This made me realize that while it is instinctively difficult to imagine a lack of sight or touch, a lack of sound, smell, or taste, seems relatively easy to im

This made me realize that while it is instinctively difficult to imagine a lack of sight or touch, a lack of sound, smell, or taste, seems relatively easy to imagine. Sight vs sound is especially interesting; we tend to think of lack of sight as blackness, as the article describes, but there doesn't seem to be an instinctive parallel for lack of sound (at least in my mind). I guess it would be "silence", but that's much more akin to lack of sound than the concept of blackness is to lack of sight (even if blackness is technically lack of light). Although having written that, I now wonder whether a person who loses their hearing might be plagued by phantom hums or such things, as can sometimes happen to hearing people when exposed to extended silence.