Why can we see darkness?

[Magical Realist]

Google AI was quite unequivocable on this:

"We cannot "see" darkness itself because sight requires light to enter the eye and stimulate photoreceptors. Darkness is the absence of light, meaning there is no signal for the eyes to send to the brain."

And yet I see darkness quite clearly. If I drive up to a store and the lights are out, I know it is closed because I see it is dark inside. If I look into a deep hole in the ground, I can see the darkness inside. Even when I enter a completely dark space, I can see the blackness in front of me. It is a distinctive color telling me it is dark. I can see shadows and silhouettes and the clear night sky and even black holes. So to me this suggests a fundamental error about what it means to see. Seeing is not just light entering the eye. It is the phenomenal visibility of any datum change whatsoever. We can see the non-physical absence of light just as clearly and unmistakeably as we can see its physical presence because of the relational property of contrast between the two.

[Syne]

Your brain interpreting the lack of visual signal is not your eyes "seeing." Like many things in perception, our brain is amazing at filling in the blanks.

[Magical Realist]

How does the brain tell if there is darkness before it if it isn't seeing it with the eyes? It never thinks it is going blind because there is a lack of light. It perceives darkness as a real state outside of the body. Is it perhaps psychic?

[Syne]

The brain doesn't know anything, except that there's a lack of signal from the eyes. The brain merely interprets that as black.

[Magical Realist]

The brain doesn't know anything, except that there's a lack of signal from the eyes. The brain merely interprets that as black.

It knows it is dark based on the state of the eyes not having any light. The blackness is a positive color indicating that for it. We thus perceive darkness as I detailed in the OP. The brain knows because the eye sees---always.

[Syne]

Okay, continue to be ignorant. 9_9

[Magical Realist]

Vision is the art of making the invisible visible.

[Syne]

Is that how you justify your ignorance? LOL!

[C C]

Google AI was quite unequivocable on this:

"We cannot "see" darkness itself because sight requires light to enter the eye and stimulate photoreceptors. Darkness is the absence of light, meaning there is no signal for the eyes to send to the brain." [...]

Similarly, the AI at DDG: "The eye does not detect the color black; instead, it perceives black as the absence of light. When there is no light entering the eye, we see black." (Internally experience black, not "see" as in an EM frequency stimulating the eye.)   

Since there is neither one nor plural wavelengths of light corresponding to black, it doesn't qualify as a color in the physical sense. But it can be categorized as an extra-spectral color, and that refined down to the subcategory of achromatic colors. Purple is an extra-spectral color, too, but in the sense that it's a color that the brain invents for a combination of frequencies rather than consisting of no wavelength at all (like black). In contrast, a proper spectral color corresponds to a single wavelength of light. 

Is black a color or the absence of color?
https://www.colorwithleo.com/is-black-a-...-of-color/

INTRO: Black is a controversial color. To some, it is clearly a color in its own right, while to others it represents the absence of color. This debate stems from the very nature of color and light itself. When talking about color, we are talking about visible light waves that are reflected off objects and detected by our eyes. Black, on the other hand, is what we perceive when no visible light is reflected off an object. This has led some to argue that black is the absence of color rather than being a color itself.

In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into the science and semantics behind this debate. We’ll look at the physics of light and color. We’ll explore how our eyes and brains detect and interpret color. We’ll also examine the cultural and linguistic aspects of categorizing black – and see that there are good arguments on both sides of this debate. By the end, you should have a more nuanced understanding of the nature of black and its relationship to color...

[Magical Realist]

I understand the need to define color as a frequency of light. It makes the optical science so much more understandable and explainable. And yet I notice color is also created inside the brain, often without light entering the eyes at all. On any given night, I can close my eyes and see a molten red and black-spotted background that fades and becomes a phantasmagoria of blue and green and violet phosphenes floating around and merging. I also know that I dream in color, often more vividly than when I see colors. Every now and then I will see this beautifully blue flash in my visual field, which I know isn't real but is intriguing nonetheless. And then of course there's the optical effect of staring at a color and then looking at a white surface and seeing an afterimage of its complimentary color. And ofcourse hallucinogens.

I take this as evidence that different light frequencies are only interpreted as colors by the brain--much like other sensations of pain and heat and touch and sweetness and audio tones that the brain externalizes in our bodies. Not so much out there physically separate from us as conjured intra-cerebrally thru some mysterious alchemy of purely phenomenal qualia. It's convenient for us to attribute objects outside our own bodies with our own sensation of color in the same sense that we attribute the sensation of hotness to heated objects and flames. But in both cases these are mere projections of the brain we have evolved to believe in for our own survival. Calling the fire hot keeps us from getting burned. And calling a fruit red helps us find the ripe ones more easily. So knowing color is more hallucinated than it is seen won't really change how we are so used to experiencing it in the world. It's just one of many illusions the brain creates for us that have ensured our survival for millions of years.