Aphantasia

I am basically your exact opposite

So you can’t talk to yourself in your head? That’s fucking weird bro, not sure you’re even human desu

Wait, you can't talk and see in your mind at the same time?

Well, I can if I want to, but I’m passively silent in my head. Not a fan of schizophrenia.

I can paint super realistic pictures in my head, but only if they're penises.

I literally don't understand these conversations. If you can't simply see things in your head, or talk to yourself, or imagine future conversations, etc., etc., then what exactly happens all day? What are you doing? It actually freaks me out to hear people say things like this. What is going on in your head from moment to moment? I can't even write this without hearing it spoken. How the hell do any of you write anything? Surely this must be just a confusion in terms, right?

How do you think?

I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Are you asking if it’s normal to have a voice in your head talking that’s not yours/is out of your control?

DUDE, YOU HAVE APHANTASIA. I HAVE THIS TOO. I FOUND OUT TWO YEARS AGO AND STILL FEEL THAT I HAVE NO RECOVERED FROM THE SHOCK THAT ALL MY LIFE I HAVE THOUGHT PEOPLE ARE JUST LIKE ME, AND THAT "PICTURE IT" WASN'T JUST AN EXPRESSION BUT PEOPLE CAN ACTUALLY FUCKING PICTURE IT.

>TFW CAN'T EVEN RELOAD VIDEOS OF MY PREVIOUS SEX ENCOUNTERS WHEN WANKING.

>TFW WHEN CANT PICTURE MY MUM'S FACE.

>TFW I GET LOST ALL THE TIME BECAUSE DIRECTIONS DON'T EXIST IN THE BLACKNESS OF MY MIND.

Turns out the NPC meme wasn’t a meme.

I never implied I don't have an inner voice user

I'm one of those people that really does see a "movie" in his head when reading fiction, and by God do I pity all of you. I didn't realize I was quite such a rare type until these threads started appearing.

all thought is linguistic, there does not even exist pre-linguistic sensory information

visualizing with your eyes closed is pleb tier, all visualizations should be done with eyes open

I didn't direct it anyone in particular. Some in the thread have said a weak or non-existant inner voice. But it doesn't matter. I've always assumed that other people thought in a similar manner to me (as in the same mechanisms of thought) but were simply drawn to different things, using that thought for different subjects. I am honestly disturbed by the consideration that other people cannot imagine in the way I imagine, that they cannot, in their thinking, feel pain, touch, thirst. My imagination contains every sense that I experience, and through that, so do my thoughts. What I can't imagine is the lack of this kind of imagination. I'm inclined to think that we have simply arrived at different words to try and explain the same experiences, but the insistence in these conversations always shocks me.

Not all. The context of sight can influence the emotional content and direction of the imagination. Certain abstract concepts are best to imagine in darkness, while practical tasks you which to manifest in the world are absolutely best to imagine with eyes open, ideally looking at the space where the manifest object will be.

when i was a child i my brain visualization was so vivid that things i visualized stayed and didn't leave.
i remember mike wazowski haunting me for weeks after seeing monsters inc and my dad beating the living shit out of me every time i woke him up to kill wazowski

Attached: BqsDqItCMAAaVkY.jpg (491x545, 27K)

I can't believe it. I'd rather chalk it up to laziness or a lack of self-awareness than to think that some people are actually incapable.

For me, both of those are thought-provoking in a very literal sense.
It's very odd. I have a good grasp of all mental sensations except for sight, which manifests itself either as a combination of all other sensations masquerading as a mental picture (i.e a sort of mere "sensory awareness") or just a very slight contour of the thing I'm "imagining".

I guess I just don't know what you mean. How could sound and touch masquerade as a mental picture?

Intuition and abstract categories

Did he ever stop

It's hard for me to put it into words. Suppose I think of a person: I can mentally hear, smell and touch her, oftentimes feeling as though she's next to me, and those sensations become intense enough for me to accept that there is, indeed, a representation of a person by my side, at which point a very faint image of her comes to mind, but at the end of the day it's just a conglomerate of my sharper mental sensations, and it fades.

