as, try to see out the back of your head. That's what true blindness is like. It's just nothing. More so than even just having your eyes closed.
Can you move your hand? Legs? Now try to move a tail...
You trying to move a tail is how a blind person without optic nerves would experience sight, they don't know, never had, and never will get that stimulus.
Well, what did you see before you were born? That's what they see.
What do you globbula? What? You don't have a globbula-sensor? Humans are weird. Well, they see what you globbula.
I've been to a "blind museum" twice - basically a place where you can experience an hour of total darkness and be faced with a number of real world challenges such as crossing a simulated "street", navigating a living room and ordering things at a cafe.
After the first fifteen minutes, your brain stops trying to see things. I can't even say whether my eyes were open or closed. All your attention goes into hearing and feeling. Basically, it's dark, but it no longer registers as dark, it's just the absence of meaningful stimuli.
Leaving the museum and seeing daylight for the first time again is the strangest sensation.
Close just one eye
So what do people who were once seeing say they see if they lose their vision totally afterwards? Like from an accident or illness?
It's a complicated one for sure, because they would "see" the same thing that people born entirely without sight would see, nothing. But they would have a visual reference from when they were sighted, and so would still have a minds eye of what things visually looked like, and so I'd imagine would comprehend and experience the situation differently.
But this goes beyond my knowledge or experience of learning about this stuff, so someone else may have to go into more detail who is more educated on the subject.
I'm legally blind but my vision is hard to describe. I can only read the top line of a eye chart which is typically the cut off for legal blindness but my vision is more based on distance and detail. I could see a brick house from the road, tell it's brick but not see the individual bricks. That sort of thing. Enlargement isn't always a helping factor either.
I can think of a way to describe it.
Humans meet an alien race, and this alien race has telepathic powers and use it regularly to communicate and interact with their surroundings.
You never had any telepathic powers, so you have absolutely no idea what they are experiencing. This is how the blind (probably) experience imagining sight. If they never had it, they have absolutely no concept of how it works or what things look like.
Can I just piggyback on your comment to say I heard recently that Stevie Wonder has synesthesia--when he hears a certain note, he sees colors. And I can't stop thinking about what, why, and how. Like how does he know the B-flat or whatever is *green.* He has no point of reference.
Best description I've heard is try to look out of your elbow, thats what a blind person sees
I once heard it described as, try to see out the back of your head. That's what true blindness is like. It's just nothing. More so than even just having your eyes closed.
Being blind in one eye is hard to describe but you don't see anything, no light or dark, like the above post.
To describe 'nothing' is something that I haven't tried to do.
I heard someone describe it as, "Look out of your big toe."
Do those who're 100% experience vision in their minds eye?
I understand that
Touche.
Also to them seeing is as meaning less, as like if i ask you to imagine a new color - "ambut"
Well surely there’s people who had eyes and lost them for one reason or another. I wonder what they would say it’s like
If they were born blind then they just do not have the concept of sight at all. It's just nothing. Their brain either doesn't know how or cannot process it.
I see people try to explain it as "what was it like before you were born?" Which you obviously cannot know because you did not exist.
The nothing part warps my imagination
What can you see out of your left elbow right now? It's like that. It's not seeing black, or seeing nothing, it's not seeing.
I get your analogy. But at least we can "imagine" what we could see out of our left elbow.
Try to imagine what sight looks like when you have literally never seen anything.
But what do they see in their mind’s eye? They must have something there??
They have a mind’s ear, a mind’s nose, mind’s skin…. No mind’s eye.
if someone is truly blind, then the answer can be illustrated as such:
what do you see out the back of your head? it's literally nothing. not darkness, or blackness, but literally nothing. no matter how much you try, you get no image out of there. that's basically it. whatever you "see" out of the back of your head is what thorough, true blindness is.
you might be like "oh but that's different," but there are creatures (mostly prey) who can literally see behind them because of eye placement. compared to such creatures, we are also blind (behind us), and it's a similar point of comparison: it's not like we see things like a deer except the part of our vision extending behind us is black; rather we literally see nothing behind us.
