I actually agree with you about the "is my red the same as your red" -- I do not believe that aphantasia is real but simply that people are talking past each other and getting hung up on semantics.

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. 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.

Some people on this thread claim that they can see imagined objects in their field of view. I cannot do this. I don't know if I believe that other people can. But a lot of people like you are saying "well, I can 'see' but I can't 'see-see'" -- I'm not interested in you, you are like me, I'm interested in people who say that they can "see". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49469365#49469495

▲

D-Machine 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> when I close my eyes I cannot see things. That is what seeing is. [...] The visualization is akin to seeing, but obviously I am not seeing them. [...] a lot of people like you are saying "well, I can 'see' but I can't 'see-see'

I most definitely am not accusing you of this, and your other comments I think make clear you have considered this, but I would be wary of collapsing a continuum to a binary here. Most of the time, visualizing is indeed only analogous to seeing, i.e. visualizing is "seeing, but not 'see-see'ing". However, with extreme focus, regular practice, and/or altered states, this distinction breaks down, and it is harder to make the separation so clear.

I suspect the more hyperphantasic you are, the more easily you can find examples in experience that blur the boundary between seeing vs. visualization, but with normal visualization capacity, these blurred cases are likely quite rare. But I don't think, fundamentally, except in true aphantasics, that there is always a 100% clear dividing line between seeing and visualization.

▲

andrewla an hour ago | parent [-]

I'm with you -- human experience is complicated, and language is a poor approximation to our inner lives.

But there are lots of people on this thread who are saying "well, of course you can't *see* the apple, it's just a helpful metaphor", but there are a lot of people (including yourself) who say that you can. I want to see if I can pick out that difference. I almost wish the survey instead said "No, of course I can't *see* it, nobody can" to really nail down that perspective.

	▲	D-Machine 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Cool, I was really worried I might be sounding dismissive. This has been an obsession of mine since long before it got popular, and I've been enjoying your comments particularly in this thread.