There is (for me) an actual experience of a picture. It seems only slightly metaphorical to call the faculty of experiencing such pictures “seeing” by an “eye”.
One test for the possession of such a faculty might be to count the vertexes of some regular (not necessarily Platonic) polyhedron, given only a verbal description.
...I do not believe this test. I’d be very good at counting vertices on a polyhedron through visualization and very bad at experiencing the sensation of seeing it. I do “visualize” the polyhedra, but I don’t “see” them. (Frankly I suspect people who say they experience “seeing” images are just fooling themselves based on e.g. asking them to visualize a bicycle and having them draw it)
What distinction are you making between “visualising” and “seeing”?
I’ve heard of that study about drawing bicycles. I can draw one just fine without having one before me. I have just done so, checked it, and every detail (that I included — this was just a two-minute sketch) was correct. Anyway, if people are as astonishingly bad at the task as the paper says, that just reflects on their memory, not the acuity of their mind’s eye. I expect there are people who can draw a map of Europe with all the country borders, whereas I probably wouldn’t even remember all of the countries.
Oh, that’s a good point. Here’s a freehand map of the US I drew last year (just the borders, not the outline). I feel like I must have been using my mind’s eye to draw it.
What distinction are you making between “visualising” and “seeing”?
Good question! By “seeing” I meant having qualia, an apparent subjective experience. By “visualizing” I meant...something like using the geometric intuitions you get by looking at stuff, but perhaps in a philosophical zombie sort of way? You could use non-visual intuitions to count the vertices on a polyhedron, like algebraic intuitions or 3D tactile intuitions (and I bet blind mathematicians do). I’m not using those. I’m thinking about a wireframe image, drawn flat.
I’m visualizing a rhombicosidodecahedron right now. If I ask myself “The pentagon on the right and the one hiding from view on the left—are they the same orientation?”, I’ll think “ahh, let’s see… The pentagon on the right connects through the squares to those three pentagons there, which interlock with those 2⁄4 pentagons there, which connect through squares to the one on the left, which, no, that left one is upside-down compared to the one on the right—the middle interlocking pentagons rotated the left assembly 36° compared to the right”. Or ask “that square between the right pentagon and the pentagon at 10:20 above it <mental point>. Does perspective mean the square’s drawn as a diamond, or a skewed rectangle, weird quadrilateral?” and I think “Nah, not diamond shaped—it’s a pretty rectangular trapezoid. The base is maybe 1.8x height? Though I’m not too good at guessing aspect ratios? Seems like I if I rotate the trapezoid I can fit 2 into the base but go over by a bit?”
I’m putting into words a thought process which is very visual, BUT there is almost no inner cinema going along with those visualizations. At most ghostly, wispy images, if that. A bit like the fleeting oscillating visual feeling you get when your left and right eyes are shown different colors?
Good question! By “seeing” I meant having qualia, an apparent subjective experience. By “visualizing” I meant...something like using the geometric intuitions you get by looking at stuff, but perhaps in a philosophical zombie sort of way?
I have qualia for imagined scenes. I’m not seeing them with my physical eyes, and they’re not superimposed on the visual field that comes from my physical eyes. It’s like they exist in a separate three-dimensional space that does not have any particular spatial relationship to the physical space around me.
I have a friend with eidetic imagination who says that for her, there is literally no difference between seeing something and imagining it. Sometimes she’s worried about losing track of reality if she were to imagine too much.
No, people really do see it, that whispiness can be crisp and clear
I’m not the most visual person. But occasionally when I’m reading I’ll start seeing the scene. I then get jolted out of it when I realize I don’t know how I’m seeing the words as they’ve been replaced with the imagined visuals
I think very few people have a very high-fidelity mind’s eye. I think the reason that I can’t draw a bicycle is that my mind’s eye isn’t powerful/detailed enough to be able to correctly picture a bicycle. But there’s definitely a sense in which I can “picture” a bicycle, and the picture is engaging something sort of like my ability to see things, rather than just being an abstract representation of a bicycle.
(But like, it’s not quite literally a picture, in that I’m not, like, hallucinating a bicycle. Like it’s not literally in my field of vision.)
I can choose to see mental images actually overlaid over my field of vision, or somehow in a separate space.
The obvious question someone might ask: can you trace an overlaid mental image? The problem is registration—if my eyes move, the overlaid mental image can shift relative to an actual, perceived, sheet of paper. Easier to do a side by side copy than trace.
There is (for me) an actual experience of a picture. It seems only slightly metaphorical to call the faculty of experiencing such pictures “seeing” by an “eye”.