Again, to me Intuition and Abstract categories are either so unrelated to sight, or full of sight that I can't take your meaning. I honestly wouldn't know how to think about or discuss almost any abstract concept without being able to visualize it.

sounds like schizophrenia

According to /pol/ some months ago, you're a
>reads notes
... NPC.

But certainly when you see someone you know, you recognize them. Those colors and shapes and movements must be stored somewhere, no? I can understand having difficulty bringing these things into a clear and stable resolution in the mind, but not have the sensation at all seems impossible to me.

Yes one day I heard my father saying he was ‘slaying mike’ really loud from the bedroom. My mother was wailing pretty loudly too I think he killed Mike that night.

I can visualize though, I just don’t have an active inner voice unless I promptly summon it

Well yes, they are "there", but by God, I do not know wherever that is, and bringing them up clearly is very hard, if not impossible.

yes i can but it'll be easier to practice one at a time. im just saying, it helps.
not exactly how it works. you only recreate a shaky version that's rather different from the original. you dont play a movie, and the head version isn't perfect. you're thinking of photographic memory which is rare.
this guy is like me.
Based. abstract thinking is cool.
you can feel your thoughts too. not just seeing.

>Not a single Nigger here realizing that what he actually sees and feels operate on the same mechanics of imagination, not realizing that you're currently imagining the world around you with just regular sight, sound, feeling, ect. its all in your head

>Close my eyes and try to picture a red star.

Attached: (((aphantasia))).png (1056x1056, 48K)

>can't tell the difference between perception and imagination

>Teacup with spout
The fuck kind of tea set did you buy, user? The teapot is supposed to have the spout.

So you replied to me three times as one person:
I'm now rather lost as to what you're saying. To me, thoughts and feelings are very different things, which carry different sensations, both of which can come with or without sight, sound, touch, etc. I would also strongly argue that emotions and feelings are distinct, and that the interplay between thoughts and feelings is the bridge between emotion and cognition. Because of this, thoughts often come with an emotional charge, while navigating through feeling can allow for greater leaps in thinking which are perhaps less accurate, but are still high enough fidelity to be useful, potentially informing thought.

you tell me the difference. it's the same concept with slight variation. You have less control over your senses but they operate the same. Same basic concept for both

he went away after a month. other stuff came and went but none of them were as memorable and scary as wazowski
maybe, at least it went away after 12.

>operate the same
how so? they operate completely separately

OP here, to me it's like

Attached: wtf.jpg (720x720, 29K)

if you are still young, be aware these things can resurface in young adulthoood

Right, so this is the part that confuses me. My natural thinking involves spoken words. As I type this, I hear the words--and hearing them is the thinking, occurring simultaneously to my typing them. It's not as though I am sounding them out, but more so that I am speaking through my fingers. I don't really mean that metaphorically. So, not as a criticism, but I sincerely don't understand how exactly you write or think without inner voice.

I don't say this to be mean, but I honestly think what you're describing is a lack of focus and practice, and I think you're confusing the skill of it with the mechanics of it.

The internal sensations, thoughts, pictures, sounds, feelings in your head, are as real as the sensations received from physical input. Not as real as the stimuli itself, but as real as the interpretation of that stimuli. Interpretation of stimuli and interpretation of imagined stimuli are very alike.

This portrayal just seems like poor concentration to me.

>telling yourself in your head that you are thinking of something in order to visualize it
Rookie mistake. Just see it. Look at it like you would something very important and imposing. IN YOUR HEAD

Yeah, this is a good point. It's very easy when trying to observe one's own thoughts to accidentally shift focus into imagining the observation rather than simply observing. If you hear yourself describing to yourself what you see, it's likely that what you have mentally pictured is not the thing itself, but rather you have created a mental image of your internal self failing to imagine something.

Different people's minds work differently, fuck if I know.

