By 1, do you mean you can picture all the details of an image in your mind, or do you mean you can turn visual hallucinations on and off at will? Many people who say they can’t visualize anything are unwittingly just saying they can’t hallucinate, because they think you can.
I don’t think anyone is saying that the ability to hallucinate at will is even on this scale, that would be some kind of 0 out of the 1-5. I can visualize in detail inside the confines of my mind, but nothing I imagine ever breaks containment and escapes into my perception of the real world. I can use my imagination to picture alterations to the real world, but this is easier if I close my eyes and imagine a scene that’s the real world I was just looking at plus the alterations. The alterations will never appear in my visual field.
I consider myself a 1, full apple.
I do sometimes get very mild auditory hallucinations, like perceiving indistinct voices or the murmur of crowds in white noise, but that isn’t an active process, just my brain searching for signal in literal noise.
I’ve heard that some people with perfect recall/“photographic memory” can hallucinate at will, though, and that’s how their recall works? I dunno, could be miscommunication along these same lines.
Maybe people aren’t saying “I can personally hallucinate at will”, but many people saying “I can’t visualize images” think that other people can hallucinate at will. The twitter poster even says “the way your eyes see?” which is pretty clearly asking if people can hallucinate.
Depending on how someone comes into this discussion, their prior experience, and the particular language they come across, it’s easy to interpret these images as representing… well… images. People who say “I’m a 1, I’m a 2, 3, 4” are probably just saying they can think about and recall the shape, texture, color, etc of things, and can’t actually see shit. Having a scale of “good image, bad image, outline” was probably meant to be very abstractly tied to this ability to think about those details.
I think if you took a group of completely neurotypical people, whatever that means, who all have EXACTLY the same sensory experience, they would start labeling themselves on every part of this chart and completely misunderstand what everyone else is saying about their perception. You’d have 1’s and 5’s despite no actual difference.
Ah, I follow, though I’m not sure I agree with your supposition there. I think we have language that can communicate varying levels of interior imagery, but I do think the people who are aphantasic are at a disadvantage in imagining what other people have going on inside their heads. Someone with robust interior imagery can just … imagine nothing, and while they might not get it exactly 1:1 with the aphantasic’s experience the general idea is still conveyed, but the aphantasic has absolutely no frame of reference for vibrant interior imagery and has to rely on approximations to understand.
Sure, maybe “neurotypical” people would all have the same visualization ability, but I think if they could discuss the concept and their experiences enough they could reach a shared understanding of what their visualization level was.
By 1, do you mean you can picture all the details of an image in your mind, or do you mean you can turn visual hallucinations on and off at will?
I suppose that’s strictly true for me even though real visual input completely overrides the hallucination. It’s like comparing the Sun with some random star. However, there was that one time I smoked way too much weed, which had an effect of greatly augmenting my mind’s eye so it became comparing the Sun with Venus. Visual input was still at the forefront, but you now had the mind’s eye image of the object being superimposed on the actual object.
If you’re talking about just being amused by the floating images when the eyes are closed, yes I’ve done this countless times. I don’t see this as any different from replaying movie dialogue or imagining eating something delicious.
By 1, do you mean you can picture all the details of an image in your mind, or do you mean you can turn visual hallucinations on and off at will? Many people who say they can’t visualize anything are unwittingly just saying they can’t hallucinate, because they think you can.
I don’t think anyone is saying that the ability to hallucinate at will is even on this scale, that would be some kind of 0 out of the 1-5. I can visualize in detail inside the confines of my mind, but nothing I imagine ever breaks containment and escapes into my perception of the real world. I can use my imagination to picture alterations to the real world, but this is easier if I close my eyes and imagine a scene that’s the real world I was just looking at plus the alterations. The alterations will never appear in my visual field. I consider myself a 1, full apple.
I do sometimes get very mild auditory hallucinations, like perceiving indistinct voices or the murmur of crowds in white noise, but that isn’t an active process, just my brain searching for signal in literal noise.
I’ve heard that some people with perfect recall/“photographic memory” can hallucinate at will, though, and that’s how their recall works? I dunno, could be miscommunication along these same lines.
Maybe people aren’t saying “I can personally hallucinate at will”, but many people saying “I can’t visualize images” think that other people can hallucinate at will. The twitter poster even says “the way your eyes see?” which is pretty clearly asking if people can hallucinate.
Depending on how someone comes into this discussion, their prior experience, and the particular language they come across, it’s easy to interpret these images as representing… well… images. People who say “I’m a 1, I’m a 2, 3, 4” are probably just saying they can think about and recall the shape, texture, color, etc of things, and can’t actually see shit. Having a scale of “good image, bad image, outline” was probably meant to be very abstractly tied to this ability to think about those details.
I think if you took a group of completely neurotypical people, whatever that means, who all have EXACTLY the same sensory experience, they would start labeling themselves on every part of this chart and completely misunderstand what everyone else is saying about their perception. You’d have 1’s and 5’s despite no actual difference.
Ah, I follow, though I’m not sure I agree with your supposition there. I think we have language that can communicate varying levels of interior imagery, but I do think the people who are aphantasic are at a disadvantage in imagining what other people have going on inside their heads. Someone with robust interior imagery can just … imagine nothing, and while they might not get it exactly 1:1 with the aphantasic’s experience the general idea is still conveyed, but the aphantasic has absolutely no frame of reference for vibrant interior imagery and has to rely on approximations to understand.
Sure, maybe “neurotypical” people would all have the same visualization ability, but I think if they could discuss the concept and their experiences enough they could reach a shared understanding of what their visualization level was.
I suppose that’s strictly true for me even though real visual input completely overrides the hallucination. It’s like comparing the Sun with some random star. However, there was that one time I smoked way too much weed, which had an effect of greatly augmenting my mind’s eye so it became comparing the Sun with Venus. Visual input was still at the forefront, but you now had the mind’s eye image of the object being superimposed on the actual object.
If you’re talking about just being amused by the floating images when the eyes are closed, yes I’ve done this countless times. I don’t see this as any different from replaying movie dialogue or imagining eating something delicious.