My favorite twist on this is, "What do you see out of your elbow?"
I’ve taught blind people for 20 years and I’ve never heard that before. It’s perfect!
This is such a good analogy
If you want to feel it yourself in a more tangible way close one eye but not the other and ask yourself what you are seeing out of that eye that's closed.
hey that's a neat trick, i was expecting to see blackness, but i guess your brain "deletes" that information if you keep one eye open?
Absolutely!
Nice!
Someone once wrote this to illustrate it. Close one eye. Can you see anything out of it? Even said darkness? I can't and it's weird.
This is what made sense to me. You don't see half vision and half black when you close one eye. There's just nothing where your closed eye would see. Close both eyes and there's suddenly a field of black on the 1st closed eye side. Really made me realize we can't really know what it's like
This just kinda blew my mind! Very cool.
People are saying the analogy is to look out of your elbow or the back of your head or something, but I don't think that's really helpful because it doesn't make any sense as an exercise.
Here's an easier way to conceptualize what a completely blind person "sees": close one eye, and while keeping the other eye open, describe what you see out of the closed eye.
You don't see darkness. You "see" nothing.
Darkness is zero light. But that's not what's entering their brain. Blindness is null light. The absence of any stimulus, even darkness.
That’s not true. I see dark and fuzzies.
So the elbow part makes more sense.
Here's a secret... most blind people aren't totally blind, some couldn't read ANY of the letters on an eye chart, but could still make out shapes like a stop sign. Some could make out light or dark. Kind of like some people have to walk slow, some with a cane, some with a wheelchair.
But if you're totally blind... like a pirate and there's just no eyeball there
Put one hand over one eye. It's kinda like that. Not that it's darkness... it's more... nothing.
And some people who are blind can read large print! I have friends who rely upon braille and others who will read their uno cards albeit more slowly. The spectrum of ability is very wide and interesting!
A surprising number of you who have been trying to explain this have actually gotten it right. We... do not see. It's not that we see black. It's not that we think everything is dark. We have no idea what light is. We have no idea what darkness is. There is no blankness where we expect something visual to be. That's because ... there is nothing visual at all in our frame of reference. I am totally blind and have been so since around the time I was one year old. I, of course, have absolutely no memory of what seeing was like. The world for me is only perceived with my remaining four senses. I am aware of the existence of my eyes as part of my face, but beyond that, my eyes do nothing for me, except of course water due to allergies, sadness, or itch because of an eyelash caught in one.
Neat. I learned something today. Sounds like closing one eye means you see something similar to the non-awareness that we don't see. I'll have to tell the next sighted person about that trick when they ask me this question. So yeah. Asking what we see is actually an oxymoron. We don't see nothing even. We... do not see. We feel, taste, smell, hear, but we do not see even nothingness. Seeing nothingness would be seeing something. The presence of nothingness is still something perceived.
Finally someone with actual experience answering the question.
I'd be more interested in how people who are blind from birth leverage the senses they can experience to create a "picture" of the world and how that differs from those who can see. Presumably their interpretation of touch and hearing is much richer and more encompassing.
Right, I assume they still create a 3D spatial map of the world.
I’ve always wondered what would happen if a person born totally blind smoked DMT
Same here. Someone without a reference for vision at all, especially. Makes me wonder how the experience would unfold.
We see darkness because our eyes are always 'looking', like radio static it's still trying
Someone born completely blind cannot see darkness the same way we cannot see from the back of our skulls, there's nothing there to get that input to begin with
Here's how It was explained to me...
Close both eyes. You probably see blackness. Now open your right eye, but leave your left eye closed.
Describe what you 'see' out of your left eye. Probably absolutely nothing - not even blackness.
I'm blind. But blindness isn't all or nothing, it can vary.
For me, when I don't wear my glasses, everything is blurry. This also applies to up close. I took my glasses off typing this, and while I can tell partially what I'm typing, it's just blurry and smeared. Think of writing something with a pencil and trying to erase it with an eraser that is terrible.
But my experience isn't representative of everyone else's.
