sense deprivation, identity and dasein

What Dreams Are Like When You’re Blind
By Cari Romm
In New York magazine

There’s a part of me that reacts, “Yeah, I think I know what he means”. But another part – the bigger part – still has no real sense of how a dream like that would be experienced. My brain is just too engrained in connecting all of the others senses to the world as I see it.

Sure, if it was a dream that revolved almost entirely around me listening to music, sound would predominate. In fact I’ve had dreams where my brain actually created songs I had never heard. I’d wake up thinking, “what a great song!”

Again, the mind-boggling mystery of dreaming itself.

Or a dream where I am preparing a meal in the kitchen, smells would predominate. But the bulk of my dreams are rarely of that nature. And I can only assume that if I did lose my sight, eventually my dreams would catch up with this new reality. Then I might get a little closer to dreams in which the visual was just not a significant factor.

In other words, we are all basically the same…until we’re not. We all experience content and emotion in the waking world so we all experience the same in our dreams. And then, it seems, it can only come down to the gaps between us rooted either in our sense perceptions [from birth or otherwise] or in the thing that most fascinates me: the embodiment of dasein.

The content and emotion in your life…in your dreams. The content and emotion in my life…in my dreams. And then figuring out the least dysfunctional manner in which to communicate it. Which, as this thread seems to indicate, is often easier said than done.

Anyway, getting back to where I would like to see this thread go: connecting the dots existentially between sense deprivation [congenital or otherwise], dasein and the manner in which human interaction often revolves around what we struggle to understand about and communicate to each other.

Also, the exploration of dreams themselves.

As for the first consideration, here I always come back to the time I first saw Children of a Lesser God. In a very profound and powerful way it drew me into the lives of two people who, while sharing the same world here and now, had lived lives that were very, very different. That which I construe to be the embodiment in dasein. One was born deaf while the other was not deaf but spent his life teaching the deaf to better interact with the hearing world.

But: because of the gaps in their lives, their communication would often breakdown. And that’s what always draws me in here. The need to create compromises when important parts of your understanding of the world are different.

Consider:

[b]James: I really just came to ask one question. What happened when Sarah tried to speak?
Mrs: Norman: What happened? She looked awful. She sounded awful. People made fun of her. What do you think?

Sarah [to James]: Hearing boys? They could never be bothered to learn my language. I was always expected to learn to speak. Well, I don’t speak. Sex was always something I could do as well as hearing girls. Better! At first, I let them have me because they wanted to. Before long, the boys were lined up on a waiting list my sister kept for me. No introduction, no talk. Just went to a dark place and fucked. They didn’t even take me out for a Coke first.

Sarah [to James]: I don’t do anything I can’t do well.

James: Sarah…what do you want?
Sarah: You.
James: You got me. What else?
Sarah: Children. I want deaf children.
James: What do you want me to say, that I want deaf children? No, I don’t. But if they were, that would be fine.

James: You know I haven’t turned on my hi-fi since you…Hold it. That sounds like…like I’m blaming you for me not listening to music…Thank you. I will. I’ll rest my hands nd listen to something beautiful.
[Bach Plays]
James: I can’t enjoy it. I can’t, because you can’t.

James: What do you hear? I mean, is it just silence
Sarah: No one has ever gotten in there to find out.
James: Will you ever let me in?

Sarah: You don’t want to help anybody. You just want to change and control them. I think that you want me to speak. And I just want to be me.
James: Well, who the hell are you?!

Sarah: …you think for me, think for Sarah. As though there were no “I.” I will be with you, quit my job, learn how to play poker, leave Orin’s party, learn how to speak." That’s all you, not me. Until you let me be an “I” the way you are, you can never come inside my silence and know me. And I can’t let myself know you.
James: Well…that’s all very moving. But how are you going to manage? You can lock yourself back in your precious silent castle…I heard. I heard every word, goddamn it. I translated for myself. It went from your hands into my brain and out my mouth. And you know what? I think you’re lying. I don’t think that you think being deaf is so goddamn wonderful. I think that you’re scared to death to try. I think it’s nothing but stupid pride that’s keeping you from speaking right. You want to be on your own. You don’t want to be pitied. Then you learn to read my lips and use your mouth for something besides showing me you’re better than hearing girls in bed. Read my lips. What am I saying? You want to talk to me, then you learn my language. Did you understand that? Of course you did. You’ve probably been reading lips for years. But that’s the great control game, isn’t it? I’m the controller? What a fucking joke. Now, come on! Speak to me! Speak! Speak to me!
Sarah [all but screaming]: Aah! See my mouth! Aah! Hear my voice! I’m not afraid!

