Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You'll be amazed how good your memory will get without the crutch of sight That's all really interesting. I personally have a problem with my thoughts in that I need to "sound out" or read them aloud in my head. This sometimes really slows me down, I mull over a thought until it sounds right. Especially when I'm tired I can get stuck in a loop. And it applies when reading too, I can force myself to read faster but…
I can’t speak to physical blindness, but I have aphantasia[0] which basically means I cannot voluntarily invoke my minds eye. Up until I found out about it last year, I thought that “visualizing” things was a metaphor for thinking, as I didn’t realize people could actually see things without looking at them. There are varying degrees of aphantasia. For context, I am completely unable to “see” anything in my mind. I d…
Correct me if I'm wrong but I suspect a lot of self-diagnosed cases of aphantasia are due to the ambiguity of language (specifically, English)... Qualia lost in translation.
I suspect nobody really sees something visually when thinking/imagining something, in a sober waking state (barring maybe a few rare exceptions or psychotic disorders). If you would see something superimposed on your visual field, with closed eyes or not, that would be called hallucinating.
For me, "seeing it in my mind's eye" is a different kind of "seeing": there is no visual input.
Example: imagine a tree. Where are the branches? Where are the roots? Where are the leaves? What color do the leaves have? Etc... You can answer these questions, right? The place where you find the answers is where the mind's eye is. I've yet to meet someone who actually sees the tree with the same visual clarity as if looking at an actual tree.
Dreaming is somewhere in between for me: it's usually visual, but not of the same visual quality as waking life, except when lucid. A lot of people don't remember their dreams, but that doesn't mean they don't have them. Ask yourself right after waking up in REM sleep (don't even open your eyes if you can): what just happened? What were you thinking?