It’s different for everyone. The YouTuber Molly Burke is blind and has talked about this. A lot of blind people still see some things. Like colors, shapes, or shadows. I think Molly Burke said she also sees random bursts of light that aren’t really there, so it’s not just darkness for her. There’s a couple Paul and Matthew who have a YouTube channel. Paul is blind and iirc his vision is like looking through a little peephole and it’s blurry and I think fuzzy around his field of vision
They don’t see. And it isn’t similar to when you close your eyes. They don’t see black - they see nothing. A common way to get a sighted person to understand this is to ask them what they “see” out of their elbow.
What do you see out of your elbow? Well that’s what blind people see.
Gotcha
I personally think the best way to actually visualize it is to look straight, take your hand, and slowly move it from your peripheral vision toward behind you. It disappears into nothing. Not black.
I'll say this while we wait for a genuinely blind person to weigh in, or at least someone who's medically qualified to discuss it:
It depends on the level of blindness, many clinically blind people aren't actually 100% blind, but rather functionally blind, they can't see detail far enough away from them to be able to even navigate a well lit and highly contrasted room.
But they do see stuff, it's mostly just blurry lights and shapes.
Then there are fully blind people, I only know one personally who was completely blind from birth, he see's nothing, not black, not white, nothing, the entire idea of seeing anything just doesn't exist to him, it was a concept I couldn't actually fully understand, but from what I understand that's not the most common kind of blindness.
I've heard it described as something sighted individuals can't comprehend. The darkness you and I experience when we close our eyes is different from the nothing a totally blind person "sees," and it can't be described without experiencing it first hand.
Okay this makes lots of sense
Hopefully a blind person will weigh in, but, till then:
It varies enormously. Blindness is a spectrum. And most legally blind people have at least a little vision.
Here are some videos that helped me (fully sighted) to get a feel for some different types of blindness.
https://youtube.com/shorts/zHltd4Eq-oU?si=XwRpioz9d1HGLpHG
https://youtube.com/shorts/0KGWjl4ggxs?si=XIWyZHSnLthcpXRe
Tommy Edison explains that he just doesn't see anything. Not darkness, not black, simply nothing
He's one interesting folk, even met with Michael Stevens (vsauce)
I really like his videos because he doesn't just try to explain his world to us, but he also tries to understand concepts that sighted people take for granted. He's got a great curious personality too.
I highly recommend his YouTube channel, The Tommy Edison Experience.
When I went blind in one eye from a concussion to the retina, I thought I was seeing, but the left affected eye seemed like translucent water. When I looked at my phone, I could read it fine. Put a hand over my right eye and the everything was blank translucent.
The brain patched in what it thinks the left eye should see when the right is open. But the left sees nothing. Not blackness.
But my optical nerve etc was intact. Took about an hour to go away.
Also had this happen to half the left eye with a visual migraine about 2-3 times. Upper left diagonal half with a flowing bubbly translucence.
I want worried about it any of the times, which shows the brain was acting concussed. Normally sick a thing world freak me out!
Oh that's crazy
How do you perceive WiFi?
Same answer for profoundly blind people.
That is..... profound
What does your elbow see?
I heard of a great analogy that really made me think about this very question. When we close our eyes we “see” black. Without the optic nerve, a blind man sees nothing.
I ended up about 90% blind for two months. My blindness affected my central vision in the form of dark spots, kind of like when someone takes a picture of you with a flash and you get those after images of the flash.
I could see out of my peripheral vision only, so I could navigate the world ok, I could pretend to look people in the eyes while talking to them, but if I needed to use a public bathroom, I'd need to ask someone which door to use, stuff like that.
Here's a good experiment. Take one hand and hold it directly in front of your face, about 2 inches away. Stare only at the palm of your hand and then look around using your peripheral vision only. That was my life for a few months!
What do non-blorgers actually blorg?
Most blind people are not 100% blind, there is normally a tiny bit of vision remaining, but it depends on how they went blind or if they were blind from birth. Some blind people see through a kind of really dense fog others lose all peripheral vision and only see a small window directly ahead others see only peripheral vision and have a blank spot directly ahead.
