After so much talking with Pedro...

Could people here start arguments about this dilemma?

A blind-since-birth person is given a sphere and cube to feel with their hands. Then, they have an operation which restores there sight and all they are able to see (this part would be tough to carry out) are a sphere and a cube. Without moving their arms etc., are they able or not to differentiate and decide which one is the cube?

I think not which is why I constantly haven’t believed a lot of what Pedro said. On the other hand, their brain might begin to learn perspective veyr quickly or they might even be able to logically deduct which is which before having feedback reactions (i.e. being able to move their hands in front of their eyes). Of course, the famous nose RC where you attempt to see your own nose with one eye is itself a feedback reaction, as are the hairs growing down to your eyes (if you’re that lazy) etc.

I dont see why they wouldnt see the difference.If their brain works properly they know the difference between something round and smooth and square box.All they need is the information -no matter if it comes from eyes or hands.
If i understood all this thing right:)

They’ve been blind forever, obviously if they’ve somehow worked out perspective etc completely correctly the answer will be yes but otherwise no. By the way blind people have blind dreams.

I think it depends on how old the person is.
If the person is 2 years old it might work it out. If the person is like 40 years he can´t learn to see, even if his eyes are ok.

Or am I missing the point of the question here?

If he is able to see like we all do, I think he´ll work it out with structures as simple as this.
From his feeling experience, he knows that one object is completely smooth and feels the same at every point, while the other has 8 sharp parts (the edges).
He can see that the cube isn´t all the same at every point, but the sphere is.

tapir

That’s also a possibility. i’m still uncertain about cube/sphere recognition. Not that this experiment can ever actaully be carried out…

I remember seeing a story like this a few years ago on one of those nightly news shows, like “60 Minutes”

It focused on a guy (in his 40’s?) who had been blind since birth. But whatever was causing his blindness, they had just created an opperation to fix. They did and he was able to see again.

He was being interviewed, and they were walking along a beach. They came up to some vendor who was selling cans of Coke. As they approached, he saw the cans and said “What are those things?” When he got closer he said “Are they… yes… they’re cans of Coke!”

He didn’t have to touch it to deduce it, but it did take him a few moments to figure out what they were.

Well that answers the question then doesn’t it? If he was able to tell that it was a can of coke, the surely he would be able to tell the difference between a sube and a sphere.

If he was blind, and had only just got the ability to see, then how did he read the “Coke” lable on the can?
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He may have used a Braille sort of reading except with normal letters. I doubt it however.

He probably deduced from the shape of it that it was a Coke can, which he had drunk (felt) before.

of course they can.

They are simple geometric shapes, one has edges the other does not. Once they are able to see they would be able to see one has edges and the other doesn’t so they would easily be able to differentiate the two. More complex object may pose a problem but simple shapes like that would not.

The use of touch allows the blind person to get a feel of objects and allows them to see the object in 3D. Just because you cannot see an object doesn’t mean you can’t correctly visualise it in your mind. close your eyes and pick up any object in the room. once you touch it you will probably know what it is, but use your hands.

As you touch it invision what you are touching in your mind, put it altogether into a 3D image - do not add things just because you know it is there - add things by how they feel. You should be able to accurated create these items in your mind.


A good experiment to do would be to get a friend to get 5 or more similar items eg: 5 remote controls that look similar. You would be blindfolded to make sure you can’t see (and would not have seen the items before hand)

He would then give you one chose randomly on the spot. And you simply feel them create the image in your mind then hand it back so your friend can put it with the rest. If you can accurately guess which remote it was then you shouldn’t have any doubt that a born blind person wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if they gained sight.

If you are good with visualising things you feel then you maybe even able to reproduce that experiment with people. By feeling someones face and seeing if you can pull them out of a lineup. To do so acurately they would have to be total strangers which might not be achievable.

While they may take a while to recognise things, they would have a pretty accurate visualisation of many things.

Coke is used by many people to describe many soft drinks not just coca-cola - some people i know refer to pepsi-cola as coke. All he would have needed to know is that it wasa soft drink. Also since he would have been using braile all his life he may also have been able to read the words on the can by assosiating the shape with the braile.

I won’t point out the error helcorax made with that paragraph lol.

Lol it took me a long time to figure out the mistake. Plus the guy figured out it was cans of coke after he had been able to see for a while. If he had no visual experience at all, he wouldn’t know how the sharp edges of a cube looked like or the smoothness of a sphere. But he had been able to see for a while already.

I disagree. A baby that can see will learn shapes and the neuron pathways in his brain will save this in a particular way. However, a blind from birth person does not have the same neuron connections and so senses the object shape in a different way. Since the brain has not a single link or way of guessing the shape in seeing is linked to the shape in non-seeing (ie. to brain patters being connected) then he would not (had he never seen before) be able to deduce which shape is which.

