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Aphantasia
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In this episode, Megan and Frank investigate aphantasia, the inability to generate mental imagery. What can aphantasia tell us about the nature of the mind, in particular, "the hard problem" of consciousness? Should aphantasia be considered a disorder, or merely another variation in human experience? And is it possible to meaningfully talk about our inner experiences, or would that necessarily constitute a kind of private language? Thinkers discussed include: Adam Zeman, Merlin Monzel, Elizabeth Barnes, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Soren Kierkegaard.
Hosts' Websites:
Email: philosophyonthefringes@gmail.com
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Bibliography:
Some People Can’t See Mental Images. The Consequences Are Profound | The New Yorker
Zeman et al. 2015 - Lives without imagery - Congenital aphantasia - PubMed
Krempel & Monzel 2024 - Aphantasia and involuntary imagery
Monzel et al. 2023 -Aphantasia within the framework of neurodivergence
The Private Language Argument | Issue 58 | Philosophy Now
Disability: Definitions and Models (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability | Oxford Academic
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Cover Artwork by Logan Fritts
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Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
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License code: QHFDPNIRFW3UXOH3
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Milestone
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Philosophy on the Fringes, a podcast that explores the philosophical dimensions of the strange. We're your hosts, Megan Fritz and Frank Cabrera. On today's episode, we're talking about aphantasia.
00:00:15
Speaker
What can aphantasia tell us about consciousness? Should it be considered a disorder? And is it even possible to meaningfully talk about mental imagery?
00:00:39
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. We're really happy to be with you again. Finally, we've had this episode ready to go for like about three weeks now, right?
00:00:50
Speaker
Yeah, three weeks. And we would have gotten it out so much sooner. We wanted to, we tried to, but I was extremely sick for almost those entire three weeks. Nothing dire, just bad cold. Yeah, I don't want it to seem like I was like on my deathbed, but well, okay, I feel like that undersells a little bit. I said it wasn't diet. I'm on my fourth antibiotic right now. Yeah. um i was i was I was not able to to talk without... I saw an article about there being a newsworthy virus spreading around, so maybe you have that.
00:01:22
Speaker
i Yeah, had or a had. The fourth antibiotic is taking it out, I think. So so we're were we're back in the saddle, which is great because this is our 30th episode.
00:01:34
Speaker
Yes. Hooray. The big three zero. Yeah. Our show has left its 20s. I wish I were 30. So I think that we have a fun topic for you for our 30th
Understanding Aphantasia and Mental Imagery
00:01:44
Speaker
episode. And as a way to kind of launch right into that, I want to ask you a question, Frank. Yes. Yes.
00:01:51
Speaker
If i tell you to close your eyes and picture an apple, are you closing your eyes? Yes. Are you picturing an apple? Mm-hmm. What does the apple look like?
00:02:03
Speaker
It's big and bulky and it's green because we recently bought a green apple for our three-year-old to try. So that's what I'm imagi imagining. Imagine a green apple. it has a stem. you know It's really large. Big fat. Yeah, it shouldn it shouldn't be this large. It's probably genetically modified apple. but yeah i Any leaves?
00:02:25
Speaker
No, no, no, no, no leaves. Is it a bright green or kind of? Yeah, bright green, you know. Shiny, waxy? Any bites taken out? No, no bites. You know, it's shiny. That sounds really vivid. Yeah.
00:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose. What about you? can you can Can you imagine apple and tell what it's like? yeah, yeah. Mine's not a Granny Smith. Mine's not a Granny Smith. You're not closing your eyes. You're not closing your eyes. I don't need to. okay It's just the image is in there. i don't even need to close my eyes. Mine's one of those like marble apples, Gala or like Macintosh or whatever they are. Yeah. ah It's got two leaves, but I can add more leaves if I want to.
00:03:00
Speaker
Little speckles on it. It's very shiny. And I think a teeny tiny worm lives inside. Picked right off the tree. So the reason why we're doing this exercise because the topic for today is aphantasia, which is the inability to generate these kinds of mental images. so This is a phenomenon that's been discussed in the popular press and in some academic literature recently, and we thought it was a fitting topic for our podcast because, as we'll see soon, it is kind of weird.
00:03:30
Speaker
I would definitely say it's weird. It's a topic that I've been interested in for like over a year now. And every time I would bring it up to Frank to try to talk about it with him, he would get really mad and we'd get into a fight. I didn't get mad. I just found the topic a little frustrating because for various reasons, as we'll get into as we proceed on with the episode. But I wore him down. Yeah. Yeah.
00:03:49
Speaker
Yeah, I ended up really enjoying researching for this episode. So... So yeah, so we said that aphantasia is the inability to generate mental imagery. But mental imagery is itself a kind of technical jargony term from psychology and philosophy.
Vividness of Mental Imagery: A Spectrum
00:04:03
Speaker
But here's what researchers in like psychology, for instance, mean by mental imagery. They call it... A quasi perceptual experience in the absence of external stimuli. So when you see the apple, it's in front of you, it's vivid, you have a per perceptual experience. When you imagine it in this way, you have what they call quasi perceptual experience. kind of like seeing the apple, probably different for many people in various ways, most significantly in its vividness, perhaps. Mm hmm.
00:04:33
Speaker
But the important point is the apple's not there. the The external stimulus is not there. Nonetheless, you're still representing the apple in your imagination, and it still has this kind of phenomenal qualitative feel. You get the experience of what it's like to see an apple, kind of, when you imagine it.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, when people first started talking about this sort of online in in greater numbers, I think maybe like a year ago or a little bit more, there was this chart that was going around with ah an outline of ah of a head. Yeah. and a picture of an apple. and ah Well, there was there was actually five outlines of heads, on numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
00:05:09
Speaker
And in each of these heads was a picture of an apple, except in the last one, which is totally blank. Yeah. um In the first outline of a head, there's a very vivid, like very realistic picture of an apple, like a photograph.
00:05:21
Speaker
In the second one, it's kind of more like a cartoon apple. In the third one, it's a black and white sketched apple. In the fourth one, it's just a line outline of an apple. And then in the fifth, it's it's empty. And that's supposed to represent the different levels of ability to conjure up mental images. Yeah, and the reason why this was kind of weird for a lot of people is that many people were surprised that some individuals said they were the the fifth head, the complete absence yeah of mental energy. even fourth. Even fourth, yeah. They're saying you can't just you can't just imagine something with with color, right? What's the problem? But in addition, those that could not imagine the apple or could only imagine very faint colors, outline an apple. They were also super surprised and shocked that there were those that selected number one, the really vivid, realistic image of the apple. like What are you talking about? You can't, you're not your not, you have your eyes closed. You can't see an apple.
