I’ve read tons of these and still have no idea if I have aphantasia or not. I can’t understand whether people just have different ways of describing what’s in their minds eye or if there’s really a fundamental difference.
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“So you can really see things in your head when your eyes are closed?”
Yeah!
“And it’s as though you’re seeing the object in front of you?”
Yeah, you don’t have that?
“So it’s like you’re really seeing it? It’s the sensation of sight?“
Well… it’s kind of different. I’m not really seeing it.
——
…and around we go.
Personally, I can see images when I dream, but I don’t see anything at all if I’m conscious and closing my eyes. I can recite the qualities of an object, and this generates impressions of the object in my head, but it’s not really seeing. It’s vibe seeing.
"imagine a ball, can you see it?"
"yes"
"ok what color is it? "
I never heard anyone say anything other than a variation of "hm I don't know". It's just an anecdote but still
“I’m picturing it as a bright red ball, glossy and catching a bit of light on one side.”
Great, huh? Except that’s what ChatGPT said when I asked it those two questions. It certainly isn’t picturing anything. If a robot which only ‘thinks’ in terms of chain-of-thought of abstract tokens can act as if it truly sees things, what makes you think this test has any validity at all?
The difference comes when I close my eyes vs. block my ears. When I close my eyes, I don't see images, I can't voluntarily make images appear. But with my eyes and ears blocked, I can still think words - my inner monologue - which I experience in much the same way as I do when I'm reading. I can't conjure other sounds though, which is why I don't really consider that equivalent to "hearing" - it's not sound, it's the concept of words. I don't have any analogue of that for images.
Ordinary aphantasia doesn't imply anything about lack of inner monologue. Some people apparently do lack an inner monologue, and if they're also aphantasic, that's been described by some authors as "deep aphantasia". But there's no evidence that the two conditions are related, except in a kind of conceptual sense.
As I was reading your post and imagining, when I got to the color question it was a plastic spotted ball, white background with various colored spots. As I continued reading I switched to a red rubber ball.