Mother: I sent you away because I didn’t know how to take care of you. Your father couldn’t accept you. He felt he’d failed…You’re right. I hated you for driving him away. Please forgive me.

Sarah: I have been angry since I was a little girl. I didn’t want to hurt again, so I used my anger to push you away. I’m sorry.
James: I’m sorry…for hurting you.
Sarah: But I learned from you. I learned that I can hurt…and I won’t shrivel up and blow away.
James: I don’t want to be without you, either. Do you think that we could find a place where we can meet not in silence and not in sound?[/b]

That’s what happens when you become involved with anyone in which there are big differences in how you see yourself out in the world. Sometimes this revolves around biological [genetic] differences and other times around social and political [memetic] differences.

Then it comes down once again to…

1] might makes right — the one with the most power gets to call the shots.
2] right makes might — you can both agree on an ideal solution
3] moderation, negotiation and compromise — you meet somewhere in a murky and ever shifting middle

And all of the many different, complex, ever shifting combinations of both.

What Dreams Are Like When You’re Blind
By Cari Romm
In New York magazine

All this of course will probably be understood by most as just commonsense. Yes, this is exactly what one would expect, right? But: the more ineffable aspects would seem to revolve instead around the manner in which those blind from birth expereince the other four senses in a heightened manner…or in a qualitatively different way. It’s one thing to hear, touch, smell and taste when you do have vision to connect them to the world around you. But what if you don’t? How does that impact your understanding the world in ways that you don’t even think about consciously?

Here we are able to grasp just how futile it can become to discuss this without taking into consideration that there are so many different contexts that any particular blind person might be embedded in. Still, it’s no less fascinating to imagine how dreams change over time the longer that someone who was once sighted has been blind.

Just as it is telling how, blind or sighted, your dreams are going to change given any number of abrupt or momentous changes in the life that you live. It’s not like anyone can pin down how we ought to dream. Even if the dreams themselves are in so many mysterious ways beyond out control.

Dreams are no less rooted subjectively in dasein. Thus to the extent that those like Freud or Jung or others fail to take that into account in regard to either blind or sighted people is the extent to which they are failing to grasp what can play a crucial role in interpreting them.

What Dreams Are Like When You’re Blind
By Cari Romm
In New York magazine

Again, the truly profound [and, eventually, problematic] manner in which the biological and the experiential can be played out in so many different ways for so many different people. The part where some things seems applicable to all of us and the part where, however hard we attempt to communicate our own dream experiences, there are some barriers beyond which we cannot go. Here we can only come to an agreement about what the dreams seem to be telling us. I merely suggest in turn that we steer clear of those who claim to be experts in interpreting dreams when they have themselves have almost no real understanding of our own situation. You can be blind or sighted and have very similar dreams. Just experienced with a different set of senses. But they can never be experienced and understood in the same way.

So, is that something that you yourself can relate to? And what if a dream construed to be a nightmare by some is experienced by others as being anything but. Still, what I am doing now is prompting myself before I fall asleep to notice sensual cues that are not visual. I’m curious to see if that is something that can actually be enhanced.

Blindsight: the strangest form of consciousness
David Robson at the BBC Future website

Of course for those who were once sighted and then lost their vision, it is possible to explore the reality of both worlds. Though, again, these realities are no less rooted in what can certainly be very, very different sets of circumstances. So the part pertaining to dasein is always going to be an important component of anything that they relate to us.

Thus, as always, it comes down to that which we are able to demonstrate to others is a reasonable point of view.

On the other hand, even that has to come to grips with the “hidden depths of the human mind”. The mystery of mind – consciousness – itself.

Here we are entering the realm of…Dr. Oliver Sacks? The world of Awakenings and men who mistake their wives for hats. A surreal exploration into the often mind-boggling manner in which the brain itself can create “conditions” almost beyond imagining. Think, for example, Leonard in Memento. Now imagine him sharing Daniel’s affliction as well.

