MovieChat Forums > Philosophy > What is beyond darkness ???

What is beyond darkness ???


When you close your eyes, or suppose you are blind. All you see is color black, right? Is there anything beyond that ??? Even if you see only darkness/black, you are still seeing something. WTF ?

reply

The truth is that you are not really 'seeing' anything at all.

Your eyes are only registering incoming light and sending nervous impulses to be assembled into images inside your brain, so if pure light is all of your photo-receptors signaling at once and darkness is the lack of your photo-receptors sending your brain information then being in a totally darken'd room with your eyes open is the same as having them closed or being blind. Your brain can only conceive black/white and color states nothing 'Beyond'. If you would like something 'beyond' blackness call it whatever you like.....it might be there- you just can't register it to conceive of it.

You are bumping up against that cardboard box that is our physical limit
-sorry 

reply

First, you're assuming a conceptual model of vision as the truth, and second, that passive retina projection model was already falsified by James J. Gibson 50 years ago.

Your brain can only conceive black/white and color states nothing 'Beyond'.

This is completely wrong. Gibson verified that we do perceive some object properties other than reflected light.

reply

Secondly, there is no true connection between your brain and the sensory organs that we call eyes. There is only information/impulses jumping the gaps across nerve endings to your visual pathways inside your mind. I don't care what Gibson said, this is a fact.

So what are you actually seeing? Electrical impulses which are turned into images by the brain. I would call that completely conceptional imaging. Even shading has to be conceived into something resembling an image to be interpreted. What is Shading but black to white differentiations or graduations on a dominate background of light.

Yes, we do sense the shading of objects, passively- so did trilobites, that was the first basis of sight, the difference in passive shading as objects passed overhead on the ancient sea bed, but shading is just the absence of light? so.
And light can either be total (white) or absence (black).

If you are in a totally darkened room, how does light seep past your closed eyelids? to see color? sure if your color/cones are firing inside your retina-like rubbing your eyes with your hands- that is just artificial stimulation.

so what is beyond darkness?

reply

Your whole reply is just a series of peremptory statements. Seriously, you're not saying anything beyond what you already said. You're just repeating the exact same thing, assuming a conceptual model as fact, confusing a model with reality.

I don't care what Gibson said, this is a fact.

Gibson made several experiments that falsified the model you're confusingly describing as fact. If you don't care about that then you don't care about facts. It's as simple as that.

reply

Technically when you close your eyes you actually do still see some color since your eyelids are not entirely opaque.

If you are blind you are not seeing the color black. If you had always been blind you wouldn't even have the same concept of colors as seeing people.

Also, this: http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000130/nest/263626706

reply

for starters, it's important to understand that there is no such thing as 'darkness'. There is only lack of light.

reply

Actually, darkness is the lack of reflected light, and that might be because of the lack of light or the lack of reflection. We don't see light, we see the structure and surface of objects reflecting light.

If you point a flashlight perpendicular to you in a dark room, you don't see a beam of light coming out of it -- except for maybe some reflection on dust particles -- but only whatever surfaces reflect the light. A perfectly transparent object is perfectly invisible, even if it's bathed in light.

reply