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.
Yes, I can imagine it. You might see just eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Plus some leaves. Like an abstract Picasso or something.
Pretty sure the issue is they dont see the nose or mouth as a nose or mouth. Just lumpy lines in the leaves.
Its like looking at a picasso, and knowing you are looking at a picasso, but all you see is a pollock.
There is a part of the brain that handles recognizing faces. Maybe they see the eyes and nose but it doesn't "click" as "face" like it does for others? In the same way as if you saw 👁️ you don't think face. I know there are cases of people having inability to recognize people. Maybe it is related
Maybe it's because it takes additional outlines and facial features to establish a connection that looks like a face to them because otherwise it's too few scattered features to them and the parts that would still connect them in the brains of normal people aren't talking anymore
Interesting. Like normal brains sort of fill in those gaps but theirs don't maybe?
Seems like that to me at least