It's like a photo. For me at least, it's kind of ghostly and transparent and appears briefly overlaid on what I can see with my physical eyes.
When I was younger the images were more solid and stable. Teachers often complained that I was spaced out because I was paying attention to some inner images.
That faculty greatly deteriorated and I became hyperverbal around the same time. (Coinciding, curiously with my shift from introversion to extroversion. Spurred, presumably, by my then-new interest in women!)
These days I can still access that previous level of visual fluency if I am in a state of very deep relaxation. (So it's conceivable that cortisol inhibits the circuits required to have such experiences. But I have no idea!)
Okay, comment version 2.0 since someone instantly flagged me for replying with a dictionary entry.
The reason my comment is fundamentally a dictionary entry is because I was asked "what is it?" in response to a two sentence comment where I already said it was "conceptual". I think there's a very wide gap in understanding here, and restating and defining the word "concept" is the best way to bridge that gap. All I can really do is make my point clearer (via dictionary entry), I can't say anything else useful until I understand what wasn't clear about my previous comment.
If the person that flagged me still has a problem with my comment, please explain it.
Reply:
> So what is it, then? Some mystical thing?
concept/ˈkänˌsept/A concept is a broad mental plan, general idea, or core principle used to understand and group things together. It acts as a basic building block for human thought, language, and design.
Also, why are you asking me? Didn't you just accept it not being text and then argue it's also not an image?
When I was younger the images were more solid and stable. Teachers often complained that I was spaced out because I was paying attention to some inner images.
That faculty greatly deteriorated and I became hyperverbal around the same time. (Coinciding, curiously with my shift from introversion to extroversion. Spurred, presumably, by my then-new interest in women!)
These days I can still access that previous level of visual fluency if I am in a state of very deep relaxation. (So it's conceivable that cortisol inhibits the circuits required to have such experiences. But I have no idea!)
Hope this helps.