[suddenlybananas]

The fact that some people report aphantasia and some people don't implies that their brains are different but it does not imply that the reason the brains are different is aphantasia. For example, aphantasia has some comorbidity with autism, probably because autism leads people to interpret expressions in different ways.

[roxolotl]

So you’re saying you think people who report aphantasia see mental imagery but don’t think of it as imagery? And that the brain scans indicate difference but not around mental imagery?

[suddenlybananas]

Yeah essentially, or alternatively neither group has visual imagery. I think it fundamentally comes down to phenomenology being very hard to express in language.

[roxolotl]

That’s why the self reports seem valuable to me. If someone says “I’ve never seen something in my minds eye” and then they do dmt and say “oh shit I can see things in my minds eye now I totally get what people mean now” it seems to imply there’s a spectrum of visualization capabilities. There’s also people who’ve gone in the opposite direction due to injury.

[card_zero]

But people who do dmt are also liable to say "oh shit I can see the machine elves, I totally get what people mean now". Which is not to say that their reports are unreliable, just inscrutable.

[vidarh]

I have aphantasia, but I have had one experience of seeing clear imagery while awake (and it was not on drugs)

They are not remotely similar.

[cnity]

Honestly, your meditation experience sounds more like an altered state induced by the meditation, rather than confirmation of what non-aphantasiacs experience on a daily basis. And I'm jealous you had that experience.

[vidarh]

Whether it was an altered state or not, it showed me the ability to see vivid imagery. And the experience isn't even on the high end of reported abilities to visualise.

[roxolotl]

Yea and it seems weird to assume that since these states are possible that most humans are mistaken when for millennia they’ve talked about having mental imagery. The idea that aphantasia is just language confusion is so strange to me. As someone who has aphantasia I understand the “oh shit” moment when you realize that there’s more going on but the evidence seems pretty overwhelming to me that most people have some internal imagery.