Hyperphantasia Vs. Aphantasia
00:06:15
Speaker
That's bonkers. Yeah, because I remember when I first brought this up to you. Yeah. I think you didn't know how to answer the question. Yeah. And that was that was the start of our first fight about this. But you didn't know how to answer the question. and And it makes sense to me now because you were, when I was saying, like, what does it look like? And I guess it makes sense that, you know, your eyes aren't playing any role in this. So what do you mean by look? Yeah. It is obviously different from seeing something with your eyes. Otherwise, it would just be like a hallucination. Yeah.
00:06:46
Speaker
And that's what I said in our conversation. I was like, so you're telling me, Megan, that you're just hallucinating all day. Like we need to take you to the doctor. ah Anyway, though, ah so there's so there's some statistics now, given that the phenomenon has been studied in the last decade or so by academics. So something like point eight percent ah of the population have total aphantasia. That is a total inability to generate mental imagery. And 3.9%, something like that, have significantly reduced ability to generate images. So maybe they're they're four, right? they They just have the outline of the apple or something like that. So this is normally operationalized by the use of a questionnaire called the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire. It's a 16-item quiz, and it includes questions like this. Imagine a relative or friend you often see. Can you imagine the exact contours of face, head, shoulders, and body? And then the the choices are something like this. No image at all, you only know that you're thinking of an object, and that's the five. Vague and dim, that's four. Moderate, clear, and vivid, that's three. Clear and reasonably vivid, that's two. And perfectly clear and vivid as normal vision, that's one. And all the questions are kind of like that, and all the answers are are the same. Is it no image, vague, and dim, moderate, clear, and vivid, et cetera? So those that have aphantasia, total aphantasia, they score a 16. They're ones that select no image at all for all the questions. In research on aphantasia, usually something like 23 is used as a cutoff. So you you select mostly no image or just a vague and dim image. By contrast, those that select number five,
00:08:25
Speaker
A lot. Perfectly clear as normal a vision. Yeah. If you select that from the majority of the questions, then you have what's called hyperphantasia, which is the opposite of aphantasia, where you have this sort of extreme ability to generate mental imagery. That is also kind of a minority position or not minority sort of. How many people, what percentage of people I think it was something, I forget the the number, but it is something comparable to those that have total or significantly reduced aphantasia. Doing research for this episode was how I learned that I have hyperphantasia, actually. it makes a lot of sense given, you know, your emotional responses books that you read. like You just told me earlier today that you can't read the book to Theo about the the polar bear and the wolf because it's too sad. Yeah, well, I think, I mean, I think what it explained for me and and one of the things that I was reading in preparation for this episode talked about people with hyperphantasia and how it is like really damaging to like read the news because you you can't help but basically literally see all the events happen in your in your mind. ah You know, viscera and all. And that, I mean, that's totally me. And it's, and yeah, so I found out that there's a name for this. One article that we read, both of us, that we drew from, which we highly recommend, we'll link to this in the bibliography, um is called Some People Can't See Mental Images. The Consequences Are Profound. Is this in The New Yorker? i think that was something like that, right? Yeah, and they they quoted one researcher on this stuff who claimed that most children...
00:10:02
Speaker
are hyperphantasiac, that have hyperphantasia. And they they sort of lose it as they grow up. Most of them, at least. At least, I guess some of them
Personal Experiences and Implications of Aphantasia
00:10:10
Speaker
don't. And this makes a lot of sense if you if you are around children a lot because they're super-duper imaginative. Everything's extreme and vivid and emotional. And all and the lines between the imaginary and the real are blurred. Yeah, for that's right.
00:10:22
Speaker
um Now, I think that we should clarify from the outset because something significant about the phrasing of the question on this questionnaire is for the aphantasiac, the form of their answer that they would select is, oh, I have no image at all. I only know that I'm thinking of the object. Because one might be tempted to think, well, there's no mental imagery, so they're not they can't think about an apple. Yeah. But in fact, they can think about an apple and they can even describe an apple. Mm-hmm.
00:10:49
Speaker
It's just that this somehow all happens in the absence of mental imagery. Yeah. One useful distinction that we drew with respect to memory, which is related to this topic as well, because the aphantasics, they also cannot, they also don't have good episodic memories. They can't imagine and remember in this deep, vivid way, like what they did. They took a vacation. They can't remember the white sand. Like, You and I can both remember, even if your your your imagination is better than mine, ah you can we can both remember how white the sand is and in Pensacola, Florida, yeah that beach by the by the ah hotel, right? Great sand.
00:11:25
Speaker
ah So they can't do that. They can't like put themselves back in time and sort of picture and imagine what things look like. and so ah But they do have knowledge. They have semantic memories. They know that the sand was white. They know that they were there. They just can't put themselves in in the past or they can't imagine it.
00:11:44
Speaker
So we should say a bit now, like, why are we talking about this? Because in this podcast, we talk about ghosts and near-death experiences and alternative energy healing. Why are we talking about this? This doesn't seem as on brand for us. It's not as weird as some of the other things we talked about. The X-Files wouldn't investigate this. Yeah, probably not. So I don't know. You want to say something about this, Megan? Why are we talking about this? Why this so weird?
00:12:08
Speaker
um Well, I think part of so the thing that initially got everyone talking about it, which I think is ah cool thing to be interested in is the fact that there's these two groups of people who are having extremely different phenomenal experiences of life.
Philosophical and Academic Perspectives on Aphantasia
00:12:24
Speaker
Right. Like my thought life is just so deeply different from the thought life of someone with aphantasia. And yet neither one of us are aware aware of this until, you know, we read an article in The New Yorker or someone sends around a goofy chart with apples and, you know, pictures of cartoon heads and we pick different answers. and And if this hadn't been brought up, we just would have gone about our lives assuming that we were having roughly similar experiences with thinking and recall and mental imagery. um But that wasn't what was happening.
00:12:58
Speaker
But then when you stop and think about it, it does seem like it explains a lot of differences between people. So some people struggle with maintaining a a sense of self through their life, right? Like some people feel really disconnected to who they were as a kid Almost like they, you know, how could they possibly be that same person? um Whereas for others, it that that doesn't even make sense. Of course it's them. You look at a photo, you're like, that was me. I did that. Right, right, right, right. Differences in memory. The right the New Yorker article talks a lot about the connections between ah Fantasia and memory.
00:13:35
Speaker
Although I think that is something and that we'll talk more about later because that connection is imperfect and it can come apart in some interesting ways also. connections to art and music. I'm thinking especially, ah you know, because we talked about this, you know, but I mean, especially of how somebody responds to fiction. I remember if my mom is ever listening to this. Hi, mom. Her and I were having a conversation was because I really enjoy reading fiction and she doesn't. And one of the things that she told me makes the experience not very enjoyable for her is that a lot of authors engage in in extensive world building. Right. They want to describe the room or the land or the time or whatever.
