#Aphantasia: I don’t see images in my head. Can training give me a mind’s eye? | New Scientist

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2520604-i-dont-see-images-in-my-head-can-training-give-me-a-minds-eye/

I feel kind of stupid right about now. I just realized that I have a form of #aphantasia. I knew what that was but I thought „I can rotate 3d objects in my mind so I don’t have that.“

Turns out, that is not actually visual imagination, that is entirely spatial.

When I imagine a scene in my mind, I feel the masses of objects and how they move in space, but there are no details at all. 🫠

No wonder the only way I can draw anything from imagination is by using construction on paper and iteratively refining what I have already put down.

#drawing

My recollection from undergrad, decades before the term "aphantasia" was coined, is that B.F. Skinner testified to not having a mind's eye, thus declared it not to be a thing for anyone.

From what am seeing of reviews of Nick Chater, also a behaviorist, and author of The Mind is Flat, he might also be an aphant who believes his own lived experience to be reflective of everyone else's.

It sounds like ideas myself held, around the time first heard the anecdote about Skinner. This being the first clue that Skinner's experience, per the anecdote, that my experience, was somehow outside the norm.

Such ego-centric introspection (for evaluating how one's thought processes work, to declare that they are not as rich as others claim thought processes to be, is still introspection) can lead to very limited models of mental phenomena.

Andreesseen might also be an aphant who doesn't know any better.

https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116242597841379892

Given how the classic awakening of aphants is "Wait, you mean others really do see pictures in their heads?! That's not just a metaphor? They really see things in their heads!?!?!?" behaviorism can sound quite appealing, as its failure to explain mental phenomena we don't experience doesn't stand out as a weakness.

Eventually, many of us learn that our experience of the world is not dispositive. Not all of us do.

#aphantasia