I think most people and journalists who speak about aphantasia are exaggerating or misleading others. If you actually are able to imagine an picture with your eyes open and have it cover the real world, that's called hallucinating. Some people can visualise things stronger than others, some cannot at all, but let's not pretend like actual visualisation (hallucinating) is the norm or that more than a few people on earth can do it.
I never heard of aphantasia before but having read a bit about it, doesn't seem to be the same thing. When I "see" things mentally it's not like it "takes over" my visual input, nor it has weight in the real world. The image seems to be "nowhere", like when dreaming.
Closing my eyes doesn't really make the image clearer by itself, it's more like there's no visual input to interrupt my visualization and that's what makes it "clearer".
If I mentally listen to music it's clearly not coming from my ears (in fact the whole concept of sound direction doesn't seem to exist when I imagine sound. No stereo separation either.)
I find this whole stuff fascinating though. I wish there was some way to measure and/or capture those images/sounds and make them physical data, even if once captured it turns out to be a lot less detailed than what it seems. It'd be a security nightmare though!
Yeah, it's like some sort of internal framebuffer. I'd kinda equate it to some sort of SVG-like format where you define a series of objects and your mind "displays" it as best as it can, with more processing on whatever you are focusing currently.
I can't close my eyes and imprint a picture over my closed eyelids as if i was watching a movie. If you could imprint an image over your closed eyes, logic dictates you would be able to do the same in a dark room since light is the only difference between open and closed eyes. But I don't think people are having vivid and realistic hallucinations in the dark.
Regardless, the way journalists talk about aphantasia, or more specifically, the opposite of aphantasia, has led a lot of people to believe this is possible (at least, I believed it based on what people have said they can do).
Maybe I am just exaggerating then, but i think this whole topic has got a lot of people worried that they are not normal. I don't think it's good for the mental health of hypochondriacs.
Yes, closing your eyes and being in a dark room has the same effect (to me at least). As I mentioned in another reply I think it's simply because there's no visual input to process so your mind can focus on images better/more efficiently.
After all a decent amount of processing comes from visual input, I figure that's what makes stuff like a Rorschach test or cloudgazing to be a thing, or certain optical illusions. You are parsing what you see and the brain takes some licenses for speed at times.
It's clear everyone is hardwired to see stuff like faces in something as simple as ":)", I feel it's related, but it's not my field, I can only wonder.
Is there any science done on this particular topic? It sure is super interesting but all I see about it is anecdote or very surface level stuff. It's clear some people do it better than others (my anecdata seems to indicate creative types might tap into it better?), but since most people is also affected by certain optical effects or tricks, the ability has to be present in everyone to a degree. Might be a thing that needs to be exploited consciously to make it "vivid".
It could also be a matter of priorities in perception. Like some people remembers lyrics better than songs, or numbers better than images. Maybe we are just taking our vision of the world in the way that's the most comfortable, and for some people it's images/sounds and for others "plaintext" information.
I know I really got a thing for visual information, as I can tell stuff like typos not from reading a word, but from noticing its shape is "off", like I'm remembering a printout of the word instead of the word character-by-character. (note that difference in typesetting does not affect the "shape" to throw me off. Unless it's very weird handwritten text, but that throws everyone off)
I'm talking about literally seeing the image, not being able to better internally visualise the image in the dark. If you are able to literally see images in the dark as if light was bouncing off of them, that's hallucinating and I don't think we're talking about the same thing then. If you are actually able to hallucinate on command I'd be very surprised.
That would be like lucid dreaming while awake and I'd imagine it would be more well documented considering half of this thread claims to be able to do it. Actually, why are so many people trying to lucid dream at all if this level of visualisation is so common?
As far as I can tell, you're the only one moving the goalpost from "internally visualize" to "actually see the object manifested in front of you".
I don't think anyone is claiming that the latter is widespread, and I also don't think you're acknowledging that there are many people who can't do the former at all (myself included).
If you ask me to imagine something, there is no visual component to that at all for me. Internally, externally, nowhere.
