It was a footnote in an article I read about a monkey using blindsight and that there had been several experiments with humans proving blindsight existed and that surprised me. As a footnote.
There have been several experiments that indicate people can see without using their visual cortex.
Also the name of one of the best sci fi novels ever written, which has references to the phenomenon
The trans humanist stuff was so cool to me. Designer vampires specifically designed for analysis and command. I love books where concepts are explained and you kinda get it, but definitely requires rereads. Anathem by Neal Stephenson is another one.
I read it earlier this year. Really interesting. Lots of commentary on what it means to have consciousness or intelligence, and on how we’re affected by language and communication. Not sure I’d call it enjoyable though. I’m glad I read it, but I’m not sure I’d put it high on my reread list other than to be able to read the earlier stuff knowing what happens in the later stuff.
Ha, cool, I came across that cover while I was searching for more information on it, it’s pretty good?
I’ve read it no less than 15 times, maybe more. I think I’m finally at the stage where I’m not picking up new stuff on rereads. Yeah. It’s wild.
Read the flyleaf at the library, sounded impossibly corny. Thought it was time for some cheesy science fiction, get off the serious stuff. I was wrong. I was so wrong.
Oh fantastic. Wow, I’ll read it, putting it on my list not
I’m assuming you’re talking about the Peter Watts book, not the Robin cook book, right?
I used to read a lot of Robin Cook, and I was ringing a bell, but I’m assuming you’re talking about the Peter Watts blindsight?
I think that this is pretty cool i didn’t know anything about it either. The brain is pretty amazing.
Isn’t that wild? They’ve tested people and a chimp so far over the last five decades, apparently investigation into the phenomenon started in the '70s.
V. S. Ramachandran’s “Phantoms in the Brain” book had a blindsight patient, many years ago ( he’s a neuro-researcher ).
He handed her an envelope, & asked her to put it in a mailbox ( which I think he held, at some angle, in some semi-random location, before her ), and she did, automatically.
He said she was absolutely dead blind, but could probably drive, without hitting any obstacles, or do archery, iirc…
SHE couldn’t see, but something in her unconscious-mind could see.
He called that something “the zombie”.
Interesting book, iirc ( it’s been a looong time since I read that one ).
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This would’ve made a nice chapter in books by Oliver Sacks
Also, there’s the “Controversy” that states some scientists consider blindsighted people to not be blind. I’d say it is the same as with other cognitive issues, one may technically not be blind but how would you call that when one cannot use their sight if not blindness
I looked into the controversy articles that people wrote, and they were mostly saying that if certain conditions were satisfied then it might not be blindness, even though they did replicate the experiments the other scientists did and got the same results.
The scientists objecting are, as I understand, saying that because of a third test they devised, then it could be argued that it isn’t technically “sight”.
But the controversy is a lot weaker in my mind from what I’ve read the repeated abstracts and experiments over the last 50 years that document blindsight.
One of the articles specifically mentioned a part of the brand that isn’t the visual cortex that frogs and animals can use to see objects even if they are completely blind, and that’s why they did the tests with the chimpanzee in the first place, because of a frog can do it, why not a chimpanzee.
I can’t tell from what I’ve read if humans are supposed to have this same ancient component that lower animals do, but I assume I’ll be able to find out if I keep digging.
Thank you for providing insight.
What I mean is more that things related to consciousness, subjectivity, and qualia are rather loosely defined and aren’t guaranteed to have any measurable and good definition
You’re right, something vaguely defined can definitely have that problem.
Blindsight stood out to me a significant because the visual cortex is damaged, not functioning or missing all together and there’s a part of the brain that works with lower(and higher) animals that apparently allows them to see still, somehow.
If it was a matter of definition, like “degraded sight” versus “partial blindness”, I would nou have found this as compelling and certainly not noteworthy enough to post.
But if you are missing the part of the brain that processes sight, or are missing an eyeball… I believe one of the test participants had his actual eyeball destroyed.
If it’s the physical lack of a processing unit and still we get the result of apparent sight and there is no conclusive scientific objection to half a century of scientific experiments measuring how much blind people can see, that’s fascinating to me.
Actual eyeball destroyed should not allow to percept anything I think, but I don’t know of course
Other than that, as a layman, I would expect there to be some automatic and autonomous stuff related to vision but not requiring conscious results. After I learned of some processing done right in the eye (can’t find the link, it was some experiment on cat eyes) I’m more inclined to think that a lot of processing is done out of consciousness, or sometimes even brain
It’s a very long Royal Institution video, but the first section covers this topic with footage of Helen the monkey. The whole video is fascinating.
I have watched that footage, it was veryv interesting, I’ve read. I believe most of the available abstracts and watched the videos at this point
This video uses blind sight in the Intro as a hook for an hour long lecture on sentience.
Oh cool, I found out about blindsight reading an article about how warm-bloodedness, according to Nick Humphrey, I believe is the guy’s name, may have led to sentience and what that means; apparently that’s what his new book is about.
I guess that’s his jam
So what you’re saying is that Daredevil is a documentary?
Scientists seem confident that the visually blind people are actually somehow seeing rather than using their other senses to compensate, so not really, but in the spirit of the bit, yes.