| 24 / 40, although I might've rated a few too optimistically. > It's actually hard for me to imagine what people mean by pictures in the mind. Surely nobody imagines things the way they see things? We do! When I'm focused on imagining something, it's similar to if there were a 5% opacity layer - of what I've imagined - overlaying my normal vision. Only the opacity is really 0%, but I'm still able to perceive it... somehow. I can look at a table, and imagine a mug on it, and I'll "see" the invisible 0% opacity mug there. A 1% opacity wireframe/outline of the mug would be very very similar to what I "see". I can then close my eyes and "picture" the room still. I can get up and try to navigate the room - it's not working off a collection of factoids about where objects roughly are compared to each other or where I was, it's much more like vision. There are hazards - my actual position and my imagined position won't stay perfectly in sync and will drift apart over time. And if someone moved around the furniture, that won't be reflected in my imagined world, leading me to try and sit on nonexistant chairs or trip over tables that are invisible... within my invisible, imagined, room. I don't have to base what I'm picturing off of reality, although my imagination struggles to fill out entire scenes on it's own consciously if it doesn't have a template to work off of. Details get left out or abstracted. I can keep my eyes open and do this as well. I notice that I automatically and subconsciously take steps to reduce the impact of my real senses when I do this - this typically means I look up towards some boring part of the ceiling or sky, defocus my vision, and reduce the amount of attention I'm paying to my senses. I may or may not close my eyes when trying to "picture" something. This all reduces the impact of what's "behind" the invisible "semitransparent" layer of my imagined pictures. I can do similar with other senses. I can imagine what pizza tastes like - if you took away the flavor of pizza until you're no longer sure or not if you're actually tasting anything, the physical experience is similar to that. Same with smells - just take the real experience, and then dilute it to the point where you're no longer sure if you're actually smelling the thing or not. Interestingly, imagined touch and feel might be a bit more vivid for me - imagining myself on a warm and sunny beach, I do actually feel (still very slightly) warmer. |