I probably was moving goalposts, but it's just one of those issues where it's hard to communicate with each other. I guess i'm not very good at visualising other people's experiences :p
I guess I should clarify that I don't think you were arguing in bad-faith ("moving the goalposts" is a bit a of a charged phrase in the current political climate). I appreciate the conversation!
Moving the goalposts is bad arguing. Bad arguing is often due to bad-faith arguing; but good arguing is hard, so it's also often accidental. Yet, people equate pointing out flaws in an argument with accusations of intellectual dishonesty: it's been politicised.
So we have a meta-problem of different abilities to visualize or imagine the concepts of visualization :)
Sorry, but this is too funny. There's some sort of fundamental difficulty when humans are trying to compare their varying (or not?) qualia.
Like those stoner-philosphy questions. ("Is the 'red' I see the same hue as the 'red' you see? How would we ever know??")
There's an element of that unsolvable problem here; of knowing whether the other person is describing their internal mental state using the same definitions as you are.
I've read plenty of folks who claim they can watch a movie on the inside of their eyelids, an experience they claim is indistinguishable from watching it on a TV.
Oh then definitely not. As I replied earlier there's no real weight to any image I might be thinking about.
I had a case of sleep paralysis or whatever it's called once and hallucinated someone standing at my door, and even thought it was persistent and made sense it faded over time until I was just left with a "what was that?". It's nothing like that at all.
Even if you can think of an object, even complex ones, and determine through a visual method its properties, shapes and colors, it's "nowhere" relative to real life visuals. You could be spinning in place or blind and you can still visualize the image. I could think of a scene with a very bright light but I'm really thinking of a white color or a gradient, it's obviously not going to blind me because it's now flowing through my optic nerves. I mean I can do something like divide a screen in two regions with an imaginary line, but it's not some sort of futuristic HUD.
That's kinda why I think there's some relation between our ability to mentally visualize an image and the ability to recognize a face or find shapes in stuff like Rorschach tests. In other words I think everyone has the ability to visualize images mentally, they just don't exploit it because maybe they put more weight on other details. Where I can remember and play with images and sounds mentally with no effort, other people can remember huge amounts of text, or do complex math instead. It might be a matter of specialization, perhaps?
Think of what you see (with you eyes) as a stage, space, or, in computing terms, a buffer or something like that. What I imagine in my head does not compete for space in this buffer that much -- it's like in a different stage, a different space. I know something I imagine lies in imagination-space not in eye-vision-space. Those two spaces are probably merged somewhere[0] so they can use similar recognition and abstraction engines in the brain, but this information of what comes from which one is maintained (like you can distinguish between senses, between the auditory stage and the visual stage without thinking).
[0]: I believe this explains how, while I can do all this visualization, it's difficult to simultaneously "grasp" both spaces -- it's like both are there, but when I switch to mind space the visual one goes to the background and I can't process it too much.
It's incredibly easy to "typical mind" and expect that the normal inner experience of being human is the same for everyone else as it is for you.
There's a wide variance in visual imagery. I know people who can vividly imagine things with their eyes open, find it easy, almost automatic, others who have to try, and some who can't at all.
Similarly there are wide variances in how people think: some think very visually, some have an internal monologue (or multiple), some have an inner experience with neither.
I used to be nearly aphantasic - having only brief flashes of vision except on the edge of sleep - but have been slowly training the skill after finding out it's possible, and normal, to do more.
Focusing on spending time around the edge of sleep on thinking about things -> sometimes seeing flashes of them -> eventually can do it on demand more? Now focusing on those -> trying to imagine more intricate details.
Afraid it's hard to explain, and if I'd been fully aphantasic to start (including when nearly asleep) would not have been able to make any progress.
Same type of issue as trying to explain how to move a specific muscle or unfocus your eyes
A good test for me was this: ask someone to close their eyes and visualize an apple. Ask them what they experience. Some only 'see' the concept. Some only outlines. Some see black and white. Some see colors. Some see very specific things, like the brand. Some experience an entire scene, with smells and all.
