[vidarh]

It goes beyond that, I think, in that many of us have gone most of our lives believing others used this language metaphorically, and assigning a meaning to these words.

I was about 45 by the point I realized most people to varying degrees actually meant that they saw things when imagining them.

And so to me it's not that there no thought behind it, because I do something when I "imagine" something, just not the same thing. The word means something different to me, and most of the time you wouldn't notice even when it's staring you in the face.

E.g."I imagined her face" has a meaning to me even though I can't literally see a face when imagining it, but I can recall qualities and emotions and sensations of it anyway and to me those things add up to the meaning of that word, because nobody ever thought to assume it needed explaining that it was literal.

Opening that line of inquiry quickly makes it apparent that we assume a whole lot about how similar our inner lives are that just doesn't consistently hold up, but that we don't challenge without digging into precisely how people use various words.

[jvanderbot]

This is so earth shattering to me. I'm completely unable to actually "see" anything when I imagine it, but I think I can visualize in the sense of recalling or imagining how it would look.

Do people actually close their eyes and hallucinate or am I reading way to far into this?

[jddj]

I think there's some of that over-reading.

In these exchanges the language typically gets sloppy and one person's "see" gets translated and reacted to as whoa, with their eyes?.

If you can imagine a red car and see it in your mind's eye (fairly ephemeral, especially if you force it, and nothing like as vivid as a hallucination) I think you're pretty normal from having followed a few of these threads over the years.

[vidarh]

If you have aphantasia, you can't "see it in your minds eye", but that does not mean I can't imagine what it looks like.

I know the distinction both from comparing with dreams, where I do see, and with a single experience during meditation (which I've tried many times but so far failed to replicate). They're nothing alike what it is to "imagine" for me.

[jddj]

Most people seem to be able to recall memories with some imagery and with some effort explore an object / space with imagery.

It's not vivid like a dream though, and doesn't have that 1st-personness either.

[vidarh]

Yes, people do, to varying degrees. Up to and including near picture perfect clarity, though most people have far less clearer images.

Only 2-4% or so see nothing at all.