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People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

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Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#271

Post by kittoes »

sethammons wrote: post #263
oivaksef wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly the same here. When I learned that other people actually could visualise things, it made me realise why I've spent my life being a commercial photographer and camera developer. Capture the images - I guess most people get this for free to some extent

I am confused. You can't recollect a friends face? You can't imagine the feeling of sandpaper? You cant bop to a melody in your head? The "mind's eye" isn't an actual image. It doesn't pop into view like augmented or virtual reality. It is imaginary.

I literally could not tell you what my own wife or children's faces look like from memory. The feeling of sandpaper, I can basically relive it 1:1. Same with music, I can all but hear it. So there does seem to be quite the spectrum, even if it's all imaginary.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#272

Post by drcongo »

tekla wrote: post #129
drcongo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most I think, especially among musicians, which makes the GP fascinating to me!

I can play the piano, saxaphone, and guitar, and I've never considered being able to think about music to be actually hearing it.

I only learned that some people don't from the Mastodon thread - it's slightly disorienting finding out how differently other people's brains work. This, for you, might be like the day I realised that aphantasia was a thing and people weren't just using flowery language when they talk about visualising things.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#273

Post by edb_123 »

etcetcetcetceta wrote: post #254
chiefgeek wrote: post #17

I’ve worked as a professional photographer for twenty years and I visualize absolutely zero with my eyes closed. It’s only recently that I learned of aphantasia. Even on most psychedelic journeys I don’t have closed eye visuals, NN-DMT being the consistent exception. Everything is more of just a “knowingness”.

>I don’t have closed eye visuals Nobody does, this is all unfalsifiable nonsense, it's an artifact of the language used to describe imagination.

Many people have such visuals, so I'm very curious as to what you mean here? I have really intense closed eye visuals during psilocybin trips that basically feel like the fabric of space and time unfolding and presenting itself in an all-encompassing ocean of geometric patterns and fractal-like structures. And sound can become images, and images can become sounds. This can be a really profound experience, and I can assure you that they are definitely a real phenomena.

I can also experience a form of closed eye visuals when not tripping but mediating (or while relaxing in bed in the dark, waiting to sleep). But they're of a quite different kind, and remind me more of a very active type of phosphenes morphing with blotches of color and light. But they are also kind of on a different layer (more in the background of the "mind's eye") than the strong "in your face" visuals I experience when tripping.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#275

Post by thom »

misthop wrote: post #105
jibbit wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you self-diagnosed yourself as unable to do something, based on what you imagine being able to do is like?

https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq

Not sure what to answer on any of those questions. There's no 'perfectly clear but nothing like normal vision' option.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#276

Post by sgsjchs »

fwlr wrote: post #106
suddenlybananas wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not denying there's a difference between the two groups, I'm denying that the difference is in phenomenal experience. If one group has a different way of describing their experience to others in general (e.g. perhaps because they interpret things much more literally than others), then they would likely describe specific things differently.

A quick demonstration I sometimes use to tease out this distinction: “imagine a six-sided die. Are you imagining it? Good. How many dots are on the side closest to you?” If the phenomenal experience was the same and the difference is in the description, everyone should still be able to give a number as their answer, even if they have to use different processes to derive the number from their different descriptions. B…

This test implies that phantasiacs immediately lock down the full visual fidelity (the orientation of the die), before you specified it. Why would they? I find myself capable of imagining the die in superposition, same as I don't imagine any particular color it has or any surface it may rest on.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#277

Post by karmakaze »

Semaphor wrote: post #243
karmakaze wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also had this kind of topological knowingness which I couldn't name. Another comment here says "schematic conceptual" which captures what it feels like for me. Another good explanation here is that it's all taking place but that last step of creating the visual is suppressed (as intended) while conscious as that would be hallucinating.

I sometimes called it "textual memory of an image", but I also liked TFA with "we experience these as an awareness of a set of spatial facts"

Yes. Reminds me of "Poetry is the art of giving different names to the same thing" vs "Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things" -- Henri Poincaré. Set of spacial facts is what's left when all the incidental embellishments are removed--pure abstraction.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#278

Post by sethammons »

kaffekaka wrote: post #268
sethammons wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am confused. You can't recollect a friends face? You can't imagine the feeling of sandpaper? You cant bop to a melody in your head? The "mind's eye" isn't an actual image. It doesn't pop into view like augmented or virtual reality. It is imaginary.

How do you know that? Honest question.

It stretches credulity that someone can occlude their vision with their imagination. Like, you are staring at a dog, you can't imagine a brick wall in front of it and not see the dog any more. Similarly you can't not see the back of your eyelids. Your imagination can kick in and your brain does $THINGS. But the back of your eyelid is still what you are seeing when you close your eyes.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#280

Post by fatnoah »

culopatin wrote: post #197
vidarh wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Ed Catmull surveying Pixar staff, there doesn't seem to be much more than a minor correlation between ability to visualise and artistic ability.

I can personally watch a movie in my head, eyes open and I’m super not artistic but very engineer oriented. To the point that I realized I should be dropping software for mech eng

I'm the same. As a student, I could vividly picture the page of the book containing the details of whatever problem I was working on. I have close to zero artistic and design ability, but am very strong in engineering and spatial reasoning.
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