A requested topic for our new user, Lightseeker.

This thread is inspired in part by quite possibly one of the most amazing men I’ve ever met, being blind, in a world designed for the sighted, he has had to overcome a great deal, even though he doesn’t think so, there are so many things that we living in a sighted world take for granted.  This Thread is primarily meant to discuss just that.  The sighted world, how it has influenced our lives, our day to day interactions, and how one would try and convey some of that to a person that cannot see.  Topics for discussion include the concept of beauty, its influences and impact; describing color, a topic I still struggle with; and anything sighted related.  I thank all those that will participate in advance.

I think that last question - how do you describe sight to a blind man - is the most fascinating. I know from my own attempts to understand concepts like ideas in theoretical physics, or even ideas like seeing ultraviolet light, it's extremely difficult to imagine. I'd be fascinated to know the opinions of a blind man on the topic of understanding something we all take for granted, but would seem nearly impossible to explain without a basis of comparison.

Color is the perception of certain light wave frequencies, I believe; just like certain frequencies of sound are either too "high" or too "low" for us to hear, so are certain frequencies of light too high/low for us to see.

But in fact sound and color are from the exact same electromagnetic spectrum of differing radiation frequencies; sound is at a much lower frequency than light.

It is not a completely static thing, however; some people have mutations that allow them to see ultraviolet light, or to trigger color when hearing sound or vice versa (synesthesia)
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:27, Tue 14 Dec 2010.

Sound is not a form of the EM spectrum, otherwise it would travel through a vacuum. The low-end of the EM spectrum is radio waves (which, AFAIK, is still not audible). Synesthesia is just a brain defect, it's not an actual overlap of senses.

In reply to katisara (msg #5):

So true, See Williamson, (2000), and even using the sound to color analogy, think about the different colors of green, there is Emerald green, forest green,  true green, blue green… I could go on.  And think about some colors that are confusing, navy blue versus black for instance, or bright red and orange.  These are classic problems for individuals with color blindness.
We spent forty five minutes talking about that one.  He once said that’s like being in a class where all the subject mater is completely theoretical, no matter how much you understand it, and you don’t completely comprehend it.”  I’ve sent him an e-mail, he recently joined RPOL, there are a lot of sights that won’t work with his screen reader, but fortunately this one will.  Hopefully he’ll join this one and he can chat with you about it Sciencemile.

Indeed, if someone came to me and said "hey, what about xeno sense? It's just like seeing, with the different wavelengths and all, except... it's just there, like in your head, and you can tell an object's depth, age and emotional state based on..." I still couldn't really picture it in my head.

I'm glad RPoL works on him. A fair chunk of my professional work time is spent taking our websites and making them compatible with screen readers for blind people. Honestly, it's a huge pain in the butt, because now everything has to go through another committee and takes two months longer, but it's good to know that, in the end, it actually makes a difference.

In reply to katisara (msg #7):



*hugs *

your actions are not in vain.

I could spend hours answering this one, and I probably will, but color is a good one, given that there are more variations of coloration than sounds that the human ear can hear.  The closest to an understanding of color I have ever come is the number of threads that can exist in a piece of clothing, blue with higher threads, so to speak,  is lighter then clothes with fewer threads in them.  This isn’t really a good analogy, as I’m told that navy blue is significantly different then steel blue, which is somehow different from steel gray.  It’s an issue of shading, a concept that I don’t remotely understand, despite attempts to.  Attractiveness and all the myriad cognitive elements surrounding it has also been a topic I have studied in detail, as it is another element that I don’t truly understand at all.  I don’t make judgments based on how people smell, and yes, everybody has a unique scent, or their voice, most people don’t, but features and coloration matter.  At least, to a significant portion of the human population.

Alright, I hope I'm not being too forward, but since you put yourself here, I'm guessing you're open to questions...

How long have you been blind? Are you completely blind, or just legally so?
Do you... I don't want to say 'understand', but for lack of a better term... do you understand things like colors? How do you mentally interpret it? Does that help you deal with other theoretical concepts better?

Welcome to the forum, Apoplexies!  If someone's using a screen reader, I'll really have to be more careful with my typing! ;)

Though I don't think I'll have any luck trying to explain the experience of color to someone who's never seen it, I do agree with sciencemile that the analogy to sound is probably the best.  Both are wave phenomena, which means mathematically at least, they're very similar.  I wouldn't say there are "more" colors we can see than sounds we can hear, since there's a continuum in each case.  The examples you give of different shades of colors, apoplexies, might be akin to the different overtones in sounds.  For example a flute playing a C and a trumpet playing the same C are different.  Same root note, but different overtones.  It's similar for shades of colors.  In each case, it's the mixture of frequencies that gives the sound/color its character.  Perhaps an analogy for the colors you mentioned would be different sections of an orchestra all playing a single note.  As you change which instruments are in or out of the group playing, you change the character of the sound you hear, even though they're all playing the same note.

All that said, though, its still just an analogy.  What goes on between the eyes/ears and the brain is the tricky part, I suppose, and that's well outside my area of expertise, I'm afraid.  Anyway, very interesting topic, and I wish I could be of more use in explain it!

