[Filligree]

If you think you have aphantasia, you almost certainly do. I was in the same boat, but after conversations with a few friends I found that the ones which don't give very literal descriptions of their imaginations.

It isn't in any way an analogy, they literally do see the things they're imagining. It's like a hallucination, except with control and full awareness that it's not real.

It's easy to see how that could turn into actual hallucinations, I'll agree.

[admiral33]

I do not have aphantasia. The way I think of my imagination is like a virtual machine running a separate reality I'm in control of. I can roll a ball around on a plane in space and still have awareness of "base" reality.

Other -non visual- sensations I am able to simulate: - Taste/smell, able to taste specific foods without eating them - Sound, able to hear conversations, music, etc. - Pain, able to feel the sensation of touching a hot stove or breaking my arm

If any people with aphantasia are in this thread, are you able to "simulate" any of these experiences? Also: are you religious in any way? There is an interesting history of religion and schizophrenia [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_schizophrenia

[garmaine]

> If any people with aphantasia are in this thread, are you able to "simulate" any of these experiences?

No. Memories are like non-verbal propositional knowledge. You know what happened, you can articulate connected facts about it. But the idea of “hallucinating” a visual memory is absolutely foreign to me. You bunch of crazy people actually see things that aren’t there, in your mind’s eye?

> Also: are you religious in any way?

Strong no, but I fail to see the relevance. I’m atheist for entirely unrelated reasons.

[rckoepke]

> You bunch of crazy people actually see things that aren’t there, in your mind’s eye?

It's not so much that I "see" them -- it's very distinct from the visual perception. For me, actual sight is associated with some physical feelings - not only do I see objects/colors/etc but there's some degree of feedback from the muscles of my eye, best demonstrated by looking at bright lights vs dim surfaces. It's very, very clear when I'm actually seeing something.

Then, separately from ocular perception, there's an ethereal space inside my head where I can conjure up various "platonic ideals" of things, and the senses they generate. It's like a sandbox of sorts, or perhaps that loading scene in the matrix where Neo and Trinity grab a bunch of guns.

By platonic ideal, i mean that when I think "Apple", I sort of see an apple in that internal space, but it's neither red, nor green - unless I focus on "red apples" in which case it will no longer be green, but also won't yet be specifically a Fuji apple or a Red Delicious apple. It's just an uninstantiated class of "apple.red" existing in my headspace.

No matter how hard I visualize the apple, no matter how many specifics I give it (Fuji apple, small soft brown spot on one side, with broad color splotches rather than narrow bands)...it never activates the "feeling" of real sight. It very much feels like it doesn't exist, a temporary cloud of vapor that just "poofs" away instantly if it's not constantly regenerated.

For me, there's very little way I could see getting confused between my visual imaginations and my visual sight.

Generally when I conjure something up I don't just see it visually, potentially I also sort of taste or smell or can recognize the feel of its texture, and maybe hear associated sounds like the breaking open sound of the apple. Again, all of these are extremely non-tangible and generally would never be confused with real sensations. They occupy a different space.

It's like a simulation and modeling environment with a physics engine, more than anything else. It's a place to run experiments - with or without hypotheses.

Also, almost all my thoughts have a verbal monologue. There aren't "characters" in my head talking to me, it's usually my own voice, but sometimes I can use other people's voices to sound things out as well. Rather different from my internal monologue I can also pull up "recordings" of what other people said to me (which are really generative models, akin to a decoder in machine learning).

[mnowicki]

That was the best explanation I've heard about this, before reading this I was questioning if I had aphantasia

[LukeBMM]

It's worth keeping in mind that, in the Extreme Imagination Conference 2019 keynote, Prof. Zeman described "about half" of over 2000 folks his team has studied as multimodal. So for roughly 50%, it's purely a matter of visual processing and doesn't apply to other senses (like your examples), while the other half include multiple (or all) senses.

That being said, I'm one of the folks who have to choose how to add spices when I cook based upon what I remember working together in the past. As I understand it, some (perhaps only a talented few and perhaps including some unimodal aphants) are able to use the same part of their brain that processes taste and smell to imagine the taste and smell of new combinations of flavors.

Another quirk: I don't think I get songs stuck in my head in the same way as others. I may have a particular verse or rhythm on my mind... but I'm pretty sure that I'm lucking out in this regard.

In all the cases mentioned, I'm reasonably capable of predicting or extrapolating outcomes based upon past experiences (I don't stick my hand on many hot stoves, for example). But my brain just doesn't seem to run through the process of recreating sensations to get there.

[missingrib]

That's interesting. I think I have aphantasia (the way people describe their visualizations seems very strange/foreign to me although sometimes I think I can visualize some things) but I can hear music very well in my head. The other sensations I cannot imagine at all.

Particularly, the idea of imagining pain and feeling it is strange to me.

[Filligree]

Well, I'm one so...

No, I'm not able to simulate any of that, in the way I think you mean. I can predict the outcomes, but I can't at all claim to be experiencing any of it. It involves no more sensation than reading words on a page.

(Which is to say, none. I understand that that can also vary. The only time that changes is when I'm dreaming. So I know what experience I'm not getting, I suppose.)

No, I'm not religious, but nobody in my family is. We used to be subjects of the Thunderer; that was a couple of generations back. Christianity managed to break us of that, but not to make us believe them.

[himlion]

This applies to me as well.

[p1anecrazy]

I’m not able to do any of these.

[newnumbawhodis]

I had aphantasia until I had a drug (weed and shrooms) induced psychosis. During the psychosis I had constant musical hallucinations. Now, after recovering, I can now both visualize and have a clear inner monologue in my mind.

[psychonautLorax]

This is fascinating. I also have aphantasia and experienced psychosis with high dosages of those drugs, however the only lasting effect I received was a profound connection with all living things. I subsequently became vegetarian. Other lasting effects I have experienced from strong psychedelics are mostly social realizations—basically I have more/expanded empathy and imagination and am able to go far enough outside my own headspace to recognize how I differ from others. I envy people who claim that psychedelics have made them closer to cognitive normal; while they have made me happier in the sense that I have less internal conflict, they have never “fixed” my brain, only given me better coping mechanisms.

[garmaine]

I wish that was a repeatable experience.

[ken]

> If you think you have aphantasia, you almost certainly do.

I took the VVIQ online and it concluded that I "probably don't" have aphantasia (but merely "You do not have a vivid imagination"). Basically it seems that unless you're 0's across the board, you can form some part of some image in your mind, and thus don't meet their definition.

Then again, the only one I rated above a 1 was "gait", and that's as much auditory as visual, so I'm not sure I believe them.

I took another online test which asked me to look at a 3D shape made of blocks, and then later compare others (drawn from different angles) and determine which was the same, without referencing the original. It was an easy test, but to me it had little to do with visual imagery. I just remembered the original shape as sounds (far easier than remembering a shape!), and then picked which of the others sounded the same.

That's the fundamental problem I see with tests that try to figure out how a person thinks. You try to invent a test which you believe can only possibly be solved in one way -- but people who don't think that way already have a lifetime of experience living and thinking, so surely they've developed other mechanisms by now.

It's like saying "I know how to test if someone has two legs: we'll put the finish line 100 meters over there! Then anyone missing a leg won't be able to get to it." Just because you don't have two legs doesn't mean you can't get around just fine.

I'm absolutely sure there are people who solved the block problem visually, and tactilely, and other ways I can't even guess at. I think "aphantasia" is all wrong. It implies visual thinking is normal, and "non-visual" is the only alternative. We don't have a special word for "people who don't have blue eyes". We say directly what color we mean.