I heard someone say it’s like looking with your elbow.
Not an expert so feel free to call me out, but I'm going to say that "what do blind people see" is the wrong question, because there's literally no visual information going to their brain. Light enters their eyes, but it doesn't get processed by the brain in the same sense that if your hand goes numb you lose your sense of touch because the signal isn't reaching your brain. I guess blind people just have numb eyes in a sense.
I would also say we don't see darkness with our eyes closed, we just see the back of our eyelids and without light the back of our eyelids are very dark. If we could backlight our eyes, closing our eyelids would just look very fleshy and close-up all the time which would kinda suck.
Also as an aside, do darker skinned people see "more" darkness with their eyes closed than lighter skinned people? Like does the pasty ginger kid's eyelids let in more light than someone with vanta black pigmentation? Thin curtains compared to heavy blackout curtains?
I'm currently able to see quite well with one eye, functionally blind in the other. I have been completely functionally blind following complications from surgery. I was using a white cane and other aids for a year. My right eye gets some muted and very blurred vision, and it's missing 80% of a standard field of view. As such I can see light and colours, can sometimes pick movement, but n detail at all. So no capacity to read, some capacity to not walk into walls, but no ability to see steps if walking. But I think your main question relates best to that 80% of my field of vision that is missing. I'm only aware this is the case from eye tests, to me those parts I'm missing simply do not exist. My brain considers the blurred out muted vision I get to be my whole field of view. So I don't see a black zone then a 20% patch of light. Like all our senses, our brains filter and interpret the inputs to give us our vision, hearing etc. Our brains cut out all the bits that aren't important, including seeing our noses and skipping the in between parts when we move our eyes quickly to focus on something else.
For people with zero sight at all, it's akin to what you "feel" when you touch a completely numbed part of your body - you don't even feel at all. There's simply no sensation.
I've heard it explain by "what do you see through your elbow, that's what a blind person sees"
I now know the meaning of nothing
Not blind nor am i qualified to speak on it but id guess it's as if you see nothing because there is no "vision" signal at all coming to your brain.
Think of it like a desktop PC with a webcam attached. Before you plug in the webcam does the PC know what it's looking at or even what vision is? no. It needs the webcam to even have the concept of "vision". the webcam converts analogue data to a digital signal. That signal is what the brain recognises and understands as "vision".
No webcam = no eyes = no signal = no concept of vision for those born blind.
How I’ve heard it described… close one eye and leave one open. What do you see out of that closed eye? That’s it.
Try to come up with a brand new sens that doesn’t exist. What can you sense with it?
BETTER QUESTION
What do people with "normal" vision people actually see???
Close one eye, and describe what you see out of that eye :-)
Sharks have special sensory organs that let them sense electrical fields. This is called electroreception. What do you sense with your electroreception? That's the same thing as blind people see.
I am assuming you're not a shark, if you're a shark this analogy kind of falls apart.
I have always been told to have someone hold something behind your back, and ask you what it is, that it’s what a blind person sees, nothing.
Close one eye and use your other open eye to see out of the closed eye. That’s what total blindness is. You see nothingness. There is NO there! It’s nothing. Not black. But nothing.
Describe the color blue to a blind person and they'll tell you
Will heavily depend on the type of blindness. Some types of blindness are just severe near-sighted/far-sightedness, some people have a black spot in the center of their vision (common with macular degeneration), some people who have a brain side problem causing their blindness might see swirls of color or have their vision appear warped.
For total blindness though, especially total blindness from birth, it's hard to explain it in a way that makes sense. I've heard though that it's like trying to see out of your elbow, or the back of your head. It's not blackness, it's just... Nothing.
My right eye hasn’t ever work, so I can only half answer. But imagine trying to look out of your elbow. You cant see with it, so you can’t see black, red, or blurriness. It’s just nothing.
If they're truly blind and have never seen before and don't have the capability, then they don't see anything, not even nothing. It's not a sense that they have. It's like asking you what you sense with echolocation. Not even nothing, because it's not a sense that you have.
You already know.
