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If there were a concrete phenomenon that's consistently observable, I absolutely agree with that reasoning. But I don't see that dynamic in discussions of aphan
by SilasX 5y ago
If there were a concrete phenomenon that's consistently observable, I absolutely agree with that reasoning. But I don't see that dynamic in discussions of aphantasia. We can't directly compare subjective experience, so any comparison is going to be filtered through the language of how we describe said experience, and so it's that much harder to conclude whether aphantasia is a natural category and the extent to which people have it.
Thus I share the parent's frustration about the sound-and-fury (imaginable or otherwise!) associated with this topic.
Even when people do try to have a productive discussion about it, half of it is nailing down a test to distinguish whether you're "really seeing" an image or just speaking metaphorically. That, or an article (like this one) casually assumes away this measurement problem and goes into a diatribe about how trippy aphantasia is.
(Before you start guessing, I don't think I have aphantasia, based on its descriptions. I can imagine pictures, or at least I think I can, though not necessarily the crystal clear images others seem to see. I do poorly on "draw this complex image from memory" challenges, although I think I'm still drawing from my mind's "eye" when I do it.)
Now, if we want to talk about observables believed to be associated with aphantasia, that would definitely be interesting. But most discussions are light on that too, or casually assume all kinds of things are implications of the condition.
Basically, I'm not convinced we have a rigorous enough way to talk about this question for it to be worthwhile, so I usually feel like discussions of it are mostly a waste.
- blindmute 5y agoI mean, if you have a strong mental imagery, it's not ambiguous at all whether it's metaphorical or not. It really is seeing. All experience is subjective, but it's like if half of people were seeing in greyscale and tried to argue that there may or may not be different colors other than grey, and that the discussion is pointless. The people seeing colors are like, uhhh no man, there are actually different colors and you're just not seeing them. It's incredibly obvious that there are more colors than grey. But when a large chunk of people see in monochrome, and even more people are seeing an extremely desaturated palette to where it's almost grey but not quite, the discussion gets muddied. And then the greyscale seers try to convince everyone that it's just a difference in language and actually 'red' is just a feeling. It's just absurd to anyone who has the strong sense.
- watwut 5y agoExcept this is nothing like color blindness. No matter how much you play with colors, you remain colorblind. Colorblindness also affects your life at least somehow. This is more like skill. The more you draw and deal with visual, the more your visual imagination and memory develops. It is also completely irrelevant skill to day to day life, which would explain why bulk of population happily does not care about it at all.
- d3ad1ysp0rk 5y agoAre you implying that aphantasia is treatable by practice visualizing things? My own experience with it and everything I've seen (no pun intended) says otherwise, but I'm happy to read a good source of reasoning around your theory.
- watwut 5y agoYep. And it completely ignores aspect of it being something that you can train. It is more of mental skill, like ability to manipulate numbers in your head, remember worst and what not. I 100% doubt I am only one whose visual imagination got significantly better with trying to learn new strongly visual skill (in my case drawing). > or casually assume all kinds of things are implications of the condition Imo, it is also completely absurd to frame it as condition too. The impact of ability to imagine pictures or not is completely irrelevant to life. Maybe except if you attempt to be an artist, but then again doing art itself seem to train this ability.
- SilasX 5y ago>Imo, it is also completely absurd to frame it as condition too. Oh sure, that too. I was just going for brevity in that part. As per my first paragraph, I'm not convinced that aphantasia is a natural category, which would be necessary for framing it as a condition. (Although I'd maybe say I'm more "on the fence" than "convinced its absurd" -- I'm open to the possibility someone can come up with a clear test, I just don't see it and don't expect anyone to.)