Qualia are private. We don’t know how another person perceives the outside world: the color of the ocean, the sound of the waves, the smell of the seaside, the exact temperature of the water. Even more obscure is how someone else imagines the world in the absence of external stimuli. Most people are able to generate an internal “representation”1 of a beach — to deploy imagery — when asked, “picture yourself at a relaxing beach.” We can “see” the beach in our mind’s eye even when we’re not really there. But no one else has access to these private images, thoughts, narratives. So we must rely on subjective report.
The hidden nature of imagery (and qualia more generally)2 explains why a significant minority of humans are shocked and dismayed when they learn that other people are capable of generating visual images, and the request to “picture a beach” isn’t metaphorical. This lack of imagery often extends to other sensory modalities (and to other cognitive abilities, such as spatial navigation and autobiographical memories), which will be discussed another time. For now, the focus is on vision.
Redditors and their massive online sphere of influence were chattering the other day about this post in r/TIFU: A woman was explaining her synesthesia to her boyfriend when he discovered that he has aphantasia, the inability to generate visual images.
TIFU by explaining my synesthesia to my boyfriend
“I have grapheme-color synesthesia. Basically I see letters and numbers in colors. The letter 'E' being green for example. A couple months ago I was explaining it to my boyfriend who's a bit of a skeptic. He asked me what colour certain letters and numbers were and had me write them down. ...
Tonight we were laying in bed and my boyfriend quized me again. I tried explaining to him I just see the colors automatically when I visualize the letters in my head. I asked him what colour are the letters in his head. He looked at me weirdly like what do you mean in "my head, that's not a thing"
My boyfriend didnt understand what I meant by visualizing the letters. He didn't believe me that I can visualize letters or even visualize anything in my head.
Turns out my boyfriend has aphantasia. When he tries to visualize stuff he just sees blackness. He can't picture anything in his mind and thought that everyone else had it the same way. He thought it was just an expression to say "picture this" or etc... ”
There are currently 8652 comments on this post, many from individuals who were stunned to learn that the majority of people do have imagery. Other comments were from knowledgeable folks with aphantasia who described what the world is like for them, the differences in how they navigate through life, and how they compensate for what is thought of as "a lack" by the tyranny of the phantasiacs.
So I just discovered that not being able to visualize things in my head is real and it's called aphantasia. Thanks reddit for changing my life.— Cylie (@CJ_Kuehl) June 24, 2019
reddit just made me realise i might have aphantasia (inability to picture something in your mind) if i try visualise a red star i get to somewhere between 1 and 2 pic.twitter.com/Y9EYNXEnbG— daz (@Dt967) June 24, 2019
There's even a subreddit for people with aphantasia:
And for people on reddit, come check us out on https://t.co/WO6iGxct76.— ᛠᛞᚩᚱᛁᛗᚦᚱᛁᚦ ᛚᚪᛝᛖᚱᚾᚪᛗᚪ (@Eadorim) June 25, 2019
How did I find out about this? 3 It was because my 2016 post was suddenly popular again!
That piece was spurred by an eloquent essay on what's it's like to discover that all your friends aren't speaking metaphorically when they say, “I see a beach with waves and sand.” Research on this condition blossomed once more and more people realized they had it. Online communities developed and grew, including resources for researchers. This trajectory is akin to the formation of chat groups for individuals with synesthesia and developmental prosopagnosia (many years ago). Persons with these neuro-variants have always existed,4 but they were much harder to locate pre-internet. Studies of these neuro-unique individuals have been going on for a while, but widespread popular dissemination of their existence alerts others – “I am one, too.”
The Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) “is a proven psychometric measurement often used to identify whether someone is aphantasic or not, albeit not definitive.” But it's still a subjective measure that relies on self-report. Are there more “objective” methods for determining your visual imagery abilities? I'm glad you asked. An upcoming post will discuss a couple of cool new experiments.
Footnotes
1 This is a loaded term that I won’t explain – or debate – right now.
2 Some people don’t believe that qualia exist (as such), but I won’t elaborate on that, either.
3 I don’t hang out on Reddit, and my Twitter usage has declined.
4 Or at least, they've existed for quite some time.
Further Reading
Aphantasia Index
The Eye's Mind
Bonus Episode: What It's Like to Have no Mind's Eye, a recent entry of BPS Research Digest. There's an excellent collection of links, as well as a 30 minute podcast (download here).
Imagine These Experiments in Aphantasia (my 2016 post).
Involuntary Visual Imagery (if you're curious about what has been haunting me).
In fact, while I was writing this post, intrusive imagery of the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal in Delta BC (the ferry from Vancouver to Victoria Island) appeared in my head. I searched Google Images and can show you the approximate view.
I was actually standing a little further back, closer to where the cars are parked. But I couldn't quite capture that view. Here is the line of cars waiting to get on the ferry.
During this trip two years ago (with my late wife), this sign had caught my eye so I ran across the street for coffee...
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