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I've always struggled with descriptions of aphantasia and I don't know if I have it myself because I don't know what's "normal". This article also didn't clarify it.

When imagining an object, do people literally see it as if they were physically looking at it with their eyes (as if a physical image appeared on the inside of their eyelids)? When I imagine something, there's nothing visual/optical involved. It's like a dim picture that originates in my brain--I can kind of put something together, but it lacks any detail or clarity. My actual vision stays completely black.

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Okay, explaining personal experience is notoriously difficult - but here we go:

This is a story - this is not literally true, but is a roughly similar shape of things.

My experience is that I am a little thing piloting a giant thing (my body) - I sit in a seat and watch a screen. That screen shows me what my eyes see, and to the edges and beyond are empty. In front of me - between the screen and me - is an empty space. In that space I can draw lines, color things, move things, rotate things.

If I concentrate hard enough I can overlay (by seeing the space while I have my eyes open) an imagined thing in real space (The imagined item is still originating from that space - not the screen - but the screen and that space...mix). The screen from my eyes is an order of magnitude brighter - so I have to focus in order to do that. I can imagine things with my eyes open... but when I do, I am not facing the 'eye-screen' inside my head, I'm looking down and away from it and only at that space of imagination.

I recently starting drawing: It seems to solidify this space/ability more than any other mental exercise I've tried. I have noticed a distinct improvement when I started deconstructing what I was seeing in real live down to basic shapes (In that imagined space and overlaying it on what I was seeing).

When I was doing forms and rehearsing techniques in martial arts, I would imagine wireframe fighters coming at me. Normally they were yellow, but a successful strike against "hitboxes" in their limbs, torso, or head would turn the corresponding part red. I couldn't see them as such like a HUD, but I could visualize them, and it noticeably improved my technique.

I've adopted the "tiny pilot controlling a meat mech" perspective before, but the "screen" is wrap-around and very close, there's no space outside or between me and it.

> there's no space... between me and it.

Now consider that the idea that there is a "me" perceiving the screen is only an un-investigated assumption, and that this "me" is actually only implied by whatever object appears on the screen.

Can any such separate entity actually be found?

Or is the thinker implied by the thought, the listener implied by the sound, the feeler implied by the feeling, etc.

To kind of piggyback on here since you described your experience very well, I'll give my own as a contrast to yours:

Mine seems similar. Instead of piloting a body I just am my body, and I don't perceive any screen. Instead of an "area between me and the screen" I just have a completely separate workspace of sorts where I can visualize things. But - and this is where I differ from you the most I think - in my mind that workspace is quite separate from my field of real vision. If I concentrate I can kind of overlay them, but it feels very artificial.

Likewise, this mirrors my experiences near exactly. In a very real sense, I am/embody the contours of my senses.

On a possibly related note, when I was very young there was a moment I distinctly remember 'pulling away' from this sense-surface-of-self, and a bone deep certainty that if I did so I would be lost and/or have done something unrecoverable. Spooked me thoroughly at the time, but now I wonder if doing so would have formed that intermediary-type viewpoint.

I describe it as two separate screens because I can't really overlay them (imagine putting one monitor in front of the other and trying to see through the first one; not going to happen), but otherwise don't have much issue imagining things.

Another good comparison might be that my eyes are 4k but my imagination is like 480p.

Sounds like you have hypophantasia.

Mind's eye/visualisation/phantasia is not seen through one's physical eyes. From how I've heard people explain it, it's:

* (1) Seeing inside your head. * (2) Feels like seeing behind you or/and somewhere else. * (3) Seeing through another set of eyes (mind's eyes) * (4) As if I just saw something, but not with my own eyes.

People can have no mental imagery or visual perception in one's thoughts, aphantasia, to very low/unclear/fuzzy/uncertain mental imagery (hypophantasia), to regular phantasia, which is not as real as looking through one's eyes, and hyperphantasia, where it's almost as good or as good as seeing through one's eyes (the fidelity, resolution, etc.)

Then there's also "prophantasia", or the ability to project visuals in one's visual physical scene, or what one might describe as being able to visually hallucinate. These are the visuals one can see through one's eyes. Prophantasia also is on this low (being able to voluntarily project unclear shapes in the visual noise in one's eye lids in the dark), to high (being able to project "holograms" in one's visual scene).

When people talk about it online they seem to not disambiguate between these visualization modes.

There are potentially other modes of visualization out there that I don't know of.

EDIT: your imagination can also happen in other sense modalities, including sound, olfaction, taste, bodily sensation, etc.

It's a spectrum, so it's not whether or not you experience aphantasia but to what degree.

Also, my experience is that I can imagine very detailed objects and scenes, but the happen in a second mental space, not the current visual field. To imagine something, I have to stop paying attention to the sensory input of the world around me and mentally turn aside to the second space where imagination happens.

