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Where do you fall on the aphantasia scale?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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I’ve always thought this was really hard to describe. I think I’m a 1. The idea of fully picturing something is such a natural thing, but I also don’t know what level of vivid people actually mean.
When I picture the apple, I could easily write a detailed paragraph about what it looks like. I could even easily picture an environment for it that just sort of comes into frame (always on an apple orchard, during the afternoon).
I can easily even put myself in that space mentally.
I’ve just never thought about this being something other people can’t naturally and quickly do that when I saw this question, I assumed people were describing actually fully fooling their senses into the thing physically appearing before them.
I picture it like another monitor or render layer that I can flip to, manipulate, and test in to work out concepts.
I'm convinced that most cases of aphantasia are just a result of the difficulty in commutating the experience of visualizing something.
To me, "seeing" something in my mind's eye isn't really similar to actual visual perception. I can imagine an apple and rotate it in my mind but I would describe this as more of an exercise in understanding what that would look like. I can "see" the stem, the striations of color, the shape, the imperfections move as the apple rotates. However, I do not actually visually perceive the apple as if it were a physical object reflecting photons into my eyes, stimulating my retina and causing the conscious perception of the apple. I think this is likely true for others.
If people could actually visually perceive or mentally project whatever they're imagining into their actual vision, then I believe people would be much better at drawing. You could just imagine this vivid image on the paper and essentially trace it.
I've heard the counter argument that this isn't the way drawing works. I still think that most people draw poorly because of the way that your mind's eye works, and not because of the way that drawing works. When they put pencil to paper, the truth about the inadequacy of their visual concept becomes apparent. Their mind was tricking them into thinking they held a complex visual idea but really, it was a vague conception.
I'm convinced that holding something in your mind's is far closer to "understanding" than it is to "seeing".
I have aphantasia, and I can't do this.