What's it like to see?

Answer 1

It's pretty cool. Especially boobs and stuff.

So let me ask you -- if YOU could see, would you still rock back and forth like a madman when you played?

Answer 2

What's it like to see?

It is a very different relationship to space -- the space you are in, the space around you -- from sound and touch.

Touch creates a zone of contact that is very precise and subtle, but it goes no further than you can reach, whether with your hands or a cane. There are many textures and qualities within this zone (and our language is ill-equipped to describe these qualities) but they go no further than you can reach.

Sound goes much further, but it is also much more diffuse. Our directional sense of sound is never better than adequate. We can hear tone and pitch, get some notion of direction, and even a sense of distance from the "muddiness" of the sound. But it is intrinsically vague.

When you see, it is as if your consciousness envelopes the world. What is far away isn't far at all -- it is in you, it is you. Whereas sounds can only be differentiated sequentially, sights are differentiated both sequentially and all at once. Sound, in effect, has only one dimension in which it can vary. Visual images vary complexly in *three* dimensions, at a minimum: There are the two dimensions of instantaneous display on the retina, and the third dimension of sequential change.

The possibilities for subtlty, differentiation, and complexity are staggering, and beyond description.

Furthermore, once you add memory, the growth in space and its differentiation is even greater. In the sightless world, you can "emplace" yourself with respect to other locales that you have visited by partially re-evoking the sensory experiences that carried you from one spot to another. Now multiply that a thousand, thousand fold, and that is the world the sighted person can emplace her- or himself.

Of course, with that much sensory input, it is the sad fact that many (probably most) people invest very little effort in actually *seeing*. Most people, I suspect, work hardest to ignore the world around them. But there is a wealth of experience available to the sighted person that is not to be had by the blind.

Answer 3

When I see someone decapitated I don't have to go touch his stubby neck to find out. Nor do I need sound. When I see the headless body, I experience it directly AS IF I had passed my fingers all over his body. And I gather all this information quite instantaneously.

I'd be pissed if I went blind.

Answer 4

it's like knowing what's before your eyes that's different from its taste sound smell and touch. it's being able to tell the different parts of some objects based on colour - intensity and shades which are light energy that rebounds off the objects that you can only "feel" when your eyes and brains and the hardwiring are intact, depth - closer or farther from you, and movement - position changes in all 3 directions perceivable.

Answer 5

Seeing is like tasting--it gives variety and spice to Life. Seeing is also like believing.

Answer 6

Well Steevie, I guess you could say that certain colors evoke certain emotions the same as the way that certain melodies and harmonies evoke emotion in you. Shapes and outlines help us recognize things and others as you would know someone by the wat that they walk or by feeling an object. That's the best I can do brother. Hope it helps.

Answer 7

Maybe you should ask Sean Cassidy

Answer 8

You had the chance for an operation 12 years ago Stevie and you refused so deal with it b i t c h!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 9

Like the opposite of being blind.

Answer 10

Exactly what it's like to hear. Only with sight.