This whole discussion is fucked, everyone is using the word “see” differently because our language is not built to talk about mental abstractions.
You know how schizophrenia can make you see things and people? Can you experience the visual effects schizophrenia at will? If you said you are a “1”, is that what you mean by “1”, or is it, in some way, different than that?
If it is different than that, at all, other people who have the same perception as you are imagining that you can trigger literal hallucinations.
Well, it’s famously kind of impossible to explain a sensation of any kind to someone who has no frame of reference for it, e.g. “red” to someone who has never seen.
I mean, reading over your comment a few times, I think there’s a 50% chance you’re describing exactly the same thing as my perception, but it’s so hard to tell.
Yeah this is kind of the conclusion I’ve come to. I don’t really know what it is that ‘see’ is really supposed to mean. I mean very obviously I don’t see it in the same way as I see an object in front of me, but at the same time there is still an apple that has various characteristics and exists in some way within some sort of mental space, and whose attributes, including ones which for a real apple would be visual, I can be aware of and understand
it kinda does piss me off that I can’t see someone else’s mind from their perspective.
I’m a 1 on this scale. It’s like Virtual Reality, where you experience something that isn’t your material space. You can manipulate those experiences, but they have an ethereal quality due to their lack of physicality. Not to mention bumping into things while distracted. While I haven’t used any AR equipment, I imagine those experiences feel similar.
A good “tell” that I am in this imagination space is a blank stare while otherwise still engaging (conversation, work, etc) because I’m not (entirely) seeing with my eyes. It’s the same with hearing, and to a lesser extent touch, taste, and smell. It also functions as a spectrum, with some experiences being stronger or weaker than others, particularly when I have material experience to fall back upon. My own memories work as stronger, more visceral experiences as I can ground the experience more than a brand new space conjured on the spot. However there is a limit. The details can be hazy or morph if I’m not paying attention to that part of the experience. Dreams are an excellent complementary experience of how side details can change to “fit” the experience.
I think it’s like this: there’s multiple layers to the process of seeing something. Light enters the eyes, it’s converted to an electrical signal in the nervous system, that signal is formatted into the “video feed” in our brain, and that picture is matched with existing patterns we know. Visualizing something is working backwards from the resultant pattern to produce possible inputs that would match. It doesn’t go to the video feed level, but it goes to the intermediary stage where patterns are being matched to a picture. Less “what are traits I associate with an apple” and more “how does it feel when I recognize an apple?”
I’m a 3 or a 2 on the scale I think, and for me it’s like I can actually see the thing I’m visualizing, but in parallel to what my eyes are seeing. Like, imagine you were looking at some security monitors on 2 different screens, one is the visual information from your eyes, the other one is the thing I’m visualizing which is very hazy and I only have a loose grasp on it.
It’s a very interesting discussion. I would say that a good barometer for this is how well you can draw an object from memory. Trying to squeeze this phenomenon into a 1-5 scale is silly either way.
I don’t think I understand what you mean? I thought it was clear. As a 1 you can imagine an apple within your had at high detail, noting the location of the stem and maybe being able to zoom in on its texture, seeing the striation of its color and perhaps a moisture. Maybe you can rotate it and note the dimple at its underside of slice it and see it’s slightly yellow roughly textured crisp inside. As any level between 1 and 5 you lose detail; maybe the shape is imperfect or fuzzy, maybe you can’t see the color as clearly or perhaps it’s a solid color, maybe it’s less of an apple shape and more spherical, the stem may be less noticable or not there at all, you may be able to imagine how it might feel under your teeth but not manipulate the visualization into slices and see it’s core or it’s seeds. Am I misinterpreting?
Edit: I misinterpreted your comment it seems, I thought you were critiquing the concept itself instead of asking for clarification. Apologies. I do think that the 1-5 scale is entirely arbitrary and doesn’t really express accurately the varying degrees at which people are capable of visualizing; like most things, it’s probably a spectrum.
No worries. I think the issue here is that if you brought 10 people into a room and somehow knew that they had exactly the same perception as each other, and got them to look at this post, they’d all start placing themselves at every number along the scale. Again, despite having identical sensory experiences.
“I can visualize an apple”
“Really? You can just see an apple in your mind whenever you want?”
“Of course… you can’t do that??”
“No, I mean I can imagine an apple, but my mind’s eye doesn’t SEE anything”
“wow so it’s just… BLANK?”
At this point, the first person thinks they’re talking to someone who rediscovers what an apple looks like every time it enters their field of view. The second person thinks they’re talking to someone who can just project cartoons onto the back of their eyelids. But they are just making different assumptions about what “see” means - they’re both taking each other more literally than they are taking themselves.
I’m pretty sure there are people with messed up visual memory as well as people who can hallucinate at will, but there are a ton more people misinterpreting each other who don’t experience either of those things.
Ahhhhhh, I see what you mean now. It’s a very difficult subject to broach certainly but not impossible I don’t think. My sister is aphantasic so I have some history discussing it with her; if you are perhaps having doubts about the existence of people who can’t visualize because you are under the impression that it is a misunderstanding caused by the limitations of language I don’t think you are entirely correct. The language barrier is definitely an issue that causes significant confusion when the subject is discussed but my anecdotal experience with my sister atleast confirms the extreme values to me. When she was young and being taught how to count and do math she really really struggled; at one point my parents, her teachers others who attempted to help would try helping by telling her to imagine some apples then add/subtract a few or count the amount of apples, stuff along those lines and it never helped because she was completely incapable of visualizing. Often her response to this approach was essentially “wdym visualize?” and no amount of explaining would help. To this day the only way she is able to do math is entirely through memorization of formulas, she has no conceptual understanding only mechanical. I’d often talk to her about my books and when I’d describe a particular scene to her she’d question how I was able to come up with it all. How could I describe something I had not seen?
Again I don’t think the numbered scale is efficient for anything other than playful conjecture nor do I even think it’s possibly to place someone on an actual spectrum at any point other than the extreme values because all of it is subjective and vulnerable to personal interpretation. There is no objective way to study this except maybe possible through the actual electrochemistry of the brain but I don’t know anything about that and I’m just guessing.
It’s also entirely possible that you never thought any of that and I wrote this for no reason but in all honesty I think I often write comments like this to help myself understand my own thoughts. Writing them out tends to help work out all my internal contradictions.
Sorry about the wall of text lol
