Do you see the electric fields of other creatures? Can you imagine what it would be like to do so? I ask because sharks can, while we can't. This is analogous to congenitally blind people, and normal sighted people. They have no experience of seeing, this it is not part of their mental life. They don't see black, because they don't see at all.

The key to understanding this is to realize that the brain is (for the most part, please don't club me if you know anything about neurobio anon) structured genetically, but programmed environmentally. That means that your genes specify that a nerve will run from your eyes, into the primary visual cortex, and the primary visual cortex will feed into the secondary visual cortex, etc... But, your genes do not teach the brain anything (not really true, a simplification but stay with me), everything is learned through experience.

Not the kind of experience a wise old man has, but the experience you gain from simply being alive and having information fed into your brain. Even a newborn baby is deep in this process. Your visual cortices learn to detect rudimentary visual building blocks, your temporal lobes eventually learn to recognize whole objects, some other temporal area learns to understand and speak words, then an area connects the two, allowing you to assign a word to the object. This all happens after birth, so two people can have totally different sets of symbols throughout. A blind person will simply have no visual symbols.

Now consider the implication for this on a person who has never received visual information. It's like how we never receive any sensory data about electric fields, the world is still a sensible place, we just use different types of information to understand it.

If none of this had changed your perception to the point that you can understand the relativity of experience, then try to stop thinking about seeing/not seeing, and consider this: The brain is an organ that learns what actions had what consequences, and makes predictions about the future from what it has learned. Thats it.

What you're asking is actually an interesting question, but from experience I think it is the wrong direction to approach the problem in. You're still in the frame of mind where others experiences are only derivatives of yours. Going in the direction of understanding the brain first, the answer to your questions will be revealed by default.

Hope this helped.

It's generally agreed upon that the human brain comes hardwired for certain things. Not only do genes code for the physical structures (optic nerve, etc), but they code for the operation of certain mental processes (such as the facilities to decode, organize, and interpret visual information). Humans have evolved these structures over the ages; such structures were necessary to survive. For example, we are able to discern the outlines of discrete objects, rather than seeing just a bunch of different colored areas in our field of vision.

Now, take a blind person. Perhaps the optic nerve is damaged, so no information reaches the brain. The structures to interpret that data still remain, though, so in a sense they are "seeing" nothing. They are not seeing darkness, they are seeing in a state where there is no visual information to interpret. That's not the same as darkness.

Approach the idea from a different angle.

How do you perceive colours? If you suddenly discovered the visual spectrum was inverted for you (red is violet and violet is red) would it have any effect on you?

You might struggle with the concept of the grass being blue (visually) but it has no effect on you because the colours are still in their right place. For a blind person, light, dark and colours have no meaning, they might see a luminous yellow but it has no meaning to them. Colours are a concept they have no comprehension of, theoretically they could be seeing a "new" colour and no one would know.

>>7906

Oliver Sacks addresses this topic somewhat in one of his books. A masseuse who has been blind since very early youth has his vision restored through cataract surgery and the results were not pleasant.

There is spacial sight and memory. This comes from feal and, for some people, sound reflections. I saw a TV show on Al Gore's network about blind people known to have developed "operating sight" by making clicking sounds and listening for the echo. One guy could find trees and people and even participate in a basketball game. He was blind from birth. Brail displays offer a fast, detailed way for blind people to gain a sketch from which they can construct a structural "image" of something or their surroundings.

When successfully used as a halucinogen, DXM has given me sight of my surroundings which does not dissapear when I close my eyelids. The detailed image of the room remains there and I can move through it gracefully and sellect an item from a shelf and continue to my next location in the room, put my hand on a specific object, then I open my eyes and the real image of the room is more dim and messy than the one I saw with my "Fremen" vision.

I suppose a sightless person would have a tactile immage of the room. Sounds would most likely fill part of the "sight" area of perception. Some people with all senses intact get a sight/sound crossover. It is not uncommon. Check the experiences of hallucinogenics on Erowid and the archives of PBS. Synesthesia, if I recall.

Blind people have been known to be very good (auto) mechanics. Of course, they can't do wiring because it is color coded and there are no tactile differences in a rainbow of solid and striped wires in a wire harness.

I meant to say, "Synesthesia is not UNKNOWN."
Some musicians have varrying degrees of permanent synesthesia. Others with the condition have not taken up music and have never given much concern to their enhanced perception.

>>7925
>>who has been blind since very early youth has his vision restored through cataract surgery and the results were not pleasant.<<
>>blind since very early youth<<

But what about people born completely blind? If there is little chance that surgery can bring sight - ever - should the child be put through the trauma of what would undebtebly be an extremely painful and stressful experience? What with all the other senses, the child won't miss what what was not known. Vison has sidelined most of the other senses IMHO; what with our modern world.
Later in life there will be challenges but the person will have all the other senses more keenly attuned. The person will have an excuse to not be alone. That alone is a gift.

>>7931
Aphex Twin has said he has synesthesia, I believe.