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This is such an interesting topic. I believe I also have aphantasia and I find that communicating about the topic is rather challenging as the right vocabulary

This is such an interesting topic. I believe I also have aphantasia and I find that communicating about the topic is rather challenging as the right vocabulary doesn't seem to exist (or I'm ignorant of it). I have no "mind's eye" and can't produce an image in my head. But confusingly, I am quite good at the mental 3D manipulation. I can spin the cow in my head and describe its orientation, but I don't actually see the cow, I just know it. I suppose my brain just has a different way of approaching this problem than visually. This is where the language is tough. I'm not visualizing or imagining as those words describe the act of using a mental image. I'm perceiving the cow? It is hard to communicate.

andrewflnr 2y ago
Now that is fascinating. It's like you have blindsight for your mind's eye. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight
ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
> I find that communicating about the topic is rather challenging as the right vocabulary doesn't seem to exist (or I'm ignorant of it). Right. This is enormously challenging in itself. And I think because nobody talks about it, it's possible, or maybe the default, to assume that you're simply broken in an obvious, universal way, and not that there might be variation or even routes to change your outcomes with metacognition or thought experiments. What often comes up is stuff like "oh I thought 'the mind's eye' was just a figure of speech, I had no idea people meant it in a meaningful sense"
LoganDark 2y ago
You're deriving the cow. You don't see the cow, but you know things logically about the cow, and you can describe it just as well as would someone who does see it. But you are not, and don't need to be, actually seeing the cow.
- ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
  The weird thing obviously is that next to nobody with a mind's eye is actually seeing the cow. A tiny tiny fraction of people talk about their mind's eye being part of their visual field, to the point that they can sort of functionally see -- hallucinate -- an imaginary object on a table like AR. Another small number of people talk about imagining complete objects out of nowhere that they then have to analyse to describe; the imaginary thing has complete shape before its shape is described. Most children can sort of whimsically play the imaginary-drinking tea game, imagining the shape of the teacups, imagining spilling tea or milk, but the mental images might not have attributes like colour or weight until they are specifically assigned to the visualisation. Like: what colour are the teacups? They don't have colour until you pick one, and then they do. Is it a heavy cup? It's not, but I do have a saucer. The more you add to the visualisation, the less translucent/ghostly/formless/conceptual it is. The fascinating thing about broad aphantasia is that it appears to be way beyond even that; it's like things only happen conceptually, yet they still happen. Like the sibling comment from andrewflnr perceptively said: as if it's a conceptual blind-sight. And when you consider our evolutionary pathway, perhaps it actually is the same phenomenon: a part of the brain successfully doing part of the task, without the support of the visualiser.
  - kaashif 2y ago
    > Another small number of people talk about imagining complete objects out of nowhere that they then have to analyse to describe; the imaginary thing has complete shape before its shape is described. But this is different from the kids tea party. I can easily pretend to hold a teacup without closing my eyes and visualizing a teacup, I don't think one has anything to do with the other. If you ask someone to actually imagine seeing a teacup but what they're imagining doesn't have a colour or size, _what are they imagining_?
    - jodrellblank 2y ago
      If I cover your eyes and put a teacup on your open palm so you can't see the colour or feel the size, _what are you holding_? I'm imagining a teacup - made of china, decorated in some way, capable of holding a few mouthfulls of ~75C thin liquid, smaller than a big mug, larger than a shot glass, with a handle sizes for the tip of one finger, delicate, ceremonial; concept space constrained to broadly teacup-ish area. But not a specific teacup unless it becomes important whether it's a plainer heavy duty cafe teacup or a grandma's Royal Jubilee promotional teacup.
- scarmig 2y ago
  A while back, I did an experiment: drawing a typing keyboard. It's something I see and use every day, so it should be easy, right? Well, I was able to, but it didn't come from first principles or even visualizing it. It came from imagining myself at a keyboard and "simulating" typing. In my mind's body, I would type a sentence, which enabled me to extract the location of the keys, which I could then translate into part of the visual sketch on paper. The initial sketch came out with key sizes and shapes heavily distorted, but all of them spatially located in the correct relative horizontal ordering, and a second sketch made it possible to regularize them. Not sure what it means, but it was an interesting exercise.
klyrs 2y ago
I have a form of aphantasia, but with that lack of visuals I also have a rich internal sense of touch. Like you, I can create and manipulate 3d objects in my mind; I really feel them down to texture and temperature (and I must say, that cow has textures I didn't want to feel, thanks for nothing) Most of my dreams are like this too -- I know where everything is, but I don't see it. But my aphantasia isn't complete. Sometimes when I think of a person I get a dim image of their face for about a tenth of a second. And very rarely, I do see things in dreams.

