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A couple of years ago, I learned that other people see images in their minds. Now I learn that people hear voices in their minds in a way that is dramatically d

A couple of years ago, I learned that other people see images in their minds. Now I learn that people hear voices in their minds in a way that is dramatically different to mine. When I am thinking, there is pure silence and blank-ness in my mind. I don't see anything in my blind mind's eye, and I don't hear anything in my deaf mind's ear. It seems that I can create a monologue in my mind, but I have to be consciously thinking of the words and almost subvocalising them to get it to work how several of the examples are described in TFA. This makes me wonder, if I'm not seeing images for my mental representations, and I am not hearing inner audio compositions, then what is my thinking consisting of? When I sit here, just now, creating and solving math problems of moderate difficulty, it's like, there's nothing except maybe a feeling of some sort? A drive or desire? The closest maybe that it feels like is the abstract symbols, from the article, "Other people don’t have a voice at all, or they speak in abstract symbols that don’t involve language." Except they aren't image-symbols in any way. Just like, feeling symbols. Anyway. I don't know. Fascinating.

boc 5y ago
So wait, if you close your eyes and picture Mount Everest, you can't see Mount Everest in your head? For me it's easy to "fly" around my neighborhood just by closing my eyes and remembering what the streets and trees and houses look like as I take a lap. I can see off into the distance, I can see the sidewalk cracks, I can see people... all of them are obviously fuzzed versions of reality but nonetheless they're relatively easy to see. I figured everyone was able to do that to some extent.
- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  It is called aphantasia and I have it too. I am totally unable to picture anything in my head despite trying for years.
  - agent327 5y ago
    How about abstract concepts? If I ask you to imagine something mathematical, like a circle in a square, do you 'see' anything?
    - JaimeThompson 5y ago
      Personally I see nothing no matter what I try to imagine. There are various degrees of it, some can "see" various amounts it seems. This [1] is a decent place for more info. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/
- checkyoursudo 5y ago
  If I close my eyes, I can see nothing. If I keep my eyes open, I can sort of barely super-impose some ghostly relief of the thing I am supposedly imagining. My wife can see like full Technicolor motion pictures in her mind with special effects and superstar cameos. I am jealous. My mind is seriously black when I close my eyes. On the plus side for me, it is super easy for me to fall asleep whenever I want, because it's just black and blank and boring when I close my eyes at bed time. :)
  - fbanon 5y ago
    >My wife can see like full Technicolor motion pictures in her mind with special effects and superstar cameos. Nah, it's not like that. When we imagine something it's not like we actually see those things like real visual stimuli. The experience is more abstract than that. There is a vague visual aspect to it, but it's not hi-def like real vision, just fragments appearing then disappearing in your mind. So it's not at all like dreaming. * at least for me.
    - checkyoursudo 5y ago
      I have no first-hand experience with what it's like, so I cannot comment on the veracity of what people have told me or I have read about it since learning about aphantasia. However, my wife assures me that it is in fact like a real, hi-def movie playing in her mind, and I have since read a number of accounts of artists who literally just draw or paint exactly what they see with their minds' eye(s), and talked with plenty of people who have varying degrees of inner vision. I take you at your word for your experience. I likewise have no reason to think my wife, for example, is exaggerating to me. My wife has a photographic memory, and she can literally recreate stuff down to almost absurd details. I think it is possible you may be underestimating what other people see in their minds. :)
      - fbanon 5y ago
        I've asked a few people and everyone said that their imagination is not as hi-def as their vision. I.e. when they imagine something it's not like an image was cut & pasted onto their visual field. So I'm pretty sure your friends were exaggerating, or meant hi-def in a different sense.
- pempem 5y ago
  That. is amazing! I cannot see anything personally without a visual reference right before closing my eyes. I can begin to use words to reason my way around the block, but even then despite seeing them so often, I cannot picture them.
- ars 5y ago
  > So wait, if you close your eyes and picture Mount Everest, you can't see Mount Everest in your head? I can picture the concept of Mount Everest. But it's more of an abstract idea. Like I don't actually see a mountain in color as if it were in front of me. But there's this "mental concept" sitting in front of me. Are you able to actually "see" a picture? Are most people able to do that? I've never noticed a limitation in myself - I can easily visualize how things will look if arranged, but I don't see a picture like a painting, rather I see the concept of the object. So I figured I was typical.
  - ManuelKiessling 5y ago
