Comment by jpfromlondon
11 hours ago
You're absolutely right.
Nobody hallucinates or "sees" the object, it's like an object instantiation with default properties that you can name/describe, nothing more.
If you quiz someone long enough you can get them to acknowledge they don't see anything "in their head" whatever that means.
This nonsense makes me irrationally annoyed, I suspect because it's unfalsifiable attention seeking, some people I've met mention it every chance they get angling at it being some sort of disability. I get it, you don't see anything...I don't see anything either...nobody does.
Can you explain why people who report aphantasia don't show physical responses (like sweat or pupil dilation) in response to imagined visual stimulus (like being described a scary scene), while people who report mental imagery do show these physical responses to the same stimulus?
I agree, of course nobody can actually do this (barring mind-altering drugs or brain trauma, and even then, not voluntarily). But there are people on this thread an on the attached survey (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49469365) who say that they can. Maybe it turns out that I have aphantasia after all and this is just an ability that I'm missing.
I am curious to see how many people say that they can do this to get some sort of baseline though.
If you accept that drugs/trauma can cause altered states then can't you also accept that some people have the altered state as their default?
Modern politeness encourages us to think of all humans as more or less the same, which I think causes a default minimization of difference mindset.
One thing that really blew my mind in my 20's was learning that asians have a different type of earwax -> usually white and dry instead of yellow and waxy. It really shocked me that I was never taught that in school, and if people are unaware of common physical differences I am sure we are largely unaware of common mental difference.
> If you accept that drugs/trauma can cause altered states then can't you also accept that some people have the altered state as their default?
Indeed, that acknowledgement by the GP undermines his entire argument:
> I see things with my eyes, experience has taught me that when I cover my eyes I cannot see things, when I close my eyes I cannot see things. That is what seeing is. I cannot see with my ears, I cannot see with my fingers.
What he and others here don't grasp is that we see with our brains, and the signals that the brain processes do not have to come from the eyeballs.
> Nobody hallucinates or "sees" the object
Prove it.
> If you quiz someone long enough you can get them to acknowledge they don't see anything "in their head" whatever that means.
This is simply false, as numerous people here have demonstrated.
> irrationally annoyed
Yes, irrationality and emotive reaction is evident.
> I suspect because it's unfalsifiable attention seeking
You suspect a lot of things based on no evidence whatsoever.
> some people I've met mention it every chance they get angling at it being some sort of disability
How is being able to see things in one's mind's eye a disability? Ah, but you meant the opposite -- your whole framework is irrational, baseless, intellectually dishonest, bad faith, and indeed quite annoying.
> I get it, you don't see anything...I don't see anything either...nobody does.
Again, it was the claim that people do see things that you were rejecting. You can't keep track of your own argument because it's irrational and devoid of evidence or logic.
I won't respond again.
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