I struggle to impose imagined objects on the visual field. I end up imagining what it would look like if I could, but this happens in the second space, in an imagined copy of the visual field.

Thinking about it is not the same as seeing it. I can like 'see' e.g. my house in my imagination. But it is more like a fast glimpse or looking past it. There is nothing to focus on. I can't count the windows without remembering them one by one. I need to rethink about the door to 'zoom in' on it etc.

As far as I understand yes, most people actually see something.

At some point I figured out this "test" to explain aphantasia to people: ask someone to imagine a car. After that, ask them about visual details of the car: what color is it? what type of car is it? (Other objects might work better than a car; In my experience color is the attribute that will be the most surprising, vwry clear for some completely absent for others.)

Most people are going to answer with whatever they "saw". For me these follow-up questions don't make sense.

Not see, but visualize. It's like a different sense. Can you recall what something you touched felt like, what something smelled like, what something tasted like, or sounded like? The recollection of the experience is different than the sensory experience itself, but there's still something of the original sensory experience to it. Visualization is like being able to recall what something looked like in this way, as if you had seen it even though you didn't.

Your vision can feed your visualization, but it doesn't go the other way, which would be a hallucination.

This is an excellent description, especially the “doesn’t make sense” part. Like ask me to “imagine an apple.”

I imagine the platonic idea of an apple and not a specific apple.

Asking “what color was the apple” is a category error for me!

Just wild how everyone is living such different internal lives.

The apple one is apparently one of the standard tests, but for me it's a really bad test. For example, using this scale: https://creativerevolution.io/aphantasia-a-blind-minds-eye/

By default I'm like you, roughly a 4 or 5 - a platonic ideal, no actual form, because I don't need to go further for being told that. But if I have any reason to go further, I have no trouble with being around a 1 or 2, depending on the object.

A lot of these simple tests don't seem to take into account "default" vs "capable of".

Weird that I don't see any links to this, supposedly the definitive test: https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq/

It's probably not linked because it is just "do you have aphantasia" rephrased various ways. This test is very poorly designed and comes off like a facebook quiz.

    > No image at all, you only “know” that you are thinking of the object
    > Dim and vague; flat
    > Moderately clear and lively
    > Clear and lively
    > Perfectly clear and lively as real seeing

All of the examples are not necessary if they can all be answered with the same answers.

Not at all. Having taken it, despite also thinking that it looked absurdly simplistic, I was surprised my answers were different depending on the subject. Nor is the result a boolean "yes/no" at all, which should be obvious from the more-than-two answer choices to the questions - phantasia is a spectrum.

Do you see things when you have a dream or how about in the intermediary when you’re falling asleep? people claim they can visualize things like that at will.

I’m of the mind to think that people are unreliable narrators of their internal world and are not to be trusted on either side of the spectrum.

it would be a hallucination to see something appear in vision. it’s in that internal space that images appear. for some people, it’s not impossible for these two spaces to overlap, but i guess most of them we would consider psychotic.

notice how a person daydreaming looks spaced out. they’re not looking through their eyes then. no, people do not augment their reality, unless hallucinating.

I can see and then overlay visualizations on top of that, but it’s still not a hallucination. E.g. I’m in bed and a green apple lies to the left. This works by “capturing” reality and transferring it to the inner screen then visializing on it. Akin to switching between your primary/secondary eye and being stuck in between, you’re both there and spaced out.

> It's like a dim picture

You don't have aphantasia. In people with aphantasia, there is no "it" to describe.

> It's like a dim picture that originates in my brain--I can kind of put something together, but it lacks any detail or clarity.

It's like having a second visual sense, but it's not strictly the same as standard vision. It often does lack clarity, but as with any other sense, you can sharpen specific details by focusing on it. Your real vision can feed into this secondary vision, but not the other way around, which would be a hallucination.

Do you have an inner monologue? If you can hear your inner voice, you'll know that your inner voice is less of a voice and more of a speaker that can play anything you like. The only limits are my own knowledge, experience and creativity.

Yeah, that pretty much lines up with my experience. If I had to place the image that I am "seeing" anywhere, it would be inside my forehead.

I'm in the same boat. I can't see things as though they're physical objects but I can sense them in some other way.

I can also draw outlines with my eyes closed - e.g. I can point my finger out and trace the positions of my desk, table, windows, etc.

But when explaining the concept of aphantasia, my go to explanation is to look directly at a person, close my eyes, and say "I have no idea what you look like." I can still sense where they are - height, weight, - and I can state facts about their beard or hair colour, but I'm not seeing it in any way I'd normally use the word 'see'.

But with all that, I feel like it could be close enough that that might be how others sense things and we just lack the terminology to express it, so I tend not to say I'm aphantasic as a definite term.

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