Blindsight: the strangest form of consciousness
David Robson at the BBC Future website

Tell me this doesn’t remind you of that spooky ordeal experienced by Sammy Jankis in Memento. The labyrinthian interaction of the brain and the mind in creating all of the many, many possible psychosomatic realities. What is real as opposed to what is not? What is not real but we are adamant is real? In other words, we believe it is real in all honesty.

For some of course there is no ambiguity at all. If they were born blind as a result of medical/biological condition that no one doubts the existence of, there will no 80% accuracy. It would all be guesswork. But what of all the other ways in which those blind from birth might possess their own equivalent of “blindsight”. Ways of intuiting the world around them that those fully sighted can’t even begin to grasp. Or even imagine.

A “fractured” consciousness. Though one embedded more in the physiological/psychological components of [i]I[/i] rather than in the manner which “I” am fractured in the is/ought world.

Blindsight: the strangest form of consciousness
David Robson at the BBC Future website

This is always something that I come back to time and time again. I merely focus in more on consciousness as it is created to evolve over time in a particular world understood in a particular way. And the manner in which – blind or sighted – it is shaped and molded by others when we are children. And noting the manner in which, depending on the experiences that we have – or just as importantly don’t have – can predispose “I” in any number of directions. And then acknowledging how this “sense of self” is fabricated and refabricated existentially from the cradle to the grave given so many factors/variables that we don’t either fully understand or control.

But why stop there? Why not admit in turn that “I” is somehow intertwined in all that we do not know – cannot even begin to imagine – about the existence of existence itself? And that’s just on this infinitesimally insignificant speck of a planet in vastness of what some argue is an infinity of universes they call the multiverse.

Only here the focus is still on the brain itself. The chemical and neurological interactions in those like Daniel able to create a consciousness that may or may not be fully pinned down by science. And then if science encompasses it fully in the either/or world what then will philosophers and theologians make of that in coming to grips with what now eludes me: a meaning and purpose that links all of us together in one or another TOE. Or God or Goddess. A theory/Creator that can then be connected to the “for all practical purposes” components of our interaction with others.

Blindsight: the strangest form of consciousness
David Robson at the BBC Future website

And yet incredibly enough in places like this there is an endless procession of men and women who boldly go where hundreds and hundreds have already gone before: to the next TOE.

God or No God.

But isn’t it ultimately science that we turn to to test them. Okay, tell us how you think the world works. Your God or No God spiritual path, your ideology or dogma. Your philosophical realism or political idealism. And, here, being either blind or sighted there are really only those who are able to test and to experiment with your assumptions/conclusions in order to make predictions that either do or do not come true that count. And that can then be replicated or not replicated by others. I merely suggest that any number of objectivists among us believe what they do because the belief in and of itself is what counts. What they believe could be practically anything. And, for all too many, believing it is demonstration enough.

Ah, but then the particularly mysterious states of mind explored by those like Oliver Sachs and by those examining Daniel. Could fathoming his “world” bring us closer to understanding our own?

Okay, so how then is this related to the subconscious and the unconscious mind? And how for those born blind are these states of mind…different?

I still recall the most vivid example of my own mind perceiving while lacking an awareness of the perception itself. It was when I first became involved with a woman named Supannika. If there really is such a thing as “soul mates” she was mine. I remember the first day we shared that was simply bursting at the seams with fulfillment. I drove from her apartment near the Pimlico race track to my apartment in Lauraville. A good 8 to 10 miles. But here’s the thing. At the time I reached Herring Run Park, it suddenly dawned on me that my mind had been entirely focused on her. In other words, I drove all those miles as though on automatic pilot. I stopped at all the lights, made all the left and right turns etc, but it was as though my brain itself had done it.

It completely astonished me. And I’ve never experienced anything quite like it again. Although in somewhat a similar vein, I remember reading books to my daughter. Books I had read a billion times. And there were “sequences” then when I would be thinking about something totally unrelated to the book and then suddenly realize that I was thinking about that and reading the book at the same time.

The human mind? Tell me about it.

