[sebtron]

As far as I understand yes, most people actually see something.

At some point I figured out this "test" to explain aphantasia to people: ask someone to imagine a car. After that, ask them about visual details of the car: what color is it? what type of car is it? (Other objects might work better than a car; In my experience color is the attribute that will be the most surprising, vwry clear for some completely absent for others.)

Most people are going to answer with whatever they "saw". For me these follow-up questions don't make sense.

[naasking]

Not see, but visualize. It's like a different sense. Can you recall what something you touched felt like, what something smelled like, what something tasted like, or sounded like? The recollection of the experience is different than the sensory experience itself, but there's still something of the original sensory experience to it. Visualization is like being able to recall what something looked like in this way, as if you had seen it even though you didn't.

Your vision can feed your visualization, but it doesn't go the other way, which would be a hallucination.

[brotchie]

This is an excellent description, especially the “doesn’t make sense” part. Like ask me to “imagine an apple.”

I imagine the platonic idea of an apple and not a specific apple.

Asking “what color was the apple” is a category error for me!

Just wild how everyone is living such different internal lives.

[Izkata]

The apple one is apparently one of the standard tests, but for me it's a really bad test. For example, using this scale: https://creativerevolution.io/aphantasia-a-blind-minds-eye/

By default I'm like you, roughly a 4 or 5 - a platonic ideal, no actual form, because I don't need to go further for being told that. But if I have any reason to go further, I have no trouble with being around a 1 or 2, depending on the object.

A lot of these simple tests don't seem to take into account "default" vs "capable of".