Well, according to Harold Tompkins at Stanford there are more shades then wave frequencies.  The problem with the analogy is that forest green and  grass green, are actually .00023 nanometers different in wavelength, but come up as different colors.  The difference between navy blue and Black is much more significantly different on the realm of wavelength, but because of the issue of lighting, the wavelength can be distorted, and thus a color becomes different.  This order of shift doesn’t occur as much with sound, unless there is damage to hairs in the ear.

This then leads me back into the questions that katisara started with.



Yes, I am and have always been open to questions, so by all means ask away.  I’ve been asked a lot over the years and don’t mind answering any questions, although I might occasionally respond with I’d rather not say.  That’s if it gets too personal, which I don’t expect to happen, but who knows.



Glad you asked, I was born with Retinal pigmentosis, a genetic disorder, which is male, linked. Now, let me put that into perspective for you, just in case you haven’t heard of it, or if my spelling is just a little off:  when I was born, I was extremely light sensitive, indoor lighting can be painful, sunlight could completely blind me; I was born with too many light receptors and not enough color receptors, and so was completely color blind; the scarring on my eye meant that anything further then my arm, at night since I could see better, was indiscernible; and anything smaller then size twenty font couldn’t be read either.  That was when I was born up until about thirteen, and then I lost all of it.  The scars on my retina became inflamed, to this day we aren’t entirely sure if the flu I had at the time played a major role, and so now, I’m still light sensitive, but see nothing.



For the purposes of this discussion I want to differentiate between “understand,” and “comprehend”, as it will convey my answer far better.  For this discussion, “comprehend” means to take in the meaning, nature, or importance of; grasp. See note at apprehend.  “Understand” is to know thoroughly by close contact or long experience with.  With that in mind I respond with this, I comprehend that color is the process in which light reflects off various objects and the frequency and length of individual wavelengths in contact with the sensation of sensory receptors in the eye lead to the perception of color.  This is a pretty good textbook definition of color, not perfect, because I don’t have a text in front of me defining it at the moment, but good enough.  Now, do I understand color, not at all, it’s an experience I’ve never had, and the confusing part is that perfectly sighted people can argue over the color of something.  There is more however, the presence of color can elicit emotions and can have an impact on peoples mood, individual notes do not have the same consequence, where as individual colors can.  Yellow can be happy; blue can be sad, etc.  It requires entire combinations of notes to provoke the same response.   I mention this to demonstrate the complexity of visual experiences, which some people I know take entirely for granted.  Now, how do I interpret it, like gravity, its force that people can see the affects of, but can’t perceive itself.  It’s a force that people experience so much off that they take it for granted, but have the full expectation that everyone knows what their talking about when they mention it.  You may, or may not be surprised with this answer, or that I understand shades to be different levels of gravitational pull.  Sound, which may seem like a natural comparison for everyone else, or at least for the majority of people I run into, seems to clash with my comprehension, what I’ve experienced, and how I understand sound.  I hope you are not offended, but I often find more abstract ways of viewing the world to be useful.  The use of thread count is Light seeker’s description.  It has its merits.  One person, who interestingly enough is deaf, described colors in terms of hot and cold, fresh and salty, like in water.  Unfortunately, this highlights an important factor, when using one sense to describe another, texture, temperature, sound; there is eventually a break down.  While this argument can be made for any analogy, some have a higher level of break down then others.  I’ll leave that alone for the moment and return to it perhaps later.

Quote> Does
That helps you deal with other theoretical concepts better? </Quote>

At the moment, the best way I can answer this question, is I’m not a visual learner, so in both comprehension and understanding, it is not necessary to directly experience what I am learning.  This is a two edged sword, since  education is largely visualized (e.g. Knolls, 2004; Dobson & Fertig, 2006), but at the same time it helps me understand  matters related to Stats, cognitive science, and many other subjects far better, because things occur more in my mind, then based on my experience.  I don’t know how well this answers your last question, but if it doesn’t satisfy you please, ask more.

Oh, by the way, Tycho, don’t worry about spelling with me than with any else, I’m a phonetic speller, so you’ll notice some mistakes on my end as well.

I guess I've never thought about the distinction between the two. I always assumed that if you could see light (and presumably, black, and in the middle, grey) that you could more or less understand the idea of color, like how I can see color, and therefore I can  more or less grasp what UV would 'look like'. I wonder which would be the bigger cognitive leap, from blind to light sensitive, or from light sensitive to color-sensitive.

Do you think your not being a visual learner is because you never had that natural inclination towards that, or did you learn to be a non-visual learner as a result of your vision? I suppose it might be phrased as, if you weren't blind, would you still be a non-visual learner? If no, do you think your being forced into your learning method has resulted in your being a better or worse learner than someone who was just naturally inclined to that method?

I can’t say with certainty, but a case file on the subject, where an individual with a severe case of cataracts, so strong that neither color nor objects were distinct, gradually gained his vision when the cataracts were slowly removed.  He stated that obtaining color vision was the most difficult for him to deal with, simply because of the high degree of sensory information.  From another perspective, I can say that having the ability to see objects, in regards to light sensitivity, is less of a cognitive leap, as even without seeing the object, I still fashion images of objects in my mind.  Thus, the schema is there for this type of vision. Color sensitivity is a bit bigger of an issue, as other senses do not convey this form of experience, and thus, schema development cannot be assisted with other forms of experience.  Hope that helps.