00:14:11
Speaker
Which makes sense for for most of us who are able to have this kind of mental imagery where the more someone tells us about the environment, the more we're able to picture it and put ourselves into it. But if you're not able to do that, it would become tedious, I think.
00:14:26
Speaker
um So that kind of helped me understand what might be the root of, you know, differences between how much someone's able to enjoy fiction or or the like. So those are i those those are two reasons that I think it's it's an interesting problem. And it also connects up to some big questions in philosophy. Yeah, one thing that seems to connect to is in philosophy of mind. This has been noted by so researchers themselves on this topic, psychologists. They think it can study the study of a aphantasia can perhaps help us get insight into the nature of consciousness, and particularly ah what does the philosophers refer to as the hard problem of consciousness.
00:15:03
Speaker
The hard problem consciousness is often regarded as the most puzzling aspect of consciousness. Maybe the most puzzling philosophical problem ever. Yeah, because consciousness is really weird once you start to think about it because there is something special about seeing red as a human being for most people, I guess. You see red and you have this kind of vivid internal picture of the red. You don't just process the information. just processing information like a motion sensor or a machine would where processes the wavelengths or something like that. No, there's something that it's like to see red. It's an experience. And that something that it's like is different than the something that it's like to see blue. We're not just processing information. There's something else going on there. There's something that it's like to be in pain. And we all know what that is. And so this kind of like mysterious something that it's likeness is often referred to as the qualitative or phenomenal aspect of consciousness. And the central question that the hard problem of consciousness raises is, why do we have this? It seems extra. seems dispensable. Why couldn't we be what are called philosophical zombies? It seems evolutionarily dispensable. Yeah. What's the point of it, right? What's the point of this kind of inner theater that's going on in your head? Why can't you just process information, respond to stimuli like a robot where the lights are completely off? Yeah. Or like insects or something. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Right. Like insects respond to aversive stimuli, really rudimentary insects. Yeah. But we don't think they have like a thought life. Yeah. The assumption is there's nothing that it's like to be an insect. Right. I think some entomologists might disagree. But, you know, an amoeba. Yeah. Something something really, really simple. They respond to aversive stimuli. They move around. There's something poisonous or bad near them. But there's nothing going on upstairs. hmm. So why couldn't human beings be like that? Why couldn't they be like the amiibo where they just respond to stimuli and the lights are off upstairs? Why couldn't they be philosophical zombies? That's the term. What survival benefit does it confer? So the aphantasia thing seems connected to this hard problem because to some limited degree, the aphantasics, they're lacking the inner mental life when it comes to imagination. Of course, they can see an apple that's in front of them and they'll get that kind of vivid experience. But they can't imagine it and get that kind of semi-vivid experience. So they're kind of, don't know, like philosophical zombies with respect to every restricted domain. We're going to some hate mail. We're not saying people with Aphantasia are philosophical zombies. But there's... There's nothing wrong with that. Not that there's anything wrong with that. There's anything wrong with being a philosophical zombie. But... But, right, there's one aspect of phenomenal qualitative experience that we tend to think of as preceding behavior that in the aphantasiac does not. Yes, that's right. So if we study aphantasia more, maybe we can understand how this qualitative aspect of consciousness is generated or whatever. What's its point?
00:18:09
Speaker
So even though aphantasia has been popular recently, like in the last couple years, as a topic to talk about, it's not like we just discovered it recently, right? It has been recognized for at least a century, I think, right? It was pointed out by some early psychologists, some 19th century scientists like Francis Galton and William James.
00:18:32
Speaker
But it was kind of ignored after that. And this is largely due to the influence of behavioristic psychology, behaviorism. That was a prominent movement in 20th century psychology. The psychologists wanted, they didn't really want to study the mind because the mind is not observable, right? I can't observe your mental states. All I can observe is your behavior. So they kind of sidelined the study of mental states. It seemed too difficult. And in some cases, folks like B.F. Skinner thought that mental states didn't really do anything. he maybe they Maybe they exist, but they're epiphenomenal. They don't play any role in explaining human action. Mm-hmm. Which sounds kind of... They might arise from action. Yeah, they arise from action. are the result of of action. They may precede action, but they don't actually cause anything. So he said, what's the point of talking about mental states like pain, the pain state, and desire and belief if they're not really doing anything? and Psychology for the behaviorist was the study of human behavior.
00:19:27
Speaker
So very few people are behaviorist these days. I think we're more okay with you know making these kinds of fallible inferences about people's mental states. so We love to talk about our feelings. Yeah, we love our feelings. Maybe we've erred too much in the other direction. right Maybe we need like a new behaviorist renaissance to make the pendulum swing back ah to a reasonable place. but But yeah, so now psychologists are more okay with studying this this kind of thing because they're no longer behaviorist. But aphantasia has really only been rigorously studied since like the 2010s. It was pioneered by a British neurologist named Adam Zeman, who had a patient who lost the ability to imagine things after heart surgery. And this patient was like, what happened here?
00:20:09
Speaker
I mean, this is actually really significant because some people's aphantasia is congenital. They were born with it. And it's news to them when they learn they have it. Yeah. And some in some cases it is induced via some kind of medical event or in some cases even psychological trauma. And for people who lose the ability to have mental imagery after formerly having it, it's really traumatic. Oh, yeah, definitely. um It often results in extensive depression and anxiety, ah loss of a sense of identity, loss of a sense of meaning, inability to enjoy things because they'd enjoyed them in a much more rich ah way before. And yeah, so I mean, it sounds terrible.
00:20:47
Speaker
Yeah, if you read the New Yorker article that that we'll link to, there is a wide variety of opinions about whether this is good or bad among aphantasics. Or neutral. Yeah, some of them are okay with it. Some of them wish they could experience imagery when they imagine things. Certainly yeah certainly those that lose it, they know what they've lost, so it's very significant. for And there are no cases, if I'm correct, of people going from no imagery to imagery.
00:21:14
Speaker
Not without the use of drugs. So as the article mentioned, in some cases, if you take psychedelics, you can get images, even if you're an aphantasic. That's right. That's right. And I think um ah something I was reading, I think from Vox on this, people are trying to...
00:21:30
Speaker
create a ah therapy using microdose psychedelics to help people with aphantasia get mental imagery back. This then gives rise to the controversy of is it in an illness or a problem that should be treated or just a difference that should kind of be left alone. Which we'll also talk about soon. yeah yeah As we'll see, you know, and as you might be thinking, there could be some benefits to not having an overactive imagination. Right. Yes. So maybe going from one to the other is bad.