Blindsight: the strangest form of consciousness
David Robson at the BBC Future website

It seems that just as we go deeper and deeper into our exploration of the universe and encounter ever more puzzling mysteries, the same is the case in our exploration of the human mind. The problem however is that very, very few of us are a part of the scientific communities engaged in either task. So what we believe about the universe or the human mind is only going to be that much further removed from whatever the truth actually is. In fact, some speculate that the human mind itself may not even be capable of grasping a full comprehension of either.

And, let’s face it, blind or sighted, human emotion can only be that much more intertwined in the subconscious and unconscious “realities” that our brain “works” with. And create.

Now, in a sense, we get down to the nitty-gritty. There is how we perceive the world with an untrained mind and how in understanding the mind more and more, it can be trained to perceive the world differently. Better perhaps? That ever mysterious phenomenon that revolves around the psycho-somatic world. And how the world of those blind from birth, the world of Daniel and the world of those who were always sighted might overlap.

Or not?

Blindsight: the strangest form of consciousness
David Robson at the BBC Future website

Unfortunately, the article informs us, “this video is no longer available”. Which is unfortunate because it would illustrate the text in a way that words alone just don’t accomplish.

In other words, how is this even possible? Could he in fact actually see? Was he perhaps clicking as Maia described above. Did they ask him how he had accomplished it

The closest we get to that is this:

Back again to that machine that doesn’t exist that would allow us to be inside his head and experience what he had himself experience as he experienced it. Lacking that, what is there to make of something like this?

So, back to the parts that those like Oliver Sacks came upon in exploring the mind/body interaction at its most enigmatic…

And what is no doubt sustaining this controversy is that, from “subject” to “subject”, there are going to be any number of gaps between each individual’s situation and all that we still don’t know about the mind-boggling anomalies that pop up in regard to those like Daniel. The biological imperatives manifesting themselves in ways that we are simply not yet able to fully explain.

Then the even “spookier” experiences of those, blind or sighted, who seem to “know” things that connect them to, among other things, spiritual and religious realities that to those like me simply do not exist anymore.

Blindsight: the strangest form of consciousness
David Robson at the BBC Future website

Of course “why” here can be approached from different directions. On the one hand, there is the part that science is attempting to understand. Why does the brain create conditions like this? Is it possible [through science] to explain how in a truly definitive manner it happens to some but not to others? Can the answers to these questions lead to medical breakthroughs that do reverse blindness? Even for those who were born blind?

Then the “why?” that, for some, is the most problematic – and far more fascinating? – of all. The teleological “why?” In other words, for those who believe in or who are on a religious path given the existential trek from the cradle to the grave, how do conditions like these fit into the “big picture”? One intertwined on either a God or a No God spiritual path.

For now though, the first “why?” is the main thrust here.

Then of course it comes down to the possibilities that may become available in the medical field to reverse blindness going all the way back to those who were born blind. That’s got to be the most visceral reaction among those who are: what might be possible…and what is likely to never be possible?

Blindsight: the strangest form of consciousness
David Robson at the BBC Future website

Of course “why” here can be approached from different directions. On the one hand, there is the part that science is attempting to understand. Why does the brain create conditions like this? Is it possible [through science] to explain how in a truly definitive manner it happens to some but not to others? Can the answers to these questions lead to medical breakthroughs that do reverse blindness? Even for those who were born blind?

Then the “why?” that, for some, is the most problematic – and far more fascinating? – of all. The teleological “why?” In other words, for those who believe in or who are on a religious path given the existential trek from the cradle to the grave, how do conditions like these fit into the “big picture”? One intertwined on either a God or a No God spiritual path.

For now though, the first “why?” is the main thrust here.

Then of course it comes down to the possibilities that may become available in the medical field to reverse blindness going all the way back to those who were born blind. That’s got to be the most visceral reaction among those who are: what might be possible…and what is likely to never be possible?

Blindsight: the strangest form of consciousness
David Robson at the BBC Future website

Here of course I’m like most of you: taking their word for it. There’s how the brain functions to create the conditions that the scientists study above and there’s how I lack both the education and the background that would allow me even to ask sophisticated questions. Plus I’m not blind.

There’s only imagining how medical science, in grappling to understand the parts “deep in the centre of the brain”, might someday come up with a breakthrough that will, well, we just don’t know.

