I cannot fathom seeing nothing as opposed to just seeing pitch black. An example I was told is “it’s like trying to see out of your elbow”. I still do not get it
In: Biology
There is a blind spot in our field of vision. Close one of your eyes, take finger around 20cm away from opened eye and move it left and right while looking at the same spot in front of you(so only finger moves).
At one point the tip of the finger disappears. And that spot doesn’t become black. It just disappears.
That is the same with blind. You have no sensation at all. It simply doesn’t exist. No black. Nothing.
Take a finger, move it to the edge of your vision. Now, keep moving it until you can no longer see it. It’s not “black,” it’s not there. Now imagine that for everything.
Close one eye. You don’t see black on the affected side. Your field of vision is simply narrower.
Close both eyes. You do see back. Your brain has no (or insignificant) visual input so it sees black.
In practice if you lost both eyes you would still see black because your brain is used to the visual input.
Certain people who are blind from birth would have no concept of sight and as such would see “nothing”. In practice the vast majority of blind people do have some degree of visual sensitivity.
Let’s if I can crack it down.
If you close your eyes, you see darkness. How dark it is, depends on the amount of light in the room. Even if you close your eyes, you still have some “light”.
But if there are no eyes to receive any form of light, then there is no darkness, there’s nothing. Nothing is not darkness or anything. Nothing is nothing.
If you lose an arm, you might get a phantom arm and sometimes feel your arm is there, but if you were born without 1 arm then all you know is 1 arm and nothing else. To the 1 arm borned person, there is no 2nd arm, there never was, there is nothing.
Fuck, I can’t explain it.
The eyes give sensor input and darkness is a sensory input.
You can look into darkness and your eyes will pass information to your brain which will be processed, so you will simulate your brain.
Close your eyes and you see darkness, right? The inside of your eyelids.
Close just one eye, you stop seeing out of it completely.
When I was a kid I used to think blind people must see blackness because that’s what I see when I close my eyes, but then one day I realized that I don’t see blackness behind my head or beneath my feet or anywhere else I don’t have eyes. When you close your eyelids your eyes are still working, it’s just that all you’re seeing is the absence of light (darkness) akin being in a perfectly dark cave or the like. The experience of not being able to see behind you, for example, is from a lack of vision not a lack of light, which means you don’t even see blackness, there’s just no visual input at all. In order for you to ‘see’ darkness you must have functioning eyes, but if your eyes are scooped out of your head or whatever then those spots will revert to being like the bottom of your feet – no visual input at all, not even blackness.
Covering one eye surg it still open causes you to see black. Closing that eye makes you see nothing/no signal.
Have you ever gotten lost in a day dream? Like one where you were gone for a couple of minutes before snapping back to reality? If I asked you what you were seeing during the day dream you would say nothing. Your eyes were open, you weren’t seeing black. Your eyes just weren’t providing visual information that you were conscious of. Its like that without the need to day dream
Cover one of your eyes and Leave the other open. Tell me what you see in the closed eye?
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