Comment by jibal
6 hours ago
> 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's your experience. Other people have different experiences.
> That is what seeing is.
What an incredible leap of petitio principii. Yet there are people who can't see despite their eyes being open and the optical machinery working correctly, and there are people who see things without having eyes at all -- in some cases things that are only in their imagination, in some cases due to brain probes, in some cases due to synesthesia, in some cases due to having an array of probes on their backs that translate images into touch sensations which their brains translate into images. You seem to know nothing of any of this, or how the brain works at all, or how language works, but you have a whole lot to say about it in this thread.
BY DEFINITION you have aphantasia, according to your self-description. You seem to believe, for no good reason and contrary to a large amount of evidence, that that everyone else also has aphantasia (i.e., no one has phantasia), but that's a different issue.
I won't respond to you further.
No, based on the description they are normally phantasic and are just quibbling semantics.
Frankly, it is very hard to tell at times.
The self-description I referred to is
> 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... Some people on this thread claim that they can see imagined objects in their field of view. I cannot do this.
But he also said
> I can imagine shapes and faces and objects just fine, and can rotate them around if necessary, etc., but I cannot see them because my eyes are not involved; when I close them the imagined images do not disappear. The visualization is akin to seeing, but obviously I am not seeing them.
Initially this struck me as logically incoherent, but reading it again and taking into account the fact that he defines seeing as using eyes--an unreasonable circular precondition--he does indeed seem to be describing normal phantasia, given the reference to images that do not disappear, and to visualization. As someone with near-complete aphantasia, I cannot produce such images or visualizations and I certainly can't rotate them around.
What is quite clear here is that people are describing different sorts of experience, not mere semantic quibbling (which defining seeing as using eyes is certainly an example of) ... and we have physiological data that supports that view. I find it quite bizarre that there are so many people on this page who insist that these differences cannot exist, that everyone is exactly like them (even though there are differences among those who claim this), to the degree that they claim that others are lying, seeking attention, seeking profit, etc. ... there is no reason at all in evidence or logic to support these claims or the position that everyone's mind is the same, in this or any other aspect.