    What was the last movie you saw? Do you remember any specific color from this movie, like, idk, the color of the car the hero drove or something like that? If you didn‘t make a mental note of that color while watching the movie, then how would you re-call that information now, without visualizing it in your mind? Can you give us an idea? For example, what is the color of the laser beam of the death star? Do you „see“ the colored beam in your mind? I do, and it‘s the only mental mechanism I have to answer that question. Without that, I would have to look it up via Google Image Search or whatever, make a mental note of the specific answer, and would have to recall the answer instead of recalling the image, I guess…?
  - boc 5y ago
    Not sure about others but I can see what my brain thinks is a picture of Mount Everest. It's not a photorealistic image because I've never actually seen it IRL, but it's just a composite idea of Everest from movies, YouTube videos, images, etc. Now it's not quite the same as seeing something like you would through your eyes - you still see darkness when you close your eyes - but it's a vision that you can see in your "mind's eye" which is in color, vivid, you can hear it, smell it, feel it.
- garaetjjte 5y ago
  >So wait, if you close your eyes Is this just figurative phrase or some people need to close their eyes to visualize images? I can imagine things, but they are not real visual stimuli that I see, they are more abstract going directly to the mind. Thus it doesn't matter whether my eyes are closed or what I'm looking at, it is independent from real sight.
  - vasco 5y ago
    I don't, closing your eyes is completely unnecessary for any of this stuff. I assume it's just a phrase.
  - johnchristopher 5y ago
    It's easier for me when I close my eyes because I don't have to consciously ignore what I actually see. But I can totally get in the zone with opened eyes, generally when I let my mind wander (on a train or bus trip or on a walk for instance).
TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
If you do not have any discursive thought, I am curious how meditation is for you. Must be incredibly simple and easy.
- ars 5y ago
  And pointless. Meditating isn't any different from not meditating.
jeroenhd 5y ago
I'm the exact same way. No mind's eye, no constant internal monologue (or dialogue), mostly just calm and silence. I think I can sort of visualize voices and music, but clearly not as well as other seem to be able to. I always thought people who hear entirely understandable voices were the mentally ill people you hear about in the news and in fiction, not for that to be the norm. I do wonder about the statistics on the "internal monologue". I think I saw some stats on aphantasia (not being able to picture things) but that didn't include the internal monologue. All in all, while I think the capacity to actually visualize things would definitely be welcome, I think I'd go crazy with a constant internal monologue droning on in the background.
- ManuelKiessling 5y ago
  Guess the difference is that normal(?) people like me “create” or recall the voices in our heads, while for the mentally ill, the voices “come” to them like from the “outside”? Eww, I realize it’s really hard to conceptualize this stuff and put it into words…
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Question for you, and those like you: If you don't see images in your mind, do you see images when you dream? If you don't have an "inner voice", do you hear sound when you dream? I have no point I'm trying to make here. I just wonder if there's a correlation with dreams.
- checkyoursudo 5y ago
  I do see images and hear sound when I dream, and when I daydream! That is interesting, isn't it? I have always thought so. So, maybe it's like that unconscious memory crystallization subsystem works, but the conscious recall subsystem doesn't work quite right. I suspect that these are two quite different things, though I don't really know.
- princesse 5y ago
  I do not see anything while dreaming. It is a constant source of slight anxiety as I can be quite conscious and the blindness is puzzling. In daily life I can project myself in some mental space (ie my kitchen) and perceive where the boundaries of things would be, but none of this process has anything to do with vision of sight. It's more like extend proprioception. If you place your hand on a wall, then close your eyes, then remove your hand, I suspect you'll still feel where the wall is. Even if you picture something completely different in your head, the wall is still there I suppose? My guess is that my extend proprioception (or whatever the right name for this would be) is more fine tuned and apt than someone with a mind eye, but I can't really know. :| I also do not hear sounds while dreaming, but then again I don't really have an inner monologue anymore, that went away at the same time I learned programming and I don't think it's a coincidence. I do verbalize in my head when reading conversation-like stuff (HN, slack, etc.), but you won't catch me with any internal monologue while reading ingredients, jira tickets, etc. While dreaming, I can have conversations but there's no gradual arrival of content, it's instantaneous, it was not yet "said" or it was.
  - boc 5y ago
    This is wild! When I dream it feels nearly indistinguishable from conscious life. Full color, sounds, pain, fear, people - weirdest of all is when people in my dreams solve problems that I can't solve, like math problems. Really trips you out because it's all in your brain, and "you" were the one that also solved the problem. I chalk it up to the solution also being incorrect but feeling correct in the dream, otherwise it would be quite terrifying.
ypcx 5y ago
What happens (or what would happen) if you sit still in silence and darkness and try to observe these "feeling symbols" as they come and go? You could be better equipped for deep meditation and deep thinking than most of us, but maybe you just need to do some practice.