That's the thing, I don't think people's minds do work all that differently, at least not in the sense that you're describing. That we all generally get along day to day suggests that there are, for the most part, many common basic operative mechanisms. Poor example, but if you take computers, there are plenty of ways to program them, but the basic mechanisms are almost the same with every chip. The computer does not work differently, but is simply used differently. Obviously, some people are smarter than others, but I think that's the only real meaningful difference in terms actual mechanics. I think the rest is more similar to skill trees; based on genetic disposition and life experience, people develop different interests, habits, and proficiencies certainly. Still, I think it's asking too much to say that the actual way the brain works is really as different as these threads make it seem.

okay now you are arguing a different point here, you are saying they (perception and imagination) are 1) are real as one another and 2) that they are very alike. this is different as saying they operate the same; a man and an ape are as real as one another, they are even very alike, but they operate completely differently.

I saw 6

What do?

Imagination is when the memory part of your brain and the abstraction part of your brain trigger your perception instead of your eyeballs.

That's literally it.

That's why you can't imagine anything you don't have context for. Imagination requires a memory pushed through abstraction.

The purpose of imagination is so that you can forecast decisions and their consequences before you make them.

Alright, you're right. That is making two different points. To clarify what I mean. I hold the belief that because perception and imagination are so alike, and so closely related, it would make sense to believe that they operate roughly the same way. For instance, your brain creates an image of what you're looking at, and it also creates an image of what you imagine. You brain detects a feeling, it creates that feeling in your head.

When you imagine something, you are also still creating a feeling in your head. The brain creates sensations for both the physical world and the internal world. They both end up as thoughts in the brain, though. They both also hold their origin their, even the physical stimuli.

Biologically, you're built to receive information. But the information just comes from the nervous system which goes back to and lives in the brain. You only THINK that you are your body because your brain is wired to create interpretations of what the body experiences.

Anyways, what I mean is, perception and imagination are not exactly the same. I was wrong about that. But, they are very similar and are interconnected. I also think that what is seen or heard or felt operates through the same brain function as thoughts.

>tl;dr Brain imagines the physical stimuli, that's my theory and no I'm not gonna present evidence

>you can't imagine anything you don't have context for. Imagination requires a memory pushed through abstraction.
you are going to really need to explain this one user, how is anything new imagined if you need a memory of it for its context?
I agree that they are both very similar as far as physical processing goes, they have done studies where, say, imagining a cat will activate the same centers of the brain as physically seeing a cat will, which raises all sorts of interesting questions. but imagination implies intention, it is directed, and it is within your domain; you choose what you imagine, when you imagine, ect. perception is outside of your domain, it resists your intention and presents itself absolutely regardless of whether you want it or not (I'm leaving out medical anomalies to keep things simple because that's a whole argument in itself).

>I never actually see the object like I would in real life
Why would you think this is what people mean when they're talking about a mind's eye? It's as if you either never heard the word "imagination" or you never thought about what it means.

Everything you imagine is a modified memory. You will never be able to imagine something that you cannot relate to a single concrete thing that you have memory of.

Memories are the building blocks of imagination.

No, I've just been told by lots of retards that they can "totally just see the thing like it is lmao" and I have a hard time believing that.

okay then Hume how do new abstract branches of mathematics develop?

I feel like talking about stupid bullshit points that bait replies is some sort of plan

I don't believe you, because you're saying some stupid shit.
>you are going to really need to explain this one user, how is anything new imagined if you need a memory of it for its context?
You know what the sun looks like. Have you ever seen a green sun? Have you ever seen the sun fall out of the sky? No, but it should be easy to imagine those things without any effort because you have a memory of the colour green, you have a memory of round objects falling, and you have a memory of the sun. When you imagine a green sun falling out of the sky, you're engaging in abstraction to form those various memories into an image in your mind of something that you have not seen and will never see.

Wrong to the point of being parodic. Most of our thoughts are non linguistic.