Just try to see using your elbow.
That's what it's like to be fully blind. It is a lack of sight. Nothing isnt blackness. It's nothing at all.
Heard this one a while ago.
Close your right eye, then place your hand tightly over your left eye. Reopen your right eye. What do you see out of your left eye? That’s what totally blind people ‘see’.
Here's a better one. Do deaf people have a voice in their head? Assuming they been completely deaf since birth and never experienced sounds at all.
Understanding not seeing is not that difficult. Close your eyes and focus your attention in front of you. You see the "darkness" you mention. Widen your focus to your whole field of vision. Then focus your attention outside of it. Like behind you. What do you see behind you? Nothing.
But when we “think” or imagine something we do it in our mind so that makes it really hard to comprehend a blind person isn’t visualizing it behind their eyeballs. I know that sounds simple but it explains why a “seeing” person can’t understand the concept.
I’m not sure if I saw it shared here, but people who are blind at birth see nothing. So, to imagine this, you can close your eyes and try to see out of your elbow. See how impossible that is? Or how blank? That’s how it is to be completely blind.
I’m not sure if I saw it shared here, but people who are blind at birth see nothing. So, to imagine this, you can close your eyes and try to see out of your elbow. See how impossible that is? Or how blank? That’s how it is to be completely blind.
Look directly forward at something non reflective, like a wall. What do you see directly behind you? That's what completely blind people see.
Generally? It depends on how it progresses, but the main thing would be as follows: If it's macular degeneration, they'll be able to see peripherally but not centrally until gradual blindness to hand motion/light perception. If it's glaucoma, they'll see centrally but not peripherally until it becomes a pinhole, then hand motion/light perception. If it were an untreated retinal detachment, it will depend on where it's located and if it involves the macula. It may be partial field blindness or full field. If it's diabetic retinopathy, you'll see stationary black spots where blood vessels have burst and/or where lasers have treated. If it's keratoconus, the vision just gets increasingly blurred/hazy until hand motion/the cornea is compromised enough to necessitate transplant. If optic nerve destruction or they just aren't present (of whatever origin), there's literally no neurological connection to "see" out of anymore so you just...don't. Hard to explain when you can't experience it.
These are the most common things bringing people in for treatment to prevent blindness. There are a variety of ways to go blind, but thankfully most are treatable well before that point. GET YOUR EYES CHECKS KIDS.
2 accounts here OP:
One myself (not blind): I took some blood pressure lowering meds once and was sitting around (more low pressure) and the blood to my optic nerve was not quite getting there. The result was the nerve started shutting down and I had what I can only describe as a “two foot hole” in my vision. No matter where I looked, from my right eye there was this silvery blackish-blue blot in my line of sight, roughly where you’d call left of center and down a little bit. Completely terrifying. Immediately jumped up started doing jumping jacks, then called doctor — too low blood pressure and we stopped the meds lol.
Other account: I knew a kid in high school who was born blind, still had optic nerves but couldn’t see/process anything visually except when he got lights REAL close (like a bulb right in front of him or looking into a microscope) he could see sparkles of red and blue. Otherwise he didn’t describe it as black. He called it “nothing”
For some of those who have never had sight in one or both eyes and I’m sure for many more.
Imagine the phrase “he has eyes in the back of his head”
Imagine the whole world has a third eye in the back of their heads, but yours never worked.
Take a moment and focus your attention on what your left eye is seeing.
Now move that focus to what your right eye is seeing.
Now move your focus to the eye in the back of your head. Do you see a spot of blackness? Nope, on that spot is “nothing” you don’t see darkness back there, there is just “nothing”.
If you want to experience seeing nothing. Close your one eye and cover it with your hand. Keep the other eye open. Now what you see with your closed eye is what total blindness would feel like.
There's no signal in 100% blindness. It's not black, it's just not there.
I feel like this has either already been asked before , or maybe should be posted elsewhere or by itself , but ... :
Do people who were born blind dream ? Is it all auditory and feeling sensations, or is there any sort of visual aspect (I just wonder if something like, just for example past lives, could be potentially proven or disproven by studying the answers to questions such as these) ?
