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is not sensing e.g. a colour like something? i'm slightly colour blind, and i can assure you that i "see" all colours. of course i'm seeing something people will full colour vision can see. but if the colour of some particular red patch is like something, and that seeing a grey patch is too, then is that not enough to think that not seeing its redness is too? the reply could read that people with colour vision have an identical qualitative experience as the colour blind, but with a little bit more, and so being colour blind is not like anything at all - except having vision, seeing shape and form. but it does seem to me that darkness is like something, in addition to the absence of light, and so why not greyscale or whatever?

we can maybe imagine someone who was never able to blink

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  1. You can only see all the colors that you can see.

  2. If you are color blind (like me) you cannot see all the colors that people who are not color blind can see; just as you cannot see the ultra violet light that some birds and insects can see, and there is nothing it is like for you to NOT see the ultra violet light that some birds and insects can see.

  3. Why do you think that darkness is the same as not having the vision sense at all?

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  • i didn't quite say that - i said that darkness is like something, like not seeing a colour. ???
    – user6917
    Aug 21, 2014 at 19:31
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I agree with the reply of "nir", above. It may also be worth considering the following :

You "see" what everyone else sees in the sense the all of the same information enters your eye. By "information" I mean all of the same electro-magnetic radiation, including optical light, enters your eye.

However, when your body converts this informational data into electrical data and fires it down your optic nerve into your brain, then your brain will certainly interpret that information differently from other observers - perhaps in very subtle ways, but differently nonetheless.

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  • i am not sure that people who lack e.g. red colour vision lack the "visual sense of red", in any way other than not seeing reds
    – user6917
    Aug 21, 2014 at 20:02
  • @user3293056 I agree with you. It is just that any individual's brain interprets the data "red" in a manner differently from everyone else.
    – nwr
    Aug 21, 2014 at 20:05
  • @NickR, in your sense of seeing, does a house see the sky because light from the sky enters the house through the open window?
    – nir
    Aug 21, 2014 at 20:13
  • @nir I must confess to being entirely perplexed by your comment. My answer is no, a house does not have any of the necessary attributes - i.e., a brain, optic nerve, etc...
    – nwr
    Aug 21, 2014 at 20:20
  • @NickR, hmm, you are right, sorry. Nevertheless, for color blind people information is most commonly already lost at the retina because of spectral sensitivity problems with the color receptors.
    – nir
    Aug 21, 2014 at 20:42

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