What do people mean by “you don’t see darkness, you see nothing” if you lose your eyeballs?

Question

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

Answer 1

You know how thermal cameras see heat? Now try to see that with your bare eyes.

Or try to detect magnetic fields the way birds can.

Or electric fields the way sharks can.

You can’t because you simply don’t have the organs for it. Far as your naked body is concerned, there is no such thing as a magnetic field. That’s what happens when you lose your eyes: there’s no more organs so in a stable state there is no such thing as electromagnetic radiation within the 500-700nm “ish” band. It just doesn’t exist.

Now that comes with the caveat that if you were once seeing, your brain will almost certainly detect the loss in sensation and do something goofy to try to make up for it, possibly by “seeing black” since that’s as close to “nothing” as we can imagine. But it’s just a phantom sensation the way amputees “feel” their lost parts.