tilthat: TIL a philosophy riddle from 1688 was recently solved. If a man born blind can feel the differences between shapes such as spheres and cubes, could he, if given the ability, distinguish those objects by sight alone? In 2003 five people had their sight restored though surgery, and, no they could not.

nentuaby: I love when apparently Deep questions turn out to have clear empirical answers.

  • crawley@lemmy.worldEnglish
    89·
    1 year ago

    I mean, apparently. The brain is so weird, it’s really really difficult to even imagine what it’s like to experience certain things that other people do. For example, sometimes people have their corpus callosum (the membrane between the hemispheres that allows them to communicate with each other) severed to prevent certain types of seizures, and afterwards they lose the ability to see “green men” as faces.

    For reference, this is what a “green man” is:
    https://acc-cdn.azureedge.net/mrlnop420media/0005503_green-man-wall-plaque.jpeg

    Can you, who easily sees the face, really even understand what it would feel like to look at that image and not see a face?

    • starman2112@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      Can you, who easily sees the face, really even understand what it would feel like to look at that image and not see a face?

      I keep tryin but it’s lookin at me and it’s distracting

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      i think i can understand it by proxy, there are numerous optical illusions where your perception of something flips back and forth (like the duck-rabbit) and i’ve experienced seeing (and hearing) things that others laugh at or find interesting and it took me several days for it to finally click in the brain and from then on i couldn’t unsee it again.