>I don't believe other people said what you claim they said

>branch
different user, but it seems like you answered it yourself

this is basic naive empiricism, there is a reason no one buys this anymore. It cannot explain the development of basic mathematics, let alone complex abstract theories like sixth-dimentional geometry.
No, I didn't. Just because something is a "branch" of mathematics doesn't mean it has any relation to the branches which came before it other than the fact they are both considered mathematics
scientificamerican.com/article/math-mystery-shinichi-mochizuki-and-the-impenetrable-proof/

I used to "think aloud" or keep a constant verbal monologue in my head habitually but it was associated with my anxiety and after tripping a bunch and learning more about ideas like mindfulness/Stoicism/CBT/REBT/etc. I've been able to quiet it. Like you said, I'm still able to think verbally, and sometimes I need to for problem solving, like mental arithmetic, but normally I just switch it off and I think that that's a good thing. I used to anxiously think while speaking; it was exhausting and worsened my speech.

>just because man evolved from a common ancestor as the ape doesn't make a man an ape
>therefore, evolution doesn't exist

the point was to say that it's absurd to consider an ape as operating in the same way as a man even though they are so closely related; the argument takes evolution as granted...

Yes, I think in images. When I read a book I am playing it in my head like a movie

I think in tactile sensations. Tolstoy reads like a good handjob

the level (both amount, and operative hierarchy) of difference between various differences in mathematical language seems completely unrelated to the point in hand, which is whether or not anything can be imagined which does not have some basis in memory. My guess is that you are being too rigid with your understanding of memory.

the argument you are replying to was over the conflation of perception and imagination, it had nothing to do with your secondary argument about whether imagination is only formed through memory...

So some people literally can't visualise things? What the fuck man.

My creative writing is like playing a movie in my head. I go to this weird state where it's kind of a different form of meditating. Instead of me closing my eyes, being aware of my breathing, and having little, if any, external sound, I'm moving around, listening very passively to a lot of sound, and not focusing on anything in particular. What happens is there's this sort of invasive thought of a concept (let's say guy at a coffee shop in a suit waiting for an interview), I'll start building the character, then the immediate scenery, then I can continue with the story. It just plays in my head like watching a movie, but I have full control to change something if I don't like how the line of dialogue went or if the suit doesn't fit as well as I originally thought. When I'm like this, my eyes don't really see anything. It observes just enough to process like half a second so I don't run into things or whatever, but what I see doesn't even get put into short term memory, kind of like when you check your phone for the time and already forgot it by the time you are starting to put it in your pocket.

My problem with creating stories is that it's always a veil for the message I want to get across, it's usually very "just a small section of some normal person's life", and it doesn't really end, it just stops. The coffee shop interview story would have the guy in a suit, he would get horribly anxious as the seconds tick by after 3pm. Checks his phone maybe a hundred times over 5 minutes, racing thoughts like "maybe I came the wrong day, maybe it's a sign I shouldn't have this job, maybe he already picked someone else, but why shouldn't he even give me a chance?" and just all over the place emotionally. Decides that he's going to be aggressive when interviewer comes, "don't waste my time like that, I have better things to do than wait for you" etc. Interviewer comes 3:22 and appologizes bc his son had a medical emergency, had to choose between going to hospital or interview. Guy feels intensely guilty, offers to reschedule. Interview goes pretty cookie-cutter, stops halfway through and offers to reschedule due to being unable to focus on the work bc of his son. No problem, reschedule. Repeat this a few times but with new crisis. Guy tells interviewer that it looks bs, just an excuse to not reject but not hire him. tldr of the story is that it's reflecting drug addiction and the impatience of going through withdrawal symptoms to become sober. It's much more internal monologue focused, so making it an actual movie sucks, but having it just be a story takes away from the visual and audio aspects, the reader might lose the more vivid imagery that happens in my head. I spent 15 minutes typing this all out on my phone instead of getting out of my car to go to the gym. The car on my right left between starting to type this and at this moment when I "started using my eyes again". I don't think anyone wants to know my stories, so I don't normally write them out.