00:21:56
Speaker
Yeah. ah Anyway, Adam Zeman coined the term aphantasia in an off-cited 2015 paper where he takes the word for imagination from Aristotle and and Aristotle's de anima fantasia and just sticks ah an A in front of it. And from what we read about him, I mean, he seems great. He seems like he really took like a lot of concern in this patient of his and really, really advocated for him and and kind of worked tirelessly to figure out what was going on. He launched the research program basically to try to help this patient. yeah mean This wasn't what he specialized in. and he's trying to figure out this problem. And then he launches a new research program, which is pretty cool. Yeah, goodbye, Adam.
00:22:34
Speaker
So one interesting thing about Zeman et al.' 's definition of aphantasia is they include a volitional component. That is, they define aphantasia as a condition of reduced or absent voluntary imagery. So they said this because, interestingly, a lot of their subjects in this 2015 article, they still had imagery in their dreams. so They had involuntary imagery. They had vivid
Beyond Visual: Aphantasia in Other Senses
00:22:59
Speaker
dreams. But when you ask them, can you imagine the apple or... you know, which color green is darker evergreen or the green of grass. They couldn't really, know, they couldn't imagine it. But they had vivid dreams. And that was that was surprising to learn.
00:23:12
Speaker
And this this result was repeated in a 2020 study where 63% of the Fantasic study had visual dreams. So for a lot of people in this literature, and for a for ah a while, aphantasia was and was discussed as a voluntary phenomenon. Can you voluntarily generate images?
00:23:31
Speaker
ah But in some recent literature, there's been kind of a shift in the direction of the study of aphantasia. and In some more recent literature, it's been pointed out that a lot of those that can't generate images voluntarily also also struggle when it comes to involuntary images too. Images from reading books, for instance.
00:23:49
Speaker
So when you read a book, most of the time you're not trying to voluntarily generate images. Although, you know, you might take a step back sometimes and try to do that. I've been trying to do that a little bit more with the book I've been reading, try to you know voluntarily imagine the thing. A lot of times when you're reading, it's it's whether you get the image or not, it's involuntary. yeah I think it depends on the extent of maybe like or like just how how difficult it is for me, how different the world is that you're trying to imagine. Like, yeah, i've I've read books where I had to really try to picture it. But then if if you're just reading some random sentence like, you know, she pressed her hands into the pockets of her red dress, you just that just pops into your head. Yeah. So the aphantasics will also struggle with that sort of thing, too, with the involuntary images. They're less likely to have intrusive flashbacks, even when it comes to after images. know, when you look at like a bright light and you still see the the after image individual field afterwards. Yeah. Even that they exhibit to a less real yeah a lesser degree than those that that don't have aphantasia. No way. Yeah. um So in light of these other studies where it seems like this is also they also struggle with involuntary imaging, despite the dreaming thing. Two researchers, Raquel Kremple and Merlin Monzel, who is one of the most prominent researchers on this topic, they say all of this suggests that characterizing aphantasia as a deficit in voluntary images and claiming that involuntary images are preserved in aphantasia, as many do, is inappropriate. right So the the most recent literature is defining this as just ah an absence of mental imagery, not necessarily voluntary mental imagery. And Monzel himself has aphantasia. Yeah, he claims to have total aphantasia. that's yeah That's what he said in an interview that I um i watched with him.
00:25:31
Speaker
Fascinating. So with aphantasia, obviously the term refers to just imagery. Yeah. um That's in the, you know, the fantasia is, you know, it's in the, it's in the definition. i It's in the etymology of the word. But people with aphantasia tend to also lack imagery or lack the ability to imagine or experience inside your head other kinds of senses. Yeah. Yeah, in particular, like the ability to, I don't know, play like a song in your head, right? Imagine a song, like think about a song and in some sense, like hear it in your head. Remember a smell, I think, too, is one of them. Yeah. now And not just remember, sort of like imagine the smell. Experience the smell. In some sense, experience the smell. Yeah, they also struggle with that too, right? That 10 out of 21 participants in the 2015 study by Zeman et al. reported absent or lacking imagery in all sensory modalities. So I think this is important too because although most of the focus is on the visual stuff, and that's that's the focus with that meme that was circulating on Twitter, right? Can you imagine the apple? You know, the the other sensory modalities matter too, right? Can you imagine the smell? Can you imagine the song or or whatever, right?
00:26:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's more like a general, like, ascensorial. I think Monzel wants to say that we should be clear about what kind of aphantasia we're talking about. Visual aphantasia, auditory aphantasia. We should just be very specific here. Yeah, I think for myself, i have a very strong version of the but ability to think about a song in your head. So you have hyper. I think hyper i think I have hyper auditory aphantasia. auditory hyper fantasia hyper fantasia yeah hyper fantasia yeah you can imagine you can just like play you can just like jam out yeah yeah yeah me thinking about a song especially a song I've heard many many times since I was a teenager that's almost as good as listening to the song yeah Yeah. Well, actually, when I was listening to something on a Fantasia and Hyper Fantasia, something that a woman with Hyper Fantasia said was that she it's really hard for her to hear a song without seeing in your head a music video to it. Not necessarily the music video, cause maybe. But like just seeing a music video performed. And Frank, I'm not kidding you. That is me. That's so fun. Yeah, like I literally if I'm on a run and I'm listening to music 100% of the time, there's music video playing in my mind's eye. I'm wearing an MTV shirt right now. It's very appropriate. I always thought that that was just like goofy, but I guess it's it's a symptom of hyperphantasia.
00:28:04
Speaker
So I thought that was really interesting, too. I wonder if there's like crossover, because in that case, it's a sound causing ah an internal visual image. Yeah. um So that's like a cross sensory kind of thing. As we've seen, this this phenomenon is a lot more complex than it seems initially. it's yeah if It goes beyond just can you imagine the apple? right there's There's various sensory modalities. There's voluntary and involuntary imagery that you can study. And then there's this sort of mixed thing that you're talking about, which is seems pretty novel too.
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah, like a synesthetic kind of version of it. So some people aren't on board with this idea of aphantasia as a concept.
Skepticism and Evidence in Aphantasia Research
00:28:43
Speaker
I think maybe a past version of myself, in my ignorance, you know, was one of these people. I've i've since changed my mind. But there is there still is a sizable amount of skeptics out there. they they They're not really sure that we're describing the phenomenon correctly. They're not really sure that there really are people who can and cannot imagine things. So one form of skepticism that has been expressed is that those that think they're not imagining things or that can't do it, they just don't realize that they are imagining things. There there can be kinds of unconscious mental imagery. And this sounds kind of silly, and but they it it can be used to explain certain phenomenon. It doesn't sound silly to me because that's exactly what happened to you.
