Blind people see blackness?

[amos carine]

Here's a pretty respectable character talking about going blind:
"Alas! Your dear friend and servant Galileo has been for the last month hopelessly blind; so that this heaven, this earth, this universe, which I by my marvelous discoveries and clear demonstrations had enlarged a hundred thousand times beyond the belief of the wise men of bygone ages, henceforward for me is shrunk into such a small space as is filled by my own bodily sensations."

 

[Will273]

Update...

Sounds like a lot of theory and speculation with no factual foundation as to what a totally blind person see.

I did speak with someone that works in the genetics department of a University that works with people born with no eyes...Anophthalmia. She told me that many of those people do see something but not outside of themselves but inside. Something like a dim glow, dark or light shade of grey and a few other terms were used but the bottom line was they DID see or were aware of something and not this nothingness people mention about what you see with your palms, knees or the back of your head. I've also heard from someone that the darkness or blackness is there but just isn't recognized.

It's also mentioned on some websights for the blind that sometimes totally blind people and even those with no eyes can sometimes "see" flashes of light... so they do see something even for a short time...something is there. This is what I have been told and read from people that supposedly know and not theory or speculation.

Will

 

[Dustina]

I have Vitelliform Macular Dystrophy, Macular degeneration, cataracts and retinal tears and have had a stoke back in 2004. Vision (what I do have or can see) is blurry with a large area blind spots and several smaller blind spots. I see more peripherally..tho not a whole lot. When I close my eyes, my right eye sees emptiness or black and my left eye sees a partially orange glow. When I was at the Guide Dog school there were a couple of people there who were born blind and one had artificial eyes. The person born blind said that she could see nothing and couldn't describe it as black being that she never saw the color black to be able to describe it but said that their was just nothing. The person with the artificial eyes said that she could distinguish shade of light. As my vision has gotten worse I started seeing hallucinations (Charles Bonnet Syndrome) where I would see turtles in my living room, flowers growing in the bathroom, tree sprouting up in the bedroom but the difference between a person who has a mental disability and hallucinations is that they believe that the objects that they are seeing are real where as I knew that there was not a tree in my bedroom or a turtle on the floor of my living room. A Doctor describe it to me like this: That just like a person who has had a leg amputated say that their leg hurts (Phantom Pain) a person who is visually impaired or blind, it's the brains way of trying to recall images and objects that they once used to see as the brain doesn't know that the eye cannot see it. Just to share my own personal expierence.

 

[Dustina]

Is it not the brain that registers what the eye is seeing?