[krick]

I never had a chance to talk to somebody who was blind all his life and I've always been curious about that. It seems pretty obvious, that blind person can be dreaming, because hearing or smell are senses as much as eyesight is. I cannot comprehend the opposite: does person, blind all his life actually understand what "seeing" means? Of course he knows from the communicating with the others, that he lacks some ability, which most people have, but does he "feel" it somehow? Especially it is interesting with well-read people: writers often spend quite a large portion of the book describing how something looks. So, literate blind person must be well aware of words like "color", "beauty" (addressing the look of something), "bright", "dark", "dull", "picture" and such. But if he never ever saw — do all these words mean anything to him? Does he have idea of what it is like "to see"?

[jareds]

I have been almost totally blind all my life. I have some light perception and from talking to people the nearest I can come up with for colors is that black is when it is totally dark, gray is a normal room with lights turned on, and white is looking directly at the son. I associate colors with objects such as grass being green, brown being dirt, blue being the ocean etc but this isn't actually useful information.

[krick]

Thank you for the response. I don't know if having some light perception can be called "totally blind", because the sense of seeing isn't totally unfamiliar to you, probably it's more like "very-very bad eyesight", am I right?

But still, as I understand you somewhat have a grasp of what color actually is, it isn't just "some word other people use", is it?

But what of notion of visual beauty? Does it mean something to you, when somebody says that this picture, or woman, or sculpture is beautiful? Can you tell if sculpture is "beautiful" or not after touching it with your fingers? If so, would it be meaningful to discuss something like that with your seeing friends or you would be more likely addressing something completely different from what they do?

And a couple more questions, if you don't mind. Are you completely functional in well-known environment? For example, how hard cooking in your own kitchen is for you? And how much of a problem it is if somebody was working in the kitchen before you and left some items, like knife, in the wrong places? How hard it is to you to move in completely unfamiliar environment? Like, say, can you travel to some distant new location completely on your own, without a dog or another human? How long would it take to being accustomed to the new environment, like when being guests at somebody's place? Could you take a walk in the forest or a big park on your own? Would you feel insecure being there for the first time?

I'm sorry if I'm bothering you, it's just I really, really wanted to ask all these questions and more for quite a long time.

[zersiax]

Number of questions :) I'll see if I can answer them, at least how I think about it. :) For me, color is abstract enough for me to be unable to imagine it. Asociating colors with objects is something a lot of blind people do, but it turns into parameters on an object that way. Color = blue; there's no description ... blue = null pointer exception; As for visual beauty, this is incredibly difficult at least for me to fully comprehend, because you sighties have the annoying habit of changing what you think is beautiful every so many years :P Beauty might be the smoothness of the sculpture, its simetry, its proportions being exactly right. That is the only, somewhat clinical, description of beauty I can think of, at least visual beauty. I must say that when it comes to beauty in humans I tend to disregard it completely. People look like what they look like and that is subject to change anyway as time goes on, no use worrying about it if I can't see it myself anyway. I myself live on my own, therefore I am forced to cook, clean, do my own laundry etc. if I like it or not. This, like a lot of other things, is something you learn to live with. I can safely say that yes, I am fully functional in my own home :) Changes in the kitchen area can be a little annoying, but would never severely throw me off. There's only a finite amount of place the knives could've gone, to use your example. I tend to lay out everything I need before starting to cook though, to avoid ...less than ideal situations when such a thing happens. Unfamiliar environments are a bit of a tricky thing. You are right in assuming a dog is an incredible help in such situations,I am hopefully receiving my first dog some time this year but I see time and time again how this affects the confidence and independence of blind people I know. To answer your question though, it really depends on the person. Some people have a very good sense of direction and wouldn't have a problem in a forest or would get used to another's house quickly enough. I myself have a bit more trouble with that, but I do hop onto a train to an unfamiliar city if I know someone will be at the final station to pick me up and take me where I need to go, thats not something every blind person would do. It depends on a huge number of factors.

[zersiax]

The sort answer to your question is no. Just like dreams being unable to use any visual imagery, the same goes for concepts like bright, dull, color, etc. are abstract concepts that I really can't put any particular image to. Rule of thumb is that if you can't fully describe it in words that don't involve referring to visual cues, I don't know what it is :) As for feeling it ...it depends. I myself can still see differences between light and dark, as long as they are different enough. Think lightning at night, a lamp turning on in a dark room etc There's no color, shape or anything like that when I see that though. I therefore kind of know what seeing is, but only a very small portions of it. For people who are even more blind than I am, meaning ...no vision at all ... they wouldn't really 'feel' it, its oftencompared to imagining you have a sense that you actually don't have, like a dolphin's ability to always know where north is ...at least ...it was dolphins that coulddo that, no?

[darkmighty]

Maybe it's like picturing 4D objects is for us? I mean, you can study a lot 4D geometry etc, you can answer questions about it, but none is able to (afaik) "see" 4D objects. We just don't have a 3D matrix of receptors that would be the analogue of 3D vision, nor the processing region for that.

The questions you asked are answerable in this framework I guess, although even adding a new dimension is less than getting a full new sense.