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Comment by auggierose | Hacker News Reader

The article uses the VVIQ test (Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire), taken on the Internet, to select aphantasiac participants. I cannot take research like that seriously.

> For example: imagine a triangle. What color is it?

> For a true aphantasiac, this question is meaningless.

If you are not an aphantasiac, how do you know what meaning this question has for one? I am pretty sure aphantasiacs can "imagine" a triangle with some color in it. It is just that this imagine manifests differently than it does for you, but how can we measure that objectively?

To elaborate, even for an aphantasiac, a triangle or a color is not something abstract. You can draw it on a paper, and it is right there. If you close your eyes, you can remember what you have drawn on the paper, aphantasiac or not. So how exactly do you distinguish the quality of memories here? Certainly not with vague internet questionnaires. Research like that makes me really angry.

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If I say "imagine a triangle" and ask you what color it is, why would it have a color if there is no image there? I didn't ask you to imagine a red triangle. Only a triangle. The only way it logically gets a color is if you are visualizing it.

I understand your reasoning, but it is not very logical. It depends on what you mean by "imagine a triangle". A triangle doesn't have to be filled with a color to be a triangle. Why would you imagine it with any color in it in the first place, not just a wireframe, being transparent inside? So if your triangle doesn't have a color, it might be because you are more accurate in your imagination, not because you have no triangle imagination.

So without a proper way of defining things like "imagine" or "mental picture" first, tests like yours or like VVIQ are not well-defined. Now, maybe I don't understand the meaning of VVIQ because I have aphantasia. Or maybe I don't understand the meaning of VVIQ because I am a logician and mathematician, and I am very peculiar about "meaning". Maybe even both. Without a doubt though, VVIQ is not an objective test, because its elements are not properly defined.

The point isn’t to rigorously define “visualize” or “imagine”—we will probably never be able to do this. The point is to use a verbal prompt to elicit a mental experience and then to try to probe that experience.

> A triangle doesn't have to be filled with a color to be a triangle. Why would you imagine it with any color in it in the first place, not just a wireframe, being transparent inside?

That’s just it: when I imagine a triangle, it is a definite image with a definite color. The visual details like color come automatically for me. I cannot imagine it in the more abstract way you are describing. If it’s a wireframe, the wireframe is gray. It’s always a full, colorful, 3d scene, perhaps vague but definitely with visual detail.

> The only way it logically gets a color is if you are visualizing it.

This does not follow. I can imagine a red triangle without visualizing one.

What does this mean? What do you see when you "imagine" versus when you "visualize?"

My answer would have been. Hang on a second you never asked me to imagine a triangle WITH a color?

What else has this triangle got? A flavor? A smell? A name? It would have never occurred to me it had a color in the first place before you asked.

In my mind there is an infinite void. No color per say, think of the void of space, without a single spec of dust.

This void is a 3D space. There is a general sense of up, down, left, right, front and back.

In this void I materialize a triangle. It is a wireframe. 3 lines, all the same length. No color, they are just lines.

By default the triangle is resting on one side, pointing up, and facing me. I can then rotate and move my mind "camera" around it while simultaneously rotating and moving the triangle as well.

The more complex the shapes, the more shapes, the harder it is to maintain coherency. I can close my eyes and concentrate to help.

I can assign colors if I wish to, but they are not really there visually. More like an extra information attached to the shape.

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