00:29:25
Speaker
Like when I first brought this up to you, you're like, I don't, what are you talking about? I think my skepticism was a a little bit different. No, but what I'm saying is you you actually had this metacognitive problem. I suppose i suppose so. Maybe. maybe right I'm saying you were you had this. no i my My qualms were more just like with the description. i just didn't want to say that I see it. So maybe that's their issue. Yeah, maybe. So yeah, the idea is they have unconscious mental imagery. They're imagining things they don't realize, it something like that. And that could be used to explain how the A-phantasias get around in the world, because it seems like they they still do a lot of tasks that require mental imagery to imagine things. like They still have to navigate the world. They still to think about how to get to the grocery store and all of that sort of thing. They do these things. They're not hopelessly confused about navigating the world. So maybe they do have mental imagery. It's just unconscious. Yeah, and I mean, I think that the seeing things in dreams might lend some kind of credence to that. Right, right, right. The fact that many of them can still have imagery in dreams. Yeah, maybe in your waking life, there's just some kind of mental barrier keeping you from realizing this is actually happening all the time in the background. Yeah. And another form of skepticism is is similar to this, but I think a little bit different. um made The idea is maybe they have mental imagery and people are just talking past each other. like this the The self-professed aphantasics and the self-professed imagers, that's the term they use in the literature, the imagers, those that can generate images or involuntarily have it.
00:30:52
Speaker
and They're just talking past each other. I feel like that was more my form of skepticism. I just sort of like, I didn't want to use the word see for whatever we do when we imagine things, even though I do have that kind of imagery. So that's like another kind of skepticism. And then a third way one might be skeptical, which has a long history in analytic philosophy, is you might think that the very thing we are trying to talk about, that is these private and mental images, aren't actually something that we can meaningfully talk about at all.
00:31:24
Speaker
Yeah, the article that we've, the New York article that we've mentioned already, quotes one of these behaviorists who had this kind of view, J.B. Watson, I guess one of the founders of behaviorism. He said, quote, what does a person mean when he closes his eyes or ears, figuratively speaking, and says, quote, I see the house where I was born, the trundle bed in my mother's room where I used to sleep. I can even see my mother as she comes to tuck me in. i can even hear her voice as she softly says goodnight.
00:31:50
Speaker
Touching, of course. But sheer bunk. we are We are merely dramatizing. The behaviorist finds no proof of imagery at all in this. So, yeah, I think a behaviorist like Watson would say this is meaningless because there are no such things or we have no evidence of of such things. our Our introspection, I guess, isn't evidence enough. but Yeah, the the the evidence we see equally confirms the theory that there is or isn't mental imagery. Yeah, because all we have to go on is external behavior. Sure.
00:32:19
Speaker
So that's the line of behaviorist might take. ah The 20th century... Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who is often misinterpreted as a behaviorist, but actually wasn't, raises kind of a similar worry, but it has to do with our ability to actually meaningfully speak about the phenomenon. So he has a It's not really just one argument, but he has a kind of cluster of different arguments that have been gathered together under the phrase private language argument, where Wittgenstein makes an argument that a language that is essentially or intrinsically something only one person can understand and use is conceptually impossible.
00:33:07
Speaker
And I'm going to try to walk through this argument yeah in a coherent way. um So here's what he argues. First, he says meaningful language depends on rules. Makes sense. Grammar, right.
00:33:18
Speaker
Right, right. But it depends on rules because meaning has to be public or at least has to be possibly public in order to be held to standards of correctness. Right. I can't be said to be saying something meaningful if there are no standards for a correct use at all, such that nobody else could have access to what I'm saying or not saying. That just seems to be the nature of rules, right? A rule, you can you know, there's ways you can follow it and ways you cannot follow it. Like there's rules to chess. there There is something that it is to play chess. You could be breaking the rules or not breaking the rules. Right. um So rules for Wittgenstein are these public criteria of correctness.
00:33:58
Speaker
The problem, though, is with this question of aphantasia, what we're talking about, which are inner mental states, those are completely private.
00:34:08
Speaker
Nobody can have access to my inner mental states or mental images besides me. that Because, you know, you can't step inside my brain and look at them. I could describe them to you, but that's not the same thing.
00:34:22
Speaker
um Because I could be lying. Right. Or or or whatever. I could be describing the experience that an aphantasiac has, but just for some reason describing it as mental image. Or I guess like the words you use just might not, you know, you think they mean something to you and they don't mean they mean something completely different to me. Sure. Right. core i Something like that. Yeah, so inverted spectrum worries, yeah right? So my inner mental states are necessarily private.
00:34:48
Speaker
um We don't have a hive mind. We have individual minds and they are cut off at the phenomenological level from one another. So because of that, we can't ever know whether our descriptions of our inner mental states or mental images are in accordance with one another's standards of correct language use.
00:35:11
Speaker
If I say, here's what it's like for me to imagine an apple, my idea of what it's like, like how I'm using the terms to describe what it's like might not be how you would use those terms to describe a similar phenomena that you were experiencing. Yeah.
00:35:26
Speaker
So because of this, because there's no way for us to check to see if you and I are using these terms for our inner mental states in the same way, because of that, for Wittgenstein, our descriptions of these inner states aren't meaningful.
00:35:41
Speaker
They are a private language, which is to say they're no language at all. So suffice it to say for Wittgenstein, trying to talk about something that nobody else can access isn't going to work. It has to at least in principle be something that the public can access in order to determine if we're talking about the same thing. Yeah. So I think maybe if I'm not sure this was quite my worry when I initially expressed the skepticism, i wanted to say, that yeah, we're all the same. yeah i think, you know, what I probably had in mind was some kind of like principle of the uniformity of human nature. Like, look, we're all the same species. We shouldn't expect these like completely different ways of experiencing the world. That's crazy. just an assumption of normality. We're all the same. I think I did have Wittgensteinian worries. i mean, I'm, as you know, and probably some of our listeners at this point, I'm very sympathetic to Wittgenstein in most ways. So I think I also had some worries.
00:36:37
Speaker
i am more I am more nowadays. I remember way back in the day when we when we were dating, you once said something like, most things people say are meaningless. i was like, Megan, come on. That's a little bit it's a little bit extreme. You know I'm right. But I think...