Thus:

The V1: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abducens_nerve

Here of course the relationship between human consciousness and vision. For those who have never seen at all…is their state of consciousness different from those who have always seen? Are there chemical and neurological interactions in their brain creating a sense of reality that those who are sighted can only grasp up to a point? Or is the difference not of any significant degree?

Blindsight: the strangest form of consciousness
David Robson at the BBC Future website

In all honesty, it is not really clear to me what important point is being conveyed here about blindsight. As it is experienced by those like Daniel…or for those having participated in the experiment. And since it involves components of the subconscious and unconscious mind, is it even possible to understand it fully? Since I can’t help but be aware of being blindfolded and having my limbs tied, I can’t imagine experiencing this strange puppet show other than in being aware of it. Far more mysterious perhaps is the part where some argue that nature itself is pulling all of the strings. And that, to the extent that those born blind, those who go blind and those always having been sighted experience anything at all it is only as they ever could have.

And again, if only the video was available so that we could watch Daniel navigate the obstacles and were able ourselves to ask him questions about the blind side.

Here though this can suggest for some that the subconscious mind is somehow attuned to what they construe to be a spiritual or a religious understanding of the world around us. And if the subconscious and unconscious mind is guiding our behaviors then what does that tell us about holding people responsible for what they choose to do when assuming some measure of free will?

Okay, we have free will…but we are still little more than nature’s zombies?

One thing for sure however: the objectivists among us will never go down that path. Let alone mine.

Blindsight: the strangest form of consciousness
David Robson at the BBC Future website

Here, of course, I eventually get around to the part where even though we may never fully grasp the biological/medical aspects of human consciousness, whether one is born blind, becomes blind or was never blind, there are components of whatever any of us believe that we are conscious of which are far more problematic in communicating to others. Just because we are conscious of something doesn’t necessarily make what we convey it to be true. And, even here, we must assume that our own conscious understanding of our own particular world reality is autonomous. That we choose to believe what we do about something given that we were free to believe something else instead.

With the human species, social, political and economic memes come into play in a manner that is basically completely unknown to almost all other species.

Again, the mystery deepens. Something happens. But it shouldn’t happen. So, is it happening because it is a mystery? Or is it happening because of something you hadn’t thought of? Or because of subterfuge or fraud?

And not blind from birth or going blind in both eyes…but blind only in spots. Able to see but not as others are able to see. A condition that has a name…an affliction called being blindsighted.

And all we know is that medical science will continue to explore it in order to understand it more fully. And to understand what it all might mean in regard to human consciousness itself.

Giving blind people sight illuminates the brain’s secrets
By Rhitu Chatterjee at Science Magazine

Leaving aside the outrageous political realities embedded in a world where literally millions of children must endure the horrors of global poverty embedded in a global economy where some ever and always get the very, very best while others barely manage to subsist at all – even die – there’s the question that is pertinent to this thread: blindness in all of its many individual manifestations.

In fact, there are medical conditions related to blindness at birth [or at a very young age] such that medical science has not yet perfected a way to reverse the condition. So for those like Maia the question still remains: what about my condition?

Any particular individual afflicted with hundreds and hundreds of different medical conditions are always in the same boat here: in my lifetime will medical science find a cure…or a way to reverse their own particular condition. Then the part where this is accomplished but they are not among the lucky few who fortuitously happened to be living in a part of the world where they can actually afford to have the procedure.

And then what most of us here cannot cannot even begin to imagine:

A whole new reality for him. A whole new world. Then back to the tricky part. Okay, he can now see the world around him. And in some ways that changed his frame of mind about things, but in other ways it did not.

Now that would be a fascinating discussion for someone like me.

Giving blind people sight illuminates the brain’s secrets
By Rhitu Chatterjee at Science Magazine

How, in a strictly biological sense, the brain functions to make vision a reality is not something that interests me as much as the conflicts that arise as a result of sighted people seeing exactly the same thing but coming to very different conclusions in regard to how they react to what they all agree is in fact true.

For the blind, in not being able to see, it can only come down to what their other senses are able to convey to them. That and the information that the sighted convey to them. But, in regard to value judgments, only given their own prejudices.