andrewflnr 2y ago

Now that is fascinating. It's like you have blindsight for your mind's eye. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight

ecjhdnc2025 2y ago

> I find that communicating about the topic is rather challenging as the right vocabulary doesn't seem to exist (or I'm ignorant of it). Right. This is enormously challenging in itself. And I think because nobody talks about it, it's possible, or maybe the default, to assume that you're simply broken in an obvious, universal way, and not that there might be variation or even routes to change your outcomes with metacognition or thought experiments. What often comes up is stuff like "oh I thought 'the mind's eye' was just a figure of speech, I had no idea people meant it in a meaningful sense"

LoganDark 2y ago

You're deriving the cow. You don't see the cow, but you know things logically about the cow, and you can describe it just as well as would someone who does see it. But you are not, and don't need to be, actually seeing the cow.

ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
The weird thing obviously is that next to nobody with a mind's eye is actually seeing the cow. A tiny tiny fraction of people talk about their mind's eye being part of their visual field, to the point that they can sort of functionally see -- hallucinate -- an imaginary object on a table like AR. Another small number of people talk about imagining complete objects out of nowhere that they then have to analyse to describe; the imaginary thing has complete shape before its shape is described. Most children can sort of whimsically play the imaginary-drinking tea game, imagining the shape of the teacups, imagining spilling tea or milk, but the mental images might not have attributes like colour or weight until they are specifically assigned to the visualisation. Like: what colour are the teacups? They don't have colour until you pick one, and then they do. Is it a heavy cup? It's not, but I do have a saucer. The more you add to the visualisation, the less translucent/ghostly/formless/conceptual it is. The fascinating thing about broad aphantasia is that it appears to be way beyond even that; it's like things only happen conceptually, yet they still happen. Like the sibling comment from andrewflnr perceptively said: as if it's a conceptual blind-sight. And when you consider our evolutionary pathway, perhaps it actually is the same phenomenon: a part of the brain successfully doing part of the task, without the support of the visualiser.
- kaashif 2y ago
  > Another small number of people talk about imagining complete objects out of nowhere that they then have to analyse to describe; the imaginary thing has complete shape before its shape is described. But this is different from the kids tea party. I can easily pretend to hold a teacup without closing my eyes and visualizing a teacup, I don't think one has anything to do with the other. If you ask someone to actually imagine seeing a teacup but what they're imagining doesn't have a colour or size, _what are they imagining_?
  - jodrellblank 2y ago
    If I cover your eyes and put a teacup on your open palm so you can't see the colour or feel the size, _what are you holding_? I'm imagining a teacup - made of china, decorated in some way, capable of holding a few mouthfulls of ~75C thin liquid, smaller than a big mug, larger than a shot glass, with a handle sizes for the tip of one finger, delicate, ceremonial; concept space constrained to broadly teacup-ish area. But not a specific teacup unless it becomes important whether it's a plainer heavy duty cafe teacup or a grandma's Royal Jubilee promotional teacup.
scarmig 2y ago
A while back, I did an experiment: drawing a typing keyboard. It's something I see and use every day, so it should be easy, right? Well, I was able to, but it didn't come from first principles or even visualizing it. It came from imagining myself at a keyboard and "simulating" typing. In my mind's body, I would type a sentence, which enabled me to extract the location of the keys, which I could then translate into part of the visual sketch on paper. The initial sketch came out with key sizes and shapes heavily distorted, but all of them spatially located in the correct relative horizontal ordering, and a second sketch made it possible to regularize them. Not sure what it means, but it was an interesting exercise.

klyrs 2y ago

I have a form of aphantasia, but with that lack of visuals I also have a rich internal sense of touch. Like you, I can create and manipulate 3d objects in my mind; I really feel them down to texture and temperature (and I must say, that cow has textures I didn't want to feel, thanks for nothing) Most of my dreams are like this too -- I know where everything is, but I don't see it. But my aphantasia isn't complete. Sometimes when I think of a person I get a dim image of their face for about a tenth of a second. And very rarely, I do see things in dreams.