Is seeing completely subjective?

If that blind person hadn't seen before you could use the feel of something to help that person imagine in whatever perceptual context they may have (I'm not blind so it's hard to comprehend what that would be like but I have an idea). Say for instance you want to describe a mountain you could say well you know how this rock feels. Rough in some areas, with protruding areas that are pointed? Well imagine that magnified by 1 million times. I think that would paint a picture so to speak.

If you were to "to describe everything I know of sight", how long would it take? An hour? A day? A year? Just roughly...

Reply to MojaveMan I guess that might help, but tactile senses are different part of brain. I guess emphasis on color, sheen, translucency and stuff that are strictly visual.

Reply to TiredThinker none of our senses are completely subjective. They collect data about an objective external world and they are verified every time we attempt to interact with it. (i.e. trying to find the exit hole on the wall of our house). The interpretation of these data introduces the subjective quality which comes as a coating of our experience mainly from an aesthetic perspective.

Your first question doesn't help the title question . Its not your overarching subjectivity that limits a blind man to understand your perception of the world. Its the limitation of senses he is experiencing that keeps him from understanding your subjective view of the objective world. oF course it depends on what you are trying to describe. i.e. he can verify and understand the existence , location in space and utility of a door, but he can not do that with a color and how it makes you feel.

Quoting TiredThinker

Or if a blind person claims to have seen briefly is there anything they could say to confirm that they did in fact see versus be told what seeing is by someone else and regurgitated?

-It depends from the claim. If a blind person describes accurately a layout of a space without having any information by a third person then you can confirm it.

Reply to Nickolasgaspar

I have been interested in NDEs and OBEs research but haven't found strong evidence to support them as beyond physical. Some have claimed in a near death experiences a blind person has described visual information. But I want to know what they couldn't possibly have known unless they had achieved some form of supernatural sight. What information isn't just remembering spacial information and descriptions given by other people. Such is a setting sun being reddish.

Reply to TiredThinker I have to dismiss all NDEs and OBEs claims from being a credible source of knowledge. I don't believe a dying brain deprived from oxygen can be the best way to find out about reality and its objective nature. After all large studies on the phenomenon (A.W.A.R.E I& II) showed that subjects who claimed having such experiences failed to spot cues placed in ERs all over the US.
Its true that we all construct "memories" through narratives so we should be careful with our conclusions and what they say about reality.
The color of the setting sun is a property that can only be verified(or interpret to be more accurate) by a single sense(vision) while spatial info can be verified two or more.
So the stimuli that makes a blind man talk about "reddish" might be a completely different thing from the stimuli of our vision.

Reply to Nickolasgaspar

I am looking for a way to not dismiss NDEs as they seem to be emotional experiences and the Parnia experiments involving upward facing numbers are less emotional in nature. I just wonder if there is a quality that can't be faked by a person that literally can't physically perceive it. Or is it all just words and everything can be faked unless it's just letters, numbers, or limited choice shapes being witnessed?

Quoting TiredThinker

I am looking for a way to not dismiss NDEs as they seem to be emotional experiences and the Parnia experiments involving upward facing numbers are less emotional in nature.

Do you really believe that emotion is the best way to interpret an experience? Really? This is how we end up with stories on ghosts, goblins and UFOs....
Parnia's experiments are simple and have nothing to do with his subjects emotions. They just do the same questions and their answers fail to mention those cues.

Reply to Nickolasgaspar No emotions don't explain anything. But the main attributes described in NDEs aren't terribly informational. Mostly colors, music, and stuff that can easily be imagined. I am just curious what a blind person could possibly say about sight that leaves little doubt that they saw something.

Quoting TiredThinker

If I was to describe everything I know of sight to a blind person who has always been blind could I even begin to make it clear what I perceive?

Check out the article on Mary's Room.

The knowledge argument (also known as Mary's room) is a philosophical thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal Qualia" (1982) and extended in "What Mary Didn't Know" (1986).

The experiment describes Mary, a scientist who exists in a black and white world where she has extensive access to physical descriptions of color, but no actual perceptual experience of color. The central question of the thought experiment is whether Mary will gain new knowledge when she goes outside the black and white world and experiences seeing in color.

It's not the same point you're making, but it's related.

Reply to TiredThinker I really don't see how blind people's experiences with sight can be helpful to this question ( whether seeing completely subjective). The answer in my opinion is obvious. Seeing is not completely subjective or better its only subjective from an aesthetic aspect. If it was completely subjective then we wouldn't be able to drive cars safely, we wouldn't have color scales to pick a bucket of paint for our homes and our scale units would be useless. Do you agree?

Reply to Wayfarer I will check it out. I'm not partial to a blind person seeing color as an evidence because color might well be entirely of the mind, and for all we know the occipital lobe might be accessible even when the eyes don't work and can be stimulated.

Reply to Nickolasgaspar I do agree with that statement. I only use the word subjective to mean not objective which might not be mutually exclusive. I probably keep using the terms wrong. Basically inside the mind versus from outside.

Reply to TiredThinker So are you making an ontological question on the manifestation of reality? Does your argument(or better question) challenges the external source of the content of our Cataleptic Impressions?

Reply to TiredThinker It seems to me that what you mean by “subjective” is just “private”. The original question seems to be about whether or not you can share or convey an experience, making it a question of public and private.

Reply to Jamal Yes

Reply to Wayfarer

When we see color I think we only gain knowledge about the physical phenomenon that allows for the phenomenon of color, namely wavelength? When we dream do we imagine color from memory or can we recreate the perceptions of color? We probably recall that the sky should be blue, but do we experience it again from memory, or is the memory derived from past knowledge of what the perception should be and we basically only get the number reference from a "color by numbers" book?

Quoting TiredThinker

When we see color I think we only gain knowledge about the physical phenomenon that allows for the phenomenon of color, namely wavelength?

The point of the thought-experiment is that when Mary sees colour she knows what colour is like, for the first time - something she didn't know before.

Reply to Wayfarer How does Mary describe the knowledge? I can describe east and west as being 180 away from one another and each 90 degrees from north. But what knowledge can be described from color? Is it more than an effect that can be tided meaninglessly to other memories?

Quoting TiredThinker

How does Mary describe the knowledge?

I would imagine it would be simple to describe her experience to another person who is not colour-blind: 'I saw colours for the first time! Now I know what colours are!' And presumably her interlocutor would know just what she meant. But apropos of your OP, she could not, of course, convey that understanding to a blind person, who at best has an analogical understanding of what colour must mean.