00:36:50
Speaker
I think increasingly I see what you had in mind so many years ago when I hear the kinds of things people say, you know. And I mean yeah, people say meaningless things a lot, you know. So many victories. Like nonsensical, like literally nonsensical things. yeah we think We think we're saying something sensical, but it's actually literally nonsense. Yeah. I think that happens a lot more than we think. So I think you're right. There you go Past Megans are winning so many things today. This is great. yeah But luckily for Wittgensteinians out there, there are actually empirical tests that people have now engineered yeah and observed empirical distinctions between the physiological responses to imaginary stimuli between aphantasiacs and phantasics. Yeah, so so the situation here is pretty similar and reminds me a lot of our discussion of hypnosis, where hypnosis initially seems like this kind of dubious phenomenon, right? How do we know they're not just acting, whatever, whatever. And it turns out there are physiological markers of hypnosis, depression.
00:37:49
Speaker
diminished pain and those hypnotic analgesic experiments, whatever, right? And so too with the placebo effect. Initially, just seems like, oh, maybe it's just an illusion, but there are physiological markers. And so too with aphantasia. So for instance, some of these are pretty interesting. So if you ask someone to imagine a bright light, the imagers, the people that have the ability to generate imagery, you ask them to imagine a bright light, their pupils will contract, but not so for the aphantasics.
00:38:16
Speaker
But yes, for perception. right when When the aphantasics see a bright light, their pupils contract. So it's not just a problem with their pupils. No, no. they could they can Their pupils contract when they see light. It doesn't contract when they imagine it.
00:38:27
Speaker
But it does for the imagers. That's significant. That was crazy for me to learn. like presumably i mean, I guess I didn't try this on myself, but presumably my pupils would dilate if I imagined it. I would have never thought that. Yeah, it's probably not as significant as the case of actually seeing light, but it happens. um So too, the when you read a scary passage, right? When you read a scary passage, you you exhibit subtle physiological markers. Your sweat increases, various electrical impulses in your skin are exhibited. That happens for both the aphantasics and the imagers when they see a picture. but only for the imagers when they read the passage, not so for the aphantasics when they read the scary passage.
00:39:07
Speaker
When they read the scary passage, they don't get those physiological markers, but they do when they see, say, a scary image. So again, right, it seems like the lack of the ability to generate imagery voluntarily or involuntarily is exhibited in objective sorts of ways. They don't exhibit the same physiological markers as the imagers.
00:39:26
Speaker
um There's another another one that was really interesting. So this is called binocular rivalry priming. So so when you when you see one image in your left eye and a different image in your right eye, I suppose you're looking at like I don't know, like those those things you look at at the at the eye doctor, right? You see let one on your left and one on your right and they're different. Imagine the one on the left is red and the one on the right is blue. What what will happen is your visual field will kind of meld the two together. It'll be a mix. And and in some cases, one color will dominate the other. So that's the phenomenon of binocular rivalry. But here's where it gets interesting, right? If you ah if you ask an imager, someone who has the ability to generate images, To imagine red before you do this kind of binocular rivalry experiment, imagine red. So you prime them first. you prime them for red. right Imagine red. Then you show them the one image of red and the one image of blue and the one eye and and the other. Then the red will dominate the blue. yeah But not so for the A. Fantasics. They don't get this kind of binocular rivalry priming effect. Fascinating. So, yeah, like lots of other things, even brain imagery, like various parts of the brain light up when you imagine things. It doesn't doesn't do that for the aphantasics. So there are these objective tests.
00:40:42
Speaker
I had this. This is something that I don't know Maybe I'm totally off base here. But when when I was thinking about these tests and then like the the objections of the behaviorists,
00:40:53
Speaker
I wondered if like this is obviously it wouldn't be knockdown proof against the theses of the behaviorists. But I do wonder if it's like some evidence against it. So, I mean, you know, behaviorism is a very general philosophical view. And with those kinds of general philosophical views, you can always reinterpret the data in accordance with. OK, like what about like a hardliner like Watson? Yeah, I'm sure he could reinterpret this data in behavioristic fashion. Yeah, could. But I think these tests make that kind of an unreasonable thing to You'd have to be doing some acrobatics. Yeah, it makes it kind of an unreasonable thing to do. It makes a reasonable, even the most skeptical person of imagery should think this is like a reasonable theoretical posit, at the very least, to explain all these objective tests. What's the explanation? Well, what we call the aphantasics don't have mental imagery, and those that we call the imagers do. That's the best explanation of these tests. Yeah, it's not knockdown proof. You could still be a behaviorist if you want, but you have to assume a lot of stuff. Yeah.
00:41:57
Speaker
Kind of like the you know the egoism versus altruism debate. Of course, the egoist can always reinterpret acts of extreme self-sacrifice as self-interested. Yeah. But- You know, that kind of sounds a little bit unreasonable at some point. But the fact that we can do these tests seems to fit better in the worldview that is not the behaviorist or not the. Yeah. you know As someone who was on the fence, I agree. Right. Yeah, definitely.
Aphantasia: Disorder or Variation?
00:42:21
Speaker
Okay, so one of the things that we brought up briefly at the beginning of the episode was this question of whether aphantasia should be thought of as a disorder or disability or rather just a neurological difference, right? Similar to how we think of neurodivergence with people with certain traits, whereas maybe we used to think of them as having like a kind of disability or disorder, but now we just see it as a one of a diverse range of different ways that people can... you know, experience their neurology. Variation on human experience. Yeah. like synesthesia, right? The ability... What is that again? You see... That's where you like smell numbers. Smell numbers. private it Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
00:43:01
Speaker
So should it be considered a disorder or disability? And we read a lot of stuff on this that... And I don't know. Like, I think that it's... It's really hard to say, like, there's really compelling cases to be made for both sides. Obviously, one big factor in this question of whether, you know, is is it a disorder? i Really, the question comes down to, like, is it bad or is it neutral?
00:43:25
Speaker
All things considered. um But that question itself is interesting, right? Because it seems like we're talking about a medical category. And now we're saying the it falls under this medical category, this seemingly scientific category, if it's bad. well Which it sounds like, yeah, it's like a value, right? who Who's to say whether it's bad or not? What makes it bad? Well, so there's two...
00:43:47
Speaker
Prominent models of disability yeah ah in the philosophical literature. There's the medical model, which you just mentioned, and then the social model. Right. So the medical model basically says that disability is a disadvantage in terms of like a state that your body or mind is in that's pathological. That's that's not how it should be. Yeah. Objectively.
00:44:08
Speaker
And then we have the social model of disability that says that a disability is what makes something some condition a disability has to do with the relation that holds between that condition and an individual and her social environment. So between the individual with the condition and her social environment. So a lot of people talk about this with the deaf community. Yeah. um So people who can't hear people who are deaf.
00:44:35
Speaker
the The argument is that if people Basically, the world were set up for people with deafness. There would be no male effects experienced by deaf people, by people with deafness. And so because of that, it is a disability, but it's a disability that arises from the relationship between the deaf individual and her social environment, namely one that's set up for people with hearing. Yeah. Right. Right.