boc 5y ago

So wait, if you close your eyes and picture Mount Everest, you can't see Mount Everest in your head? For me it's easy to "fly" around my neighborhood just by closing my eyes and remembering what the streets and trees and houses look like as I take a lap. I can see off into the distance, I can see the sidewalk cracks, I can see people... all of them are obviously fuzzed versions of reality but nonetheless they're relatively easy to see. I figured everyone was able to do that to some extent.

JaimeThompson 5y ago
It is called aphantasia and I have it too. I am totally unable to picture anything in my head despite trying for years.
- agent327 5y ago
  How about abstract concepts? If I ask you to imagine something mathematical, like a circle in a square, do you 'see' anything?
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    Personally I see nothing no matter what I try to imagine. There are various degrees of it, some can "see" various amounts it seems. This [1] is a decent place for more info. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/
checkyoursudo 5y ago
If I close my eyes, I can see nothing. If I keep my eyes open, I can sort of barely super-impose some ghostly relief of the thing I am supposedly imagining. My wife can see like full Technicolor motion pictures in her mind with special effects and superstar cameos. I am jealous. My mind is seriously black when I close my eyes. On the plus side for me, it is super easy for me to fall asleep whenever I want, because it's just black and blank and boring when I close my eyes at bed time. :)
- fbanon 5y ago
  >My wife can see like full Technicolor motion pictures in her mind with special effects and superstar cameos. Nah, it's not like that. When we imagine something it's not like we actually see those things like real visual stimuli. The experience is more abstract than that. There is a vague visual aspect to it, but it's not hi-def like real vision, just fragments appearing then disappearing in your mind. So it's not at all like dreaming. * at least for me.
  - checkyoursudo 5y ago
    I have no first-hand experience with what it's like, so I cannot comment on the veracity of what people have told me or I have read about it since learning about aphantasia. However, my wife assures me that it is in fact like a real, hi-def movie playing in her mind, and I have since read a number of accounts of artists who literally just draw or paint exactly what they see with their minds' eye(s), and talked with plenty of people who have varying degrees of inner vision. I take you at your word for your experience. I likewise have no reason to think my wife, for example, is exaggerating to me. My wife has a photographic memory, and she can literally recreate stuff down to almost absurd details. I think it is possible you may be underestimating what other people see in their minds. :)
    - fbanon 5y ago
      I've asked a few people and everyone said that their imagination is not as hi-def as their vision. I.e. when they imagine something it's not like an image was cut & pasted onto their visual field. So I'm pretty sure your friends were exaggerating, or meant hi-def in a different sense.
pempem 5y ago
That. is amazing! I cannot see anything personally without a visual reference right before closing my eyes. I can begin to use words to reason my way around the block, but even then despite seeing them so often, I cannot picture them.
ars 5y ago
> So wait, if you close your eyes and picture Mount Everest, you can't see Mount Everest in your head? I can picture the concept of Mount Everest. But it's more of an abstract idea. Like I don't actually see a mountain in color as if it were in front of me. But there's this "mental concept" sitting in front of me. Are you able to actually "see" a picture? Are most people able to do that? I've never noticed a limitation in myself - I can easily visualize how things will look if arranged, but I don't see a picture like a painting, rather I see the concept of the object. So I figured I was typical.
- ManuelKiessling 5y ago
  What was the last movie you saw? Do you remember any specific color from this movie, like, idk, the color of the car the hero drove or something like that? If you didn‘t make a mental note of that color while watching the movie, then how would you re-call that information now, without visualizing it in your mind? Can you give us an idea? For example, what is the color of the laser beam of the death star? Do you „see“ the colored beam in your mind? I do, and it‘s the only mental mechanism I have to answer that question. Without that, I would have to look it up via Google Image Search or whatever, make a mental note of the specific answer, and would have to recall the answer instead of recalling the image, I guess…?
- boc 5y ago
  Not sure about others but I can see what my brain thinks is a picture of Mount Everest. It's not a photorealistic image because I've never actually seen it IRL, but it's just a composite idea of Everest from movies, YouTube videos, images, etc. Now it's not quite the same as seeing something like you would through your eyes - you still see darkness when you close your eyes - but it's a vision that you can see in your "mind's eye" which is in color, vivid, you can hear it, smell it, feel it.
garaetjjte 5y ago
>So wait, if you close your eyes Is this just figurative phrase or some people need to close their eyes to visualize images? I can imagine things, but they are not real visual stimuli that I see, they are more abstract going directly to the mind. Thus it doesn't matter whether my eyes are closed or what I'm looking at, it is independent from real sight.
- vasco 5y ago
  I don't, closing your eyes is completely unnecessary for any of this stuff. I assume it's just a phrase.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  It's easier for me when I close my eyes because I don't have to consciously ignore what I actually see. But I can totally get in the zone with opened eyes, generally when I let my mind wander (on a train or bus trip or on a walk for instance).

