The limitations of blindsight
Blindsight, made famous by a book of the same name in science fiction circles by Peter Watts, is a disorder caused by damage to the primary visual cortex. Sufferers typically lose all ability to consciously perceive any sight from the eye corresponding to part of the cortex damaged. Which sounds sort of like blindness. If you cover their normally working eye, but a tomato on a table in front of them, and ask them what's there they'll have no idea and be unable to do so. But this is called blindsight rather than just blindness. If you then ask this person to point to the object in front of them they'll point right at the tomato. How does this work? Well, the brain is composed of different parts that connect to each other in different ways and serve different purposes. Strange as it may seem the part that corresponds to you knowing that you know there's a tomato there and the part that lets you point to the tomato are different and its possible to cut one off fr