The Shock of the Unknown in Aphantasia: Learning that Visual Imagery Exists

Qualia are private. We don ’t know how another person perceives the outside world: the color of the ocean, the sound of the waves, the smell of the seaside, the exact temperature of the water. Even more obscure is how someone elseimagines the world in the absence of external stimuli. Most people are able to generate an internal “representation”1 of a beach — to deploy imagery — when asked, “picture yourself at a relaxing beach.” We can “see” the beach in our mind’s eye even when we’re not really there. But no one else has access to these private images, thoughts, narratives. So we must rely on subjective report.The hidden nature of imagery (and qualia more generally)2 explains why a significant minority of humans are shocked and dismayed when they learn that other people are capable of generating visual images, and the request to “picture a beach” isn’t metaphorical. This lack of imagery often extends to other sensory modalities (and to other cognitive abilities, such as spatial navigation and autobiographical memories), which will be discussed another time. For now, the focus is on vision.Redditors and their massive online sphere of influence were chattering the other day about this post inr/TIFU: A woman was explaining her synesthesia to her boyfriend when he discovered that he hasaphantasia, the inability to generate visual images.TIFU by explaining my synesthesia to my boyfriend“I have grapheme-color synesthesia. Basically I see letters and n...

Source: The Neurocritic - June 29, 2019 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs