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When reading "picture an apple with three blue dots on it", I have an abstract concept of an apple and three dots. There's really no geometry there, without follow on questions, or some priming in the question. In my conscious experience I pretty much imagine {apple, dot, dot, dot}. I don't "see" blue, the dots are tagged with dot.color == blue. When you ask about the arrangement of the dots, I'll THEN think about it, and then says "arranged in a triangle." But that's because you've probed with your question. Before you probed, there's no concept in my mind of any geometric arrangement. If I hadn't been prompted to think / naturally thought about the color of the apple, and you asked me "what color is the apple." Only then would I say "green" or "red." If you asked me to describe my office (for example) my brain can't really imagine it "holistically." I can think of the desk and then enumerate it's properties: white legs, wooden top, rug on ground. But, essentially, I'm running a geometric iterator over the scene, starting from some anchor object, jumping to nearby objects, and then enumerating their properties. I have glimpses of what it's like to "see" in my minds eye. At night, in bed, just before sleep, if I concentrate really hard, I can sometimes see fleeting images. I liken it to looking at one of those eye puzzles where you have to relax your eyes to "see it." I almost have to focus on "seeing" without looking into the blackness of my closed eyes. |