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago

If you do not have any discursive thought, I am curious how meditation is for you. Must be incredibly simple and easy.

ars 5y ago
And pointless. Meditating isn't any different from not meditating.

jeroenhd 5y ago

I'm the exact same way. No mind's eye, no constant internal monologue (or dialogue), mostly just calm and silence. I think I can sort of visualize voices and music, but clearly not as well as other seem to be able to. I always thought people who hear entirely understandable voices were the mentally ill people you hear about in the news and in fiction, not for that to be the norm. I do wonder about the statistics on the "internal monologue". I think I saw some stats on aphantasia (not being able to picture things) but that didn't include the internal monologue. All in all, while I think the capacity to actually visualize things would definitely be welcome, I think I'd go crazy with a constant internal monologue droning on in the background.

ManuelKiessling 5y ago
Guess the difference is that normal(?) people like me “create” or recall the voices in our heads, while for the mentally ill, the voices “come” to them like from the “outside”? Eww, I realize it’s really hard to conceptualize this stuff and put it into words…

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

Question for you, and those like you: If you don't see images in your mind, do you see images when you dream? If you don't have an "inner voice", do you hear sound when you dream? I have no point I'm trying to make here. I just wonder if there's a correlation with dreams.

checkyoursudo 5y ago
I do see images and hear sound when I dream, and when I daydream! That is interesting, isn't it? I have always thought so. So, maybe it's like that unconscious memory crystallization subsystem works, but the conscious recall subsystem doesn't work quite right. I suspect that these are two quite different things, though I don't really know.
princesse 5y ago
I do not see anything while dreaming. It is a constant source of slight anxiety as I can be quite conscious and the blindness is puzzling. In daily life I can project myself in some mental space (ie my kitchen) and perceive where the boundaries of things would be, but none of this process has anything to do with vision of sight. It's more like extend proprioception. If you place your hand on a wall, then close your eyes, then remove your hand, I suspect you'll still feel where the wall is. Even if you picture something completely different in your head, the wall is still there I suppose? My guess is that my extend proprioception (or whatever the right name for this would be) is more fine tuned and apt than someone with a mind eye, but I can't really know. :| I also do not hear sounds while dreaming, but then again I don't really have an inner monologue anymore, that went away at the same time I learned programming and I don't think it's a coincidence. I do verbalize in my head when reading conversation-like stuff (HN, slack, etc.), but you won't catch me with any internal monologue while reading ingredients, jira tickets, etc. While dreaming, I can have conversations but there's no gradual arrival of content, it's instantaneous, it was not yet "said" or it was.
- boc 5y ago
  This is wild! When I dream it feels nearly indistinguishable from conscious life. Full color, sounds, pain, fear, people - weirdest of all is when people in my dreams solve problems that I can't solve, like math problems. Really trips you out because it's all in your brain, and "you" were the one that also solved the problem. I chalk it up to the solution also being incorrect but feeling correct in the dream, otherwise it would be quite terrifying.

ypcx 5y ago

What happens (or what would happen) if you sit still in silence and darkness and try to observe these "feeling symbols" as they come and go? You could be better equipped for deep meditation and deep thinking than most of us, but maybe you just need to do some practice.