Comment by andrewla | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewla | Hacker News Reader

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I actually agree with you about the "is my red the same as your red" -- I do not believe that aphantasia is real but simply that people are talking past each other and getting hung up on semantics.

I see things with my eyes, experience has taught me that when I cover my eyes I cannot see things, when I close my eyes I cannot see things. That is what seeing is. I cannot see with my ears, I cannot see with my fingers. I can imagine shapes and faces and objects just fine, and can rotate them around if necessary, etc., but I cannot see them because my eyes are not involved; when I close them the imagined images do not disappear. The visualization is *akin* to seeing, but obviously I am not seeing them.

Some people on this thread claim that they can see imagined objects in their field of view. I cannot do this. I don't know if I believe that other people can. But a lot of people like you are saying "well, I can 'see' but I can't 'see-see'" -- I'm not interested in you, you are like me, I'm interested in people who say that they can "see". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49469365#49469495

> I see things with my eyes, experience has taught me that when I cover my eyes I cannot see things, when I close my eyes I cannot see things.

That's your experience. Other people have different experiences.

> That is what seeing is.

What an incredible leap of petitio principii. Yet there are people who can't see despite their eyes being open and the optical machinery working correctly, and there are people who see things without having eyes at all -- in some cases things that are only in their imagination, in some cases due to brain probes, in some cases due to synesthesia, in some cases due to having an array of probes on their backs that translate images into touch sensations which their brains translate into images. You seem to know nothing of any of this, or how the brain works at all, or how language works, but you have a whole lot to say about it in this thread.

BY DEFINITION you have aphantasia, according to your self-description. You seem to believe, for no good reason and contrary to a large amount of evidence, that that everyone else also has aphantasia (i.e., no one has phantasia), but that's a different issue.

I won't respond to you further.

No, based on the description they are normally phantasic and are just quibbling semantics.

Frankly, it is very hard to tell at times.

The self-description I referred to is

> I see things with my eyes, experience has taught me that when I cover my eyes I cannot see things, when I close my eyes I cannot see things. That is what seeing is... Some people on this thread claim that they can see imagined objects in their field of view. I cannot do this.

But he also said

> I can imagine shapes and faces and objects just fine, and can rotate them around if necessary, etc., but I cannot see them because my eyes are not involved; when I close them the imagined images do not disappear. The visualization is akin to seeing, but obviously I am not seeing them.

Initially this struck me as logically incoherent, but reading it again and taking into account the fact that he defines seeing as using eyes--an unreasonable circular precondition--he does indeed seem to be describing normal phantasia, given the reference to images that do not disappear, and to visualization. As someone with near-complete aphantasia, I cannot produce such images or visualizations and I certainly can't rotate them around.

What is quite clear here is that people are describing different sorts of experience, not mere semantic quibbling (which defining seeing as using eyes is certainly an example of) ... and we have physiological data that supports that view. I find it quite bizarre that there are so many people on this page who insist that these differences cannot exist, that everyone is exactly like them (even though there are differences among those who claim this), to the degree that they claim that others are lying, seeking attention, seeking profit, etc. ... there is no reason at all in evidence or logic to support these claims or the position that everyone's mind is the same, in this or any other aspect.

> when I close my eyes I cannot see things. That is what seeing is. [...] The visualization is akin to seeing, but obviously I am not seeing them. [...] a lot of people like you are saying "well, I can 'see' but I can't 'see-see'

I most definitely am not accusing you of this, and your other comments I think make clear you have considered this, but I would be wary of collapsing a continuum to a binary here. Most of the time, visualizing is indeed only analogous to seeing, i.e. visualizing is "seeing, but not 'see-see'ing". However, with extreme focus, regular practice, and/or altered states, this distinction breaks down, and it is harder to make the separation so clear.

I suspect the more hyperphantasic you are, the more easily you can find examples in experience that blur the boundary between seeing vs. visualization, but with normal visualization capacity, these blurred cases are likely quite rare. But I don't think, fundamentally, except in true aphantasics, that there is always a 100% clear dividing line between seeing and visualization.

I'm with you -- human experience is complicated, and language is a poor approximation to our inner lives.

But there are lots of people on this thread who are saying "well, of course you can't *see* the apple, it's just a helpful metaphor", but there are a lot of people (including yourself) who say that you can. I want to see if I can pick out that difference. I almost wish the survey instead said "No, of course I can't *see* it, nobody can" to really nail down that perspective.

Cool, I was really worried I might be sounding dismissive. This has been an obsession of mine since long before it got popular, and I've been enjoying your comments particularly in this thread.

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