You replied to this:
>Everything you imagine is a modified memory. You will never be able to imagine something that you cannot relate to a single concrete thing that you have memory of.
>Memories are the building blocks of imagination.
With this:
>okay then Hume how do new abstract branches of mathematics develop?
I hadn't gotten involved up to that point because I disagreed with whoever was saying sensation was imagination, but whichever said that the imagination is an extension of memory is at least right about that. Your reply seemed pretty nonsensical, so I jumped in.

I'm saying this argument:
>just because man evolved from a common ancestor as the ape doesn't make a man an ape
had nothing to do with the argument you are making about naive empiricism, you are totally confused right now

Hey buddy, I think you're further along than you think. But I also think you should try and get off social media if you haven't already. It seems like you're flexing your creative muscles, but just failing to bring seeds to fruit. What you describe is a solid analysis of the act of in-the-weeds writing. It's what most people think of when they think of writing, it's what gets most romanticized, and it's what most people struggle to do at all. But it's really only the first part. It's like you're trying to build St. Peter's Basillica by just putting one stone on top of another and hoping you discover the plan somewhere along the way. So maybe in the first draft, the idea really dominates and drives the creative process; it's even possible to let the idea carry you through the whole process; whatever carries you forward, the next step is expanding the story and revising the art of telling it. Probably, the first go will be boring. But in re-reading it, you might find some interesting element to it. Elaborate on that. Maybe there is some memory the character has that changes the meaning of the scene. Then you can decide whether you go into that memory in detail, or if you hint at it. As you read it, you can try and feel the words and rhythm in you tongue and write for style. The real danger you seem to be falling into is thinking the story exists as some ethereal object from the beginning, and it's only worth writing if that idea is good. But the real story exists not just in the plot or scenario, but in the telling. As you write, the story will grow and change, and the exciting part is that you get to decide how it does that. You can either put a strong ideological drive into the work, or you can grow it out of small observations and questions into a more complex way of thinking. But you'll never get stronger if you keep lifting the same set with the same weight.

You asked where new, abstract maths come from, describing it quite clearly as an evolution, a branch on a tree of understanding. They come from memory all the same. It doesn't matter if it's a different species of thought, the source is the same.

my wife has aphantasia too. films are particularly vivid to her because there's nothing in the back of her mind reminding her that the effects are fake, or that there's a crew of people behind the camera.

you never even argued for mathematics coming from memory, you just asserted it. what memory formed the idea of the infinite set?

She's faking then, because aphantasia, if it's real at all, should produce the opposite effect. The suspension of disbelief requires the imagination.

I did, but you apparently didn't understand what I was saying. And again, you're far too rigid with your understanding of memory. You seem fixated on the idea of memories as episodes, which is only one kind of a very complex set of memories. Abstract concepts are usually built on perceived similarities between low-resolution projections of prior experience. If you've experienced any methodical repetition, it is relatively easy to de-rez it until there is only a very loose and intangible sense of accumulation. Recognizing an infinite set can't much many steps away from that.

Aphantasia is not inability to imagine, it's just inability to visualise.

>but how do you imagine without visualisation
Watch, I'll do it right now.

>body of a cat
>head of a dog
I've just imagined a new creature. If I had aphantasia I wouldn't be able to visualise it, but I've imagined the abstract concept of it.

This is relevant because there are artists who are aphantasic. They draw by blocking out shapes on the page and then building them up until they are seeing something they're happy with. They don't visualise the finished sketch and work towards it - they have an avisual conception of the finished sketch and then build towards that with physical creation.

>Can people actually, unironically visualize things with their mind's eye?
I only visualize things with my mind's eye ironically.
Joke answer aside, yes I can visualize things clearly as if I were actually seeing them. I can do it clearly as long as the object isn't too complex. The more details that are added, the harder it becomes to do so.