I am blind in one eye. I can only describe it as nothing or empty. It isn't black.
Edit to add, there is zero light perception. I can stare at the sun and not see anything.
Okay got you
I heard a blind guy once describe it as it's not blackness or anything else. You just don't see. Imagine trying to look out of the back of your head.
Gotcha
I'm assuming you mean someone who is 100% blind, maybe even lacking eyes all together.
Some animals have a sense of "electroreception." They sense electric stimuli in the same way we sense light and sound. Humans do not have this sense.
The way you perceive electroreception is the way a blind person perceives sight.
Point driven
Congenitally blind people don’t experience visual hallucinations when given LSD.
So what they “see” is based on their experiences.
If they’ve never seen anything, they see nothing. If they’ve seen something, they can picture it.
My mind can't picture 'nothing.' That was my dilemma
What do your feet see?
They just feel..
Now let me break your brain: do you know that people with a hard strabismus don’t see in 3D?
Close one eye and tell me what you see with that eye.
its abstract colorful images in their mind that are made of sensations and sounds instead of input from the eyes like us
Both my mother & father were/are blind, my father could see shadows on a bright day, my mother had both eyes removed at 8 but remembers colours
Whoa that's something. How do they take it?
Something I’ve also wondered is where completely blind (since birth) people locate themselves. Usually we locate ourselves somewhere behind the eyes, but that is only because the world mostly seems to flood in via the eyes, and other people always face us - and look into our eyes - when communicating.
So would a blind person locate themselves somewhere closer to the mouth or the nose, assuming those sense organs are functioning?
I answer it with a question. What can your elbow see?
If they were born completely blind they see nothing. They dont see black. They see nothing at all. They see the same as you see wiith your elbow
This has been answered pretty well, I want to know what language the inner monologue of someone born deaf is?
My mom was blind due to a brain injury, so nothing wrong with her eyes themselves.
She said everything was "dark-ish" and people/objects were solid black figures.
Oddly, the one thing she could always see was the color red. So it was her favorite color. I'll never forget she had a pair of earrings she always wore that were big red lips, her absolute favorite, she would never leave the house without them and I would help her put them in every morning as a child. It's one of my fondest memories; making sure her ears were never "nakey" without her kisses. 😭
If someone is blind from birth, they typically have no real concept of sight. They are unlikely to have random colours/sparkles/noise-patterns the way that sighted people do when it's very dark.
So I began to think: some animals have senses that we don't.
How would we describe it if:
a bird asks us "what's it like having no (built in) sense of magnetic north/direction"
a shark asking "what's it like not detecting bio-electrical impulses of nearby animals"
Other things that some animals detect, that we can't sense: UV Light, Infrared light, polarized light,
There are also senses that vastly improve on what humans can do:
What do you see behind you ? Nothing.
You ask 10 blind people what their vision is like you will get 11 answers. Varies wildly person to person and it often changes with time depending on the condition.
Like pretty much all of our sense, you can't describe them without using information about experiences you've had with that sense.
Its a definition that requires you to use the word in its own definition. Try to describe to me your favorite colour, but pretend im blind.
Once you try, you'll realize that not only can we not describe colour to the blind and vice-versa, but we can't even know if what others are seeing is even what we are seeing.
there are animals that have senses we don't. sharks, for example, can sense electrical fields in the water.
imagine a shark asking you what you electro-recieve. what would say to that?
that's basically what you're asking. at least for the congenitally blind.
most "blind" people actually do have some visual capacity. light/dark, shapes or colors, heavily restricted or obstructed fields of vision. perception that simply isn't sufficient for the mundane tasks of life.
I am nearly blind in just one eye and well, you just don't see. Like with both eyes open I see the same as if I have my bad eye closed. It's not there.
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At least for truly blind people, think of it like trying to see out of your foot. You can’t, you quite literally don’t see anything because you physically can’t see anything
I was told the closest a sighted person can experience is having both eyes open, but cup a hand over one of them. The lack of sensory input you're getting from the covered eye is essentially what blind people "see"