Do people born blind, have a sense of color? Do they have an imagination?

Philippines
August 8, 2007 12:50pm CST
I have been thinking about this quite a few times now, and I was imagining it that if I was born blind, will I know that an apple is red, or leaves are green or the sky blue? That if someone told me that my eyes are black, will I imagine it or will I get a picture of what it is in my mind? If one is born with only darkness.. how do they imagine? Comments are welcome...
1 person likes this
2 responses
@Daelin (683)
• Brazil
8 Aug 07
I think color is totally abstract concept for people who were born blind (totally blind). Then can have an idea of form by touching things, but there is no way they can understand color since they can't feel it by any means. When you ask about imagination I think you are referring to the colors. If not, the imagination doens't have anything to do with the senses. A person who can't see will imagine using information they had through other senses. If you say a blind person that you like to eat an ananas, and if he doesn't know how it is, he can smell the fruit, feel the fruit and imagine how that fruit is. He can taste it as well. He will form an imagine of that fruit in his mind, even if the image is not the same you have, it is still an image made of smell, form and taste.
• Philippines
8 Aug 07
yeah. i guess so, but its hard to imagine smell or taste or feelings right? Just try imagining the smell of a banana... or imagine the touch of the bark of a tree without the image popping in your mind... That's a hard task.
@Daelin (683)
• Brazil
8 Aug 07
It is hard because we have sight and it is the main sense we use. A blind person has another sense as the main one. They might think that is hard to not use the smell to imagine something :)
@ElicBxn (63235)
• United States
16 Jul 09
My roommate is visually impaired and has no color vision. She also went to the blind school with people with no vision. While she has no color vision, she does have the concept of it, and when she writes she includes colors in her stories, if she is actually using a character from a TV show, she will ask a friend to tell her the colors of things. However, a totally blind person really doesn't seem to have quite the same concept of color that even she does, because she can at least see shades. They do have an imagination, but don't really use it to try to understand things like that.