But then, by which mean did you "ask yourself the same" ? Or is it that you cannot imagine a conversation ?
E.g. I can draw things I imagine, or describe them, or "mentally navigate" spaces I remember with ease.
I also see images in my dreams, which seems to be pretty normal for people with aphantasia, so clearly a lot of us are not unable to see things in our mind, but something is - usually - preventing it from happening while we're away. Usually rather than always because some people see brief flashes, and I sometimes think I might but I'm not sure (it's surprisingly hard to determine). I've also had exactly one experience that seems to have been in a waking state where I saw clear imagery. I say seems, because while I don't think I fell asleep, I was meditating, and while I was aware and able to manipulate the imagery, it's possible it was lucid dreaming, but it was noticeable in particular because the imagery was far clearer than when I dream.
I wonder if there's a link between engineering skills and aphantasia, given the prevalence of the "programmer art" meme?
This is similar to how I found out - I assumed what I experienced was what people meant when they talked about visualizing things, and it took a long time before I realised that a lot of them meant it very literally when they said they could "see" things.
> I wonder if there's a link between engineering skills and aphantasia, given the prevalence of the "programmer art" meme?
Ed Catmull, ex-president of Pixar, has aphantasia, and he found that artists at Pixar where not all that more likely to be able to visualize well [1], so the "programmer art" bit is far more likely to be down to practice and interest (on average, at least). I think it's more likely that the better you are in a field, the less time you're likely to have to devote to getting good in another field. Of course there are always exceptions.
But his sample was hardly representative, and so it's hard to tell whether it makes a difference. Maybe it does, and people who work at Pixar, including non-art staff are just more likely to be sufficiently interested in art to overcome extra difficulties.
That said, for my part I was decent at art when I was younger, but my drawing style was different when "imagining" things than when drawing something I had in front of me. But I also suspect I'd commit "programmer art" if I tried again now, at least without a lot of practice.
I was about 45 by the point I realized most people to varying degrees actually meant that they saw things when imagining them.
And so to me it's not that there no thought behind it, because I do something when I "imagine" something, just not the same thing. The word means something different to me, and most of the time you wouldn't notice even when it's staring you in the face.
E.g."I imagined her face" has a meaning to me even though I can't literally see a face when imagining it, but I can recall qualities and emotions and sensations of it anyway and to me those things add up to the meaning of that word, because nobody ever thought to assume it needed explaining that it was literal.
Opening that line of inquiry quickly makes it apparent that we assume a whole lot about how similar our inner lives are that just doesn't consistently hold up, but that we don't challenge without digging into precisely how people use various words.
Do people actually close their eyes and hallucinate or am I reading way to far into this?
In these exchanges the language typically gets sloppy and one person's "see" gets translated and reacted to as whoa, with their eyes?.
If you can imagine a red car and see it in your mind's eye (fairly ephemeral, especially if you force it, and nothing like as vivid as a hallucination) I think you're pretty normal from having followed a few of these threads over the years.
I know the distinction both from comparing with dreams, where I do see, and with a single experience during meditation (which I've tried many times but so far failed to replicate). They're nothing alike what it is to "imagine" for me.
It's not vivid like a dream though, and doesn't have that 1st-personness either.
Only 2-4% or so see nothing at all.
Now change this image of happy birthday so that it's now a childrens choir singing it. Now change it so its by a bunch of cynical unix grey beards singing it in a convention.
How easy was it to change this image? Did changing it affect the clarity?
For my favorite songs, I can recall it perfectly... But I don't hear it at all as if I was hearing it in real life. In fact, I don't know how to describe how vivid it is. Maybe I don't hear it at all? But I can sing these songs (out loud) without a problem.
However, I seem to be incapable of changing some elements about it. I can't seem to be able to make it faster, slower, change the singer, or the instruments. But, when I sing it out loud, I can of course modify it.
For "Happy birthday" (well, in my native language), it's really weird. Because I don't have a specific song in mind, I can follow the words, the tune, but I don't "feel" the voice of a specific singer. And I'm incapable to change this recall to different voices, like children or grown men. But if I listen to a version sung by these people, I can recall it after (until I forget).
Thanks again for these questions, I was aware of my lack of inner voice, my difficulties of a "inner sight" (that's a whole other can of worms), but I never applied this interrogations to a "inner hearing".
I like this one as it asks to form an image and asks about clarity. The image is about hearing. So it crosses both parts.
Another example would be to form an image of a telemarketer on the telephone. Change the accent. Introduce line distortion.
For me it's in the middle. Happy birthday is clear to visualise and I can follow the tune. it's not very vivid but it's like I'm singing to myself with my mouth shut. I don't have a mental "visual" image of the song by default. When changing it the imagery appears a bit more but the focus is on the sound. I can easily change it to children's voices, the unix greybeards is more difficult as it requires me working out what they would sound like including spatial echoes from the auditorium. I find the resulting image (which is clearer than the children) is amusing.
I'm not envious of the people who have an inescapable inner voice. I think it would hinder my thoughts, the speed of it, and the ability to think abstractly. It's not totally baseless, because I can force myself to have an inner voice, but it's a conscious effort. Sometimes useful if I need to clarify my thoughts. On the same note, not having a inner voice makes it really difficult sometimes to put my emotions and thoughts into words.
But I'm really jealous about anyone that can clearly conjure images, "videos", and sounds in their mind, I feel like I have a big disadvantage if I want to learn to draw, 3D model, or play an instrument.
Actually now that I think about it, I do know that this is a well-known phenomenon in the chess world. Newcomers are unable to to play blind-chess. But experienced players say that they gradually learned how to do it. How it started as a really blurry picture of just a small part of the board, and how they gradually got better at remembering and visualizing the whole board at the same and were able to play full games with a blindfold.
Come to think of it, Chinese does that too: 'forest' is '森林'.
"I asked myself" by a person who has no inner voice sounds like a blind person saying "I see..." when he understands something. It's just a figure of speech, not used in some languages (like polish, we say "I see" ONLY when we actually see something).
I do think though that I verbalize less than other (maybe most) people.
The translation between these concepts to words or sentences from my mouth or my fingers is effortless by the way. Which I myself find interesting. I think it should take some effort but it doesn't.
If you wonder how one can think without an inner voice then I wonder can you even think without your inner voice? And can your inner voice be faster than your vocal voice and if not, doesn't that slow down your thought process?
I can have an inner voice. I use it to practice how things sound in my head, or if I want to be very specific about wording, or when trying to parse some complex text, or to work out a sum. That’s how I know that most of the time I don’t use an inner voice to think.
Most of the time it’s like I have thoughts without words, and turning it into words must be handled by some unconscious part of my brain, because it’s automatic and silent.
I used to do this, but I stopped at some point.
probably yes.
also, when being asked questions I rehearse and rephrase the answer in my head often stumbling or pausing uncomfortably long to actually get it out for fear of it sounding weird or wrong or dumb.
[1] it does seem that it is much more common among "humanities-type" people and the general population, and more common to have no visualization among "exact sciences-type" people. This was also the observation of Galton https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm (ctrl-f "men of science")