But haven’t you already seen? A blind man cannot visualize or imagine vision in is mind. I’m confused, what is your point?

Doesn’t brail consist of dots, not letters? And we are asuming that he was confined to coke, and never had lemonade or fanta.

I can also see the mistake, however I don’t think it should be considered a mistake, as it is the mistake used in a different context, almost like a phrase. I would say that it is pointing towards the future tesne and not the imperfect or past again. (I won’t give it away).

why not? The person is blind not mentally handicapped. Loss of sight does not effect ones ability to visualise images in the mind. Visualisation (imagining) images does not require sight as it is done in the creative centre of the brain. This is the whole point that a blind person uses touch to visualise objects as we would use our eyes. While the image they visualise will not be exact it is close enough that they would recognise it if they ever had sight.

Blind people are very capable of making clay models, if they could not visualise an image in their mind - they would not be able to remember it and as such would not be able to use clay to model things - i have seen it done so therefore they MUST be able to visualise it in oder to create such pieces otherwise they would have no real template in which to be guided.

saying they can’t would be like saying blind people don’t dream. It is a misconception to think that you cannot visualise something in the mind because you have not seen it/can not see - the “sighted” population take the power of touch for granted and do not use it’s full potential simply because we don’t have to.

The brain does not need to “see” something to be able to visualise, while sight is helpful and more accurate it is not neccessary.

as a child in school the teacher gave use braille to “study” and experience, while to look at it you may not be able to understand it if you was to carefully touch it you would realise that braille is similar to text. Eg: a “c” is still in the same shape as a “C” by feel. if you visualise the shape you are feeling it will be similar to a “c” obviously not exact. But the person should be able to recognise letters though they may experience problems with different writing styles as you might imagine.

ok you totally missed the point on that one. :tongue:

But the quick answer would be no we are not assuming that at all. to quote myself

they also use it to describe lemonade and fanta too except when they are being accurate/descriptive.

Some americans refer to all buiscuits as “cookies” but this doesn’t mean they are made from cookie-dough and have chocolate chips in them it’s just slang.
We have no way of knowing whether the formally blind person in question even used coke to describe “a soda drink” or whether he was making a more descriptive statement about it. Short of asking the person we will never know how he knew or in what context made him say “coke” as oppossed to “soda” or “soft drink” maybe what took him so long is that he was actually processing and “reading” the words on the can.

was i clearer this time around?

Yes, doh. So how does one distinguish between coke and fanta :tongue:

Cookie - :cookiemon:

I disagree. They will visualize the toutches, in their own way that not I or you can explain because we can and could both see from birth (I asume).
The brain literaly doesn’t have the neron paterns to visualize imagery, because it could not learn how to use imagery at birth, ie shapes etc.

Don’t forget, blind people are proffesionals at feeling and creating their own way of thinking about the shape. I still say that they literaly cannot visualize the shape, and that because they are handicapped in seeing, this has stopped them from visualizing. You seem to have got the idea that I was implying they were mentaly handicapped, not true.

Well firstly, if you didn’t dream you would die. However, I think blind people have blind dreams (if they havn’t ever seen). They get the mental recording of the objects in their dreams. “By the way blind people have blind dreams.” as written by, r3m0t.

Is this a fact, or an opinion? What makes it a misconception?

Sorry if it apparently wasn’t clearer to me this time. :wink:

i’ve read some interesting reports about people who have been sighted and gone blind and have also lost the ability to “visualise” i’ve also read reports saying that peoples visualising abilty increased.

But this is the first report i have seen talking about a “born blind” having his sight given to him due to an opportation.

richardgregory.org/papers/re … ons_p1.htm

it’s an interesting read and also answer the question of whether a born blind person can tell the difference between a cube and a sphere.

i’m going to quote a paragraph now as it answers many questions asked here.

Yes this half answers my questions. However I quote:

His brain has 10 whole months to ajust to seeing and thus the patterns were there. And ovcourse, once you know what light looks like you don’t escape it, not even in your dreams. That is until you go blind.

Now had a baby literaly been born blind, then he would (in my opinion) have no sense of vision.

Either this, or that vision is geneticly written into our genes. There is no escaping vision anymore.

No wait! I changed my mind.

This weblink says that we our brain sees not our eyes.
https://www.sciencenews.org/20010901/bob14.asp

Yay, and this link may provide evednets for a “seeing gene.”
https://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/05.28/GeneRevealsHowW.html

This is seeing with artificial electrodes place on our eyes.
https://www.africaonline.com/site/Articles/1,3,51189.jsp

This website explains about the visual cortex been reasigned a different job if visual information is not relevent or needed, because the person has never seen before. (Using the eyes)
hon.ch/News/HSN/513688.html

isn’t that what i have been saying lol. :content: some interesting reads there techno