The trick to hyper phantasia as with all abstraction is to reabsorb the lifeforce into the blood. Do this and you will find your power grows by the day

Attached: loss of abstraction.jpg (1160x888, 332K)

>no effective theory of the conception of the infinite coming from memory
yeah, this is why the rationalist had to cope with appeals to God, the empiricists can't even have the common intellectual hygiene to do that

Aphantasia is a made of concept based on most people's inability to observe and describe their own experience as an experience. What you've described is not a lack of visualization, just a very weak visualization. That's fine. It's normal. It's worth noting hear that Imagine literally means "form a mental image," derived from image, from Latin for imitate or copy. All allow that we've now expanded the term to other senses, but all the same, it's not an imagination if it is not a mental image, touch, smell, etc. The "artist" you describe is still using their imagination extensively, and the process you describe wouldn't be possible if they had literally no capacity to make a mental image. Also, dude, spacing. I don't know how it's so hard. Your syntax is bad. Word choice is poor. Lurk more.

I can feel my brain leaking out of my ears every time you post.

Maybe you should start with easier material

I think your posts are impossible to decipher no matter my skill.

That sounds precisely like it's a matter of your skill.

I can understand why you need to adopt that perspective.

>no u

it's not suspension of disbelief you retard. there's a different between knowing and visualizing. she can't "see" a pink elephant but she knows what the color pink is and she knows what an elephant is. so she knows the film is not real but can't visualize anything behind the scenes so it makes it a more vivid experience, like when you were a kid before you knew about CGI and camera tricks.

I really appreciate everything you said. My fear is that there's not enough plot, that it's just symbolism and my telling of it. That guy in a coffee shop is merely that. No matter how rife with meaning I can make it, it can always be reduced to the mundane. Why would someone want to read about a guy in a coffee shop when the entire fantasy genre exists? I feel like I have to make the story captivating in-itself, not merely because of all of the potential extrapolations and symbolisms contained within. People enjoy Harry Potter and LotR without truly comprehending it. The criticism of "it's just a guy in a coffee shop, so what?" or "it's a couple of teens in high school that kill themselves because they can't get the MC's affection, why would I want to read this?" plagues me.

17 year old female has revelations of determinism and existential nihilism through the frustration of her peers lacking the capability of introspection, becomes so attached to the hope of others breaking free of conditioning that she becomes despondent, finds someone who appears to be like her, realizes he isn't, and ultimately decides that, because the last thing she would do is kill herself, she does so merely to prove that people can and have broken free from the cycle of "living every day just like the last". The suicide note explains in painstaking detail that she was never depressed, she has never been bullied, she is blaming no one for her actions, that it was just a test against determinism. The blame goes to the guy she met because "he must have been gaslighting, he was last person to see her, he even says she wasn't acting in a way we all know isn't like her, he must have done something." Social shame, police interrogations, psych meetings to determine if he's sociopath, he kills himself due to guilt and shame. When I had my friend read through this 208 pages, he said "why did you have me read this? Teens killing themselves isn't a good story, who would want to read this?" He totally missed the symbolism, even though I painted it out pretty clearly through her inner monologues and the outlashing against her friends. "The first half was boring hurr" it sets up the reader's attachment to the characters and the foreshadowing from page 13 onward tells you exactly how the story ends, which is meta considering that she was always destined to kill herself and doing so only proved herself wrong, that her living through it would break the conditioning. "Hurr teen suicide hurr" instead of the painstaking 18 months it took for me to write, edit, rewrite, modify, and working in 4 layers of meanings within a high school slice of life drama. I have to wait for some ebin sci-fi consumerist entertainment horse shit to fill my brain to start writing again. This is the most I wrote at once in years, and I could easily pump out another 10k words today, but no one would fucking read it or understand it if they did. "It doesn't go anywhere and doesn't have a real ending"

Fuck character limits. It's quite funny to see how much she reflects me in retrospect, that my suicide is merely a suicide of expression instead of life itself. I don't know how to break free and I would rather not complete suicide of linguistic expression, even if I am hanging by a knotted rope in that sense. I wish someone would understand.