But why would someone assume that in never having been able to see and then being able to, vision would result in someone not being able to make sense of a world that their other senses had provided them with ample information regarding. They live their lives just as sighted people do. A newly restored vision would seem only to add another dimension to their reality. But the reality of their lives doesn’t change insofar as their day to day behaviors are concerned.

Or would they?

Here what we would need is an attempt by someone to analyze just that. An exploration into the reality of those who were blind for years and were then able to see. What did change in their lives, what did not? And what conclusions did they come to in order to explain that?

Clearly…given what context? It is often this part that is skipped over.

Giving blind people sight illuminates the brain’s secrets
By Rhitu Chatterjee at Science Magazine

Again, see as well in what sense? In terms of vision itself or in integrating their newly acquired vision into the broader understanding of the world around them? Now that they can see, how do they react differently to the experiences that they had never seen before, to people they had never seen before. For example, it is one thing to know that sighted people are often obsessed with “looks” in their romantic relationships. When you yourself have never been able to experience it. But, once regaining your vision, will it come to matter more to you as well. Beauty as construed by the blind from birth can’t help but be reconfigured once you can see what different sighted people construe either to be beautiful or not beautiful.

Yes, this is always my own focus: genes or memes? Or, rather, what particular combination of both? What is “preprogrammed” into our brains by nature? If not everything as the hard determinists insist then what? What experiences can the newly sighted here have in a world in which this new sense [for them] – vision – is restored? It’s not only how these new visual cues are processed autonomically by the brain but how any particular individual’s brain then begins to live his or her life other than as they did when they were blind. The role that vision does play in creating and then sustaining “I” as an existential fabrication rooted in dasein.

Giving blind people sight illuminates the brain’s secrets
By Rhitu Chatterjee at Science Magazine

Now this is particularly fascinating to me.

What of this “critical period” when the brain and the rest of the body come into sync biologically around the contribution from all five senses. What if one or more of them is absent? How does the brain adjust to this in creating a reality that might be different for those born blind and those born sighted. How is vision impaired given particular contexts.

And forget cats and monkeys. At least in regard to that which I focus in on: sense deprivation, identity and dasein.

On the other hand, it is clearly important to explore this with those who were born blind but then regained their vision. Only the questions I would ask them would be aimed more in the direction of value judgments. And, let’s face it, just because you are born blind does not mean that – out in a particular world historically and culturally – you are less indoctrinated by your family and your community to think about things like morality and religion as everyone else does.

And those born blind also accumulate personal experiences and personal relationships that will shape and mold their value judgments in ways that many never really think through in the manner in which “I” do. They can become locked into one or another objectivist “ism” and then be “blinded by the light” no less so than those who do have access to their vision.

Or is there a difference? If what you are told about the world unable to see becomes a world that you are able to see how might that change your mind about, well, any number of things?

Giving blind people sight illuminates the brain’s secrets
By Rhitu Chatterjee at Science Magazine

Ever that line to be drawn. When is the brain fully in command and when does it pass the baton on to a self able to command things with automatic pilot switched to off? Some, of course, insist it is never off. That the brain in sync with the laws of nature commanding everything. And that those times when we think we are in charge is only the illusion of choice.

But what of those who are born without sight? Or any of the other senses. How does their brain function the same or different when the line is drawn? Are there likely to be more misinterpretations from the minds of those born blind…or just different misinterpretation? And, again, once sight is restored, what changes and what stays the same?

Yet another fascinating reality about the human brain? Where the brain passes the baton over to the…ghost in the machine? The “I” that is part brain and part…soul?

Illusions. Like these: google.com/search?source=un … 66&bih=625

The brain is confronted with one and, what, it tries to make sense of what is being seen before the autonomous mind – “I” – comes to realize that it is just an illusion. Or it is tricked into seeing movement or color changes that are not really there? The autonomous mind knows that the movement and bleeding colors are just an illusion but still can’t stop the brain from seeing them.

And, of course, for those born blind who never regain their sight, there may be illusions that revolve around sound and touch and taste and smell. Though, for me, those are harder to imagine.

Instead, I focus in more on the illusions that revolve around objectivism. Those able to delude themselves that their own philosophical, political or spiritual path is the only true path. That all of the hundreds and hundreds of different paths are wrong.

You know, if they are delusions.