00:44:59
Speaker
But I think, I mean, so so you might think that having aphantasia is bad, but you might think that in the medical sense, or you might think that in the social sense. You might think that it's bad because of some relationship that holds between people with aphantasia and the environment, which is maybe our social environment is set up for imagers, say, rather than people with aphantasia.
00:45:21
Speaker
Or you might think it's bad medically. It's just an objective but ah way that the body shouldn't be. Mm-hmm. I don't know. Do you see a lot of big facets of society that are built around people being able to have mental imagery or not? Well, there there was some research I read on this by that Merlin Monzel guy. ok i not sure It just seems like if that were true, people with A-Fantasia would realize they had it before they see this chart generating on Twitter or something. Yeah, so I think, so in in in his view and hitting the view of his co-authors as well, that it's not, it shouldn't be regarded as as a disorder.
00:45:54
Speaker
And one one reason why that is, is that they don't really significantly suffer in their life prospects very much compared to imagers. And in fact, the the biggest potential issue is just the kind of stigma.
00:46:07
Speaker
Right. But anyway, I guess like that that would be interesting to talk about that. Like what are the advantages and and potential disadvantages of having aphantasia? So in in the study that I read, it it was shown that there was no performance differences in school, for instance. Very few differences in the ability to remember things in like the semantic sense, like they're working and short term memory were just fine pretty much.
00:46:32
Speaker
So none none of that sort of stuff. There were some kinds of disadvantages that they did mention, though. um Just the very fact that they can't really remember their lives as much. That that was very troubling to a lot of people, at least in the um the New Yorker article we read. They they most...
00:46:48
Speaker
I think even by definition, I guess, the aphantasics suffer from what's called severely deficient autobiographical memory. It's the inability to remember in this in the episodic sense your life. That that was troubling to at least some people we read in that article.
00:47:02
Speaker
Yeah. You know, also lower emotional reactivity to certain events. they Maybe they don't miss their friends as much. You can imagine situations where, you know, someone might get mad at a phantasy for not missing something or not remembering an experience as well or not missing someone. yeah It's kind of out of sight, out of mind kind of thing.
00:47:22
Speaker
So, yeah, like those were some things, but the the researchers in this article I read, they they don't think it rises to the level of a disorder, even though, notably, a third of those that they surveyed, aphantasics, felt personal distress by it. Interesting. so I'm trying to think about this from the social, the the lens of like the social model of disability. And one of the the biggest names in this literature is Elizabeth Barnes, who has a fantastic book on this idea called the minority body. And in this book,
00:47:55
Speaker
book the so the idea is that having a bill having a disability it is a difference like a statistical difference but it by itself doesn't make you worse off right it has to it has to do with how whether or not that disadvantages you in your particular social environment but i wonder if like the social environment could be something as minor seeming as like oh there's like this kind of social expectation to be able to remember your childhood Yeah. so It's considered normal. I think something like that. Yeah, sure. Right. Like there there is. um
00:48:25
Speaker
And like you're expected to miss your friends. Right. You're expected to grieve about you know the deaths of your loved ones. And one person in the article, I think I remember, they they were kind of distressed by the fact they weren't as like sad about the passing of their mother because after the funeral, like, you know they can't really remember their mother in this deep sort of way. Right. Very well. So they weren't they weren't grieving as much as their siblings. Yeah. So, yeah, there is kind of these kinds of expectations. And, yeah, that could potentially you know make life difficult. yeah But the the research, at least in this article, they didn't they didn't think it was that serious and it shouldn't be called disorder, just a variation in human but experience. But the most compelling cases to me are the the cases where people lose the ability to image. Well, because that could lead to significant distress. And that's really the case with all these kinds of psychological disorders. Or would-be disorders. It it becomes a disorder when it when it goes to such an extent that it significantly impacts your life. right Like anxiety and depression are normal and non-pathological to some degree. right yeah and We all feel anxiety and depression sometimes. It becomes a disorder once it significantly impacts your life. So I think ah another interesting thing to talk about, though, is when we're talking about disorders and disabilities related to this phenomenon is the other side, the other extreme, right? Hyperphantasia. So I was listening to a really fascinating podcast that involved interviewing people with hyperphantasia. And one guy that they talked to... He had hyperphantasia and he had it, you know, as a kid all through young adulthood. And it kept getting, I mean, I guess this is sort of begging the question in a way, but it kept getting worse. It kept getting more extreme. Right.
00:50:06
Speaker
And eventually he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Yeah. But how he described it was that schiz the schizophrenia wasn't a new condition that arose alongside or maybe even because of his hyperphantasia, but just like the fully developed end of the spectrum. of Yeah. So then the question is, if this is all just a spectrum and like is the next step from hyperphantasia schizophrenia, which is a recognized psychological disorder.
00:50:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Good question. I mean, I'm not I'm not sure. I don't think i don't think hyperphantasia has have been studied as much as aphantasia has been. But ah but it could have. Schizophrenia has. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. ah Yeah. is Is that just sort of low grade schizophrenia? That's the kind of it seems like that's what you're asking. Right. It was really interesting how he discovered that his hyperphantasia had um evolved. I guess a the story was that he was ah he he was sitting in his room. he he was a yeah young adult with roommates. he but but He was sitting in his room and he he had convinced himself that he could telepathically determine if a flipped coin would land heads up or heads down.
00:51:10
Speaker
And he did this apparently for like 12 hours and his his roommates started to get really worried and eventually took him to the hospital where he learned that in fact the the coins had not been landing how he telepathically had been telling them to but he had imagined it so hard that he saw them as landing you know heads up or heads down whichever one he wanted it to be yeah so it was this kind of like hyper ability to image to the extent where it became indistinguishable from and then it becomes a hallucination and then it becomes a hallucination yep Yeah. so So that's one kind of potential disadvantage of hyperphantasia. It might actually be or turn into schizophrenia. Yeah. schizophre So that one seems actually very closely related to an actual, like, you know, recognized disorder. Yeah.
00:51:54
Speaker
But even in the less extreme cases, yeah even people who have hyperphantasia, they might daydream a lot. Since they can imagine their past so well, they might be stuck in the past. They're much more prone to PTSD yeah for an obvious reasons. increase And that's maybe an advantage of aphantasia, less likely to suffer from PTSD. Like you don't have those intrusive traumatic flashbacks. Those are hyperphantasia do. And then they're extreme, right? yeah Yeah. Part of the difficulty in talking about a lot of this is there really isn't that much research on it yet. It is a a new phenomenon, at least in the scientific literature, although obviously it's been with us since presumably the dawn of humanity. Forever there have been imagers and aphantasics. It makes you wonder about like historical figures and how whether they were aphantasic and whether that affected their. I wonder who was Napoleon and aphantasic. I want to know. Oh, definitely not Napoleon. would think. yeah I don't know much about Napoleon, but, you know, you get my point. like Maybe Bentham. where were Yeah. Maybe Jeremy Bentham, for instance. how who Which philosophers were aphantasics and how did that affect their philosophy? Sidgwick.