Repeating yourself, especially phrasing it in an almost identical manner, doesn't make it any more true. Kids are more imaginative than adults, and generally have a more difficult time separating their imagination from sensation. The magic of cinema relies entirely on imagining. The tricks of cinema are tricks of the imagination. Each cut relies the viewer to hold an artificial space in their memory and imagination in order to maintain an illusion of a real location with real people in it. Someone without an imagination could not understand a film. Each shot would appear to them as something new and unrelated to the shot before. It would be impossible for them to maintain continuity. They would be hyper aware of the presence of the camera, because that is a direct sense experience--the film operates in a 2D plane which never matches the experience of natural depth perception. It is only the imagination which allows the graphic image to appear as a window into another world. Essentially, what you're describing is that your wife has been able to maintain a very youthful and innocent experience of movies, allowing them to retain the same charm and wonder most of us experienced as children. That's nice, but it's not some special, strange mental disability that's actually a superpower.

You're a fucking moron.

>As I type this, I hear the words--and hearing them is the thinking,
Wrong

You're expressing your thoughts to a degree to yourself but this isn't necessary to the thoughts themselves

>So, not as a criticism, but I sincerely don't understand how exactly you write or think without inner voice.
Neither do people without an inner voice I expect. I think you *think* that you know more about your thought process that you actually do.

holy fuck you're dense
IMAGINATION DOES NOT EQUAL VISUALIZATION

Lol you would have failed drafting. I took 2 years of CAD with solid works in high school and it was primarily visualizing objects then recreating them in 3d space. I also ran a cnc router and made 3d instructions for a retractable tv mount my teacher built.

Maybe if you tried 3d drafting or 3d design for games on that board you would get better at it.

I've also read that spacial intelligence is directly correlated with testosterone which is why more men excel in spacial jobs like mechanic or mechanical engineer or f1 driver.

From the synopsis, I think your friend was right to a point, but right for the wrong reasons. For one thing, it's very difficult (if not impossible) to write about ordinary life with strong symbolism in the sense you seem to mean. This explanation seems to be more of an attempt to justify to yourself that the 208 pages were worth writing. If you're really interested in these ideas and writing a more philosophically contemplative story, then start maybe start editing this story with that in mind. If it's the characters that are interesting, look for ways to expand them and introduce complications. Also, I strongly reccomend not giving writing to friends who are not avid readers. Even an avid reader is dangerous. You really need to seek out people who you can speak candidly to about the craft. Readers are not writers. Also, as is evidenced by the crit threads, most bad writers love to give advice that's too specific. Good criticism should take certain elements of craft for granted, and instead be able to get at underlying structures of the work and deeper level flaws.

Alright, I gave you a common dictionary definition, an etymology, and an acceptance of how its usage has broadened more recently. But sure, you're right. According to you, what is imagination then if not the mental copy of sensation?

Creativity

imagination
/JˌmadʒJˈneJʃ(ə)n/
noun
the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.

Again, I appreciate everything you are saying to me. I have a lot to change in my approach if that's the case

I didn't say the vocalization was necessary in general, but I honestly struggle to understand how someone thinks about words without some element of vocalizing. Certainly, I can have thoughts without vocalization. That said, though, I know for a fact that in at least some cases, if not all cases (for me at least), that the inner vocalization of the word is a part of the process of thinking of words. And frankly, I trust my own observation of my thoughts more than your description of my thoughts based on a simple reading of poorly done research that contains fundamental flaws in its data acquisition and even in the language used to ask the preliminary questions. Which is why I've been pretty insistent that I think the primary issue is the way we all understand what we mean by these descriptions.

brilliant. do you actually feel satisfied with that as an answer?

haha, most of us do. If we didn't, we'd already be rich or famous or whatever else is the real reason we're writing.

And in what essential ways does this definition differ with how I've been describing it or using it?

You have denied that forming new ideas or concepts of external objects is imagination. You have limited imagination solely to the faculty of forming images.