One test for the possession of such a faculty might be to count the vertexes of some regular (not necessarily Platonic) polyhedron, given only a verbal description.
I didn’t know about that test! Pretty neat, and it seems better than the “color of the apple” one
To be clear I am not pushing back on the notion of aphantasia, although I’m not necessarily a fan
And I don’t think I have aphantasia
My point was more about metaphors, and about the fact that much more of our communication relies on them than we realize
That’s not an official test, just something I thought up!
...I do not believe this test. I’d be very good at counting vertices on a polyhedron through visualization and very bad at experiencing the sensation of seeing it. I do “visualize” the polyhedra, but I don’t “see” them. (Frankly I suspect people who say they experience “seeing” images are just fooling themselves based on e.g. asking them to visualize a bicycle and having them draw it)
What distinction are you making between “visualising” and “seeing”?
I’ve heard of that study about drawing bicycles. I can draw one just fine without having one before me. I have just done so, checked it, and every detail (that I included — this was just a two-minute sketch) was correct. Anyway, if people are as astonishingly bad at the task as the paper says, that just reflects on their memory, not the acuity of their mind’s eye. I expect there are people who can draw a map of Europe with all the country borders, whereas I probably wouldn’t even remember all of the countries.
Oh, that’s a good point. Here’s a freehand map of the US I drew last year (just the borders, not the outline). I feel like I must have been using my mind’s eye to draw it.
Good question! By “seeing” I meant having qualia, an apparent subjective experience. By “visualizing” I meant...something like using the geometric intuitions you get by looking at stuff, but perhaps in a philosophical zombie sort of way? You could use non-visual intuitions to count the vertices on a polyhedron, like algebraic intuitions or 3D tactile intuitions (and I bet blind mathematicians do). I’m not using those. I’m thinking about a wireframe image, drawn flat.
I’m visualizing a rhombicosidodecahedron right now. If I ask myself “The pentagon on the right and the one hiding from view on the left—are they the same orientation?”, I’ll think “ahh, let’s see… The pentagon on the right connects through the squares to those three pentagons there, which interlock with those 2⁄4 pentagons there, which connect through squares to the one on the left, which, no, that left one is upside-down compared to the one on the right—the middle interlocking pentagons rotated the left assembly 36° compared to the right”. Or ask “that square between the right pentagon and the pentagon at 10:20 above it <mental point>. Does perspective mean the square’s drawn as a diamond, or a skewed rectangle, weird quadrilateral?” and I think “Nah, not diamond shaped—it’s a pretty rectangular trapezoid. The base is maybe 1.8x height? Though I’m not too good at guessing aspect ratios? Seems like I if I rotate the trapezoid I can fit 2 into the base but go over by a bit?”
I’m putting into words a thought process which is very visual, BUT there is almost no inner cinema going along with those visualizations. At most ghostly, wispy images, if that. A bit like the fleeting oscillating visual feeling you get when your left and right eyes are shown different colors?
I have qualia for imagined scenes. I’m not seeing them with my physical eyes, and they’re not superimposed on the visual field that comes from my physical eyes. It’s like they exist in a separate three-dimensional space that does not have any particular spatial relationship to the physical space around me.
I have a friend with eidetic imagination who says that for her, there is literally no difference between seeing something and imagining it. Sometimes she’s worried about losing track of reality if she were to imagine too much.
No, people really do see it, that whispiness can be crisp and clear
I’m not the most visual person. But occasionally when I’m reading I’ll start seeing the scene. I then get jolted out of it when I realize I don’t know how I’m seeing the words as they’ve been replaced with the imagined visuals
+1 it took a while as a child before I came to understand that reading a book and watching a movie were meaningfully different for some people.
It took until I was today years old to realize that reading a book and watching a movie are visually similar experiences for some people!
I think very few people have a very high-fidelity mind’s eye. I think the reason that I can’t draw a bicycle is that my mind’s eye isn’t powerful/detailed enough to be able to correctly picture a bicycle. But there’s definitely a sense in which I can “picture” a bicycle, and the picture is engaging something sort of like my ability to see things, rather than just being an abstract representation of a bicycle.
(But like, it’s not quite literally a picture, in that I’m not, like, hallucinating a bicycle. Like it’s not literally in my field of vision.)
To add to the differences between people:
I can choose to see mental images actually overlaid over my field of vision, or somehow in a separate space.
The obvious question someone might ask: can you trace an overlaid mental image? The problem is registration—if my eyes move, the overlaid mental image can shift relative to an actual, perceived, sheet of paper. Easier to do a side by side copy than trace.