00:52:54
Speaker
Perhaps a famous utilitarian. ah Derek Parfit, for instance, we've mentioned him on the podcast before. Prominent contemporary philosopher died, him and was it five years ago, something like that, few years ago. He had a lot of views that are pretty nonstandard. He thought that there was really no self to some degree. yeah he He thought that personal identity wasn't important. He had he probably had a fantasia. He had face blindness. He had face blindness.
00:53:18
Speaker
Yeah. so So maybe he had a fantasia maybe that affected his philosophical views. like I wonder about this sort of thing. But anyway, yeah, this phenomenon hasn't been studied too much. And it seems like there's a wide variety of different experiences among those who have a Fantasia. saw I was curious about one particular question, the question of being able to navigate the world. Like, how good are you with directions? Like literally navigate. Yeah. but yeah Yeah. Like, yeah. Get around in the world. How, how good are you with directions if you have a fantasia?
Navigation and Memory in Aphantasia
00:53:47
Speaker
So as we sometimes do on this podcast, I went to Reddit.
00:53:50
Speaker
Like you do. Yeah. We love, we love Reddit. Only, we only read Reddit for the podcast and don we don't really read Reddit otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, on Reddit, there was a lot of diversity in answering this question. So so for some people, they said all navigation for me is purely habitual. They can't imagine you know where the school is and get there. and They can't do that. It's all habit. as They just go where they're used to going. um Another person said, in my own case, I have a strong spatial awareness and I have something like 3D maps of places and things, but without a visual component. That was really interesting, right? like
00:54:23
Speaker
this This person has like the outline of the city or their town in their head, but it's not it's not full of color and objects. It's just sort of like a blueprint or something. It's not visual. It makes me wonder if it's like almost more similar to like tactile or something.
00:54:38
Speaker
Yeah. And this last person said they're terrible with directions. They have a complete inability to grasp my surroundings and whereabouts. So yeah, we see many opinions on this question. So this is something I think, you know, should be studied. This seems like an interesting research question.
00:54:51
Speaker
How good are aphantasics with directions and what alternative strategies do i they adopt? in order to you know deal with not being able to imagine their surroundings. That's one reason why Merlin Monzel thinks we shouldn't really count it as a disorder, because in many cases the A-fantastic has alternative strategies that work just as well as using imagination.
00:55:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that we've learned from our research on this topic is that the phenomenon is really not homogenous. No, no. It is multifaceted. It's extremely varied. Actually, something else I wanted to bring up, because we have spent so much time referencing that New Yorker article, and the main point of the New Yorker article, even though they talk about a lot of things, is the connection between aphantasia, or being able to image, and memory. Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:39
Speaker
And I found this particularly compelling when I read it because while I do have hyperphantasia for sure, i also don't have great voluntary episodic memory recall.
00:55:53
Speaker
Yeah. As you know. Involuntary, yes, too too vivid, right? But voluntary is often very hard for me. And I think you have much better voluntary recall even though you don't have hyperphantasia. No, i I do have very, very vivid memories. In fact, when I was researching for the podcast and we were planning this, I was taking a trip down memory lane and it was like really scary how vivid some of the things i can remember that I haven't thought about in like 20 years. yeah yeah no Yeah. I'm getting goosebumps now thinking about Yeah. And like, so I can voluntarily image extremely vivid things, but not not memories.
00:56:33
Speaker
So it made me wonder about like this connection because the the hypothesis in the article is that there is a strong connection between having vivid mental imagery and being able to voluntarily recall things. But it can, I think, obviously come apart. I think my my voluntary imaging for things like apples and and whatever is kind of, you know, kind of mid. I'd probably be like a three or four. Not definitely not a five or anything like that. Yeah. I'm like my six. But my but my my episodic memory is like very, very strong. Yeah. Yeah. Like a five, probably. Yeah. So that's just another example of the way that I think. um
00:57:06
Speaker
Yeah, there's these trends, but they also come apart in ways that raise further really interesting questions. And that's why it's a weird thing. And that's why we talked about it. It's super Even though it's not supernatural or something that they talk about on the History Channel, that's why we thought it deserved a podcast episode. And it deserved a special 30 slot. Yeah.
00:57:25
Speaker
Yeah, and then something that a lot of the things that we read or listened to about this topic mused about, sort of maybe you know not to any conclusions, but just raised you know raise this question of, does this topic interest us and disturb us so much because it does indicate a place where we struggle to understand one another? Mm-hmm. And I mean, I think that that's obviously right.
00:57:44
Speaker
You know, something that unnerved people when they learned that there was, you know, 1% of people out there who didn't have mental imagery. It's it's a question of connection, you know, that that there's maybe this permanent wall there between being able to deeply connect with people in that group. Maybe not. Maybe maybe that doesn't present a problem. But, you know, you can at least see why someone might think it did.
00:58:07
Speaker
Like maybe we're just experiencing the world so differently that any possibility or appearance of deep connection is just going to be illusory. Yeah, this is i think a kind of perennial interest or concern of yours, philosophical concern, people's ability to understand each other, understand each other's reasons, appreciate each other's reasons. And if they can't, well, what do we what do we do? What do we do?
00:58:31
Speaker
Right. So that's kind of the larger significance, I think, of of the topic. Can we really fully understand each other? Yeah, and i think I think what the discovery of aphantasia or maybe even hyperphantasia, you know, maybe maybe people can't understand, you know, me because my experience of the world is so much different than theirs. Maybe I'm i'm also cut off. I'm in a cut off category also. Mm-hmm.
00:58:52
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think that it's genuinely confusing. um You know, philosophers have talked about this question of, you know, if subjective experience always kind of necessarily forces us into silence at some level. I'm thinking Kierkegaard specifically. a big idea of his is the is that the the the the best kind of life you can live, which for him is is a life of religious faith, is one that is at its core inexplicable to other people, even inexplicable to other people living the same kind of life. It's it's inherently... at the divas level, purely subjective. And that that forces you into a kind of silence at some level. But I think that that is, I don't know, not like a happy thought, or at least like it's a thought with a lot of gravity. Wasn't Vickensign into silence too?
00:59:35
Speaker
Vickensign loved silence. That was the, that's the last line of the Choctatus, right? Where of one cannot speak. All right, that's all we have for you on this topic. um Join us next time for another episode on some topics.