I'd really like you to show me where I did that, because I think I've pretty explicitly stated how that's not my opinion.

>It's worth noting hear that Imagine literally means "form a mental image,"
>it's not an imagination if it is not a mental image, touch, smell, etc

Thoughts are just recalling of sensory information. Most people are able to recall multiple kinds: sounds, smells, sights, tastes, tactile feels, etc. Recalling of sounds seems to be the most commonly trained one and basis for the inner monologue in most people. Deaf people usually replace it with visual memories.

>etc.
I honestly don't know why you would quote something without reading it.

Ah yes, the "etc. clearly meant concepts and ideas even though every other item described in the sentence was a mode of perception" defence. I totally didn't anticipate this retardation a mile away.

Even if you're not just straight up lying to save face that would only make you a moron who doesn't know how "etc." works rather than a moron who doesn't know what imagination is. Either way you're still a moron.

Don't expect further reply.

>concepts and ideas aren't constructed out of the senses
Man, again, I feel like I already addressed these criticisms. The context of the paragraph should make the etcetera pretty clear. And you're the one hiding behind the yet to be defined "ideas and concepts" like there's some other kind of form which can be considered without representational expression through the senses.

(1/3)
Honestly, I think drawing/doodling so much as a little kid helped me develop a very visual imagination.

When you can put a pencil to blank paper and make an image out of nothing, you eventually get pretty good at doing it in your head, especially the better you get at drawing things to look the way you want. Eventually you start "drawing" 3D images in your mind, imagining all 5 senses being stimulated in addition, and before you know it, you're daydreaming and forget the actual physical world around you. Then, "Wake up! No daydreaming in class! Long division is an incredibly important part of life and a foundation of the curriculum! Now stop using your imagination and plug numbers into these repetitive equations for an hour!"

I always try to challenge my students to be creative and use their imaginations for all 5 senses, never holding academic marks over their head for shit like art. I give them as much time as needed to create something, even if it's just modifying things with their personal touch. The reward isn't "got good marks for assignment", it's "tried a new way to use my brain".

I had dreams when I was much younger that were so vivid it was hard for my wee mind to distinguish from reality. One time sincerely believed my brother had died, already came to terms with it and everything. My dreams now as an adult are more vivid, immersive, expansive, and emotionally fulfilling that any movie or event in reality, because it genuinely feels like it's actually happening to me. The sheer pleasure, wonder, love, even occasional tragedy or terror change me on some level.

We're still in the dark ages in terms of understanding how our brains work, so your lack of understanding is shared.

Do you not think that it's possible that an inner monologue is more of an echo of your thoughts, more than a thought itself? That's my way of looking at it. I think the fact that people can train their monologueing to be more or less active supports this supposition. People develop less active inner voices through methods like meditation, and anecdotally I have heard of people doing the opposite through focused effort to effectively talk to themselves.

(2/3)
I once saw a cartoon as a kid (Mighty Max, fuck yeah, had some toys too) that mentioned controlling your dreams once you know you're dreaming. Didn't believe it at the time, but that scene stuck with me. Had a nightmare one time, being chased, somehow knew it was a nightmare but couldn't do shit, in desperation tried to will myself awake by focusing on my physical body in bed, suddenly jerking my body and opening my eyes as hard as I could. It worked. Seeds of knowledge planted of how much control we can have over our own minds.

Tried controlling my dream the next time (several years later) I knew I was dreaming. I was so consciously aware of the whole process that I was taking mental notes of how my thoughts affected "reality" in the dream as I was trying to focus on keeping everything stable. Since I used to imagine/visualize lots of random thought experiments growing up, I sometimes thought of things in boredom like "if you suddenly got god powers and could make literally anything you thought of happen, how would you keep everything around you going? If you accidentally thought of it all disappearing, would you just accidentally delete everything? What if you couldn't imagine it back? Even if you could, would everyone/thing be the same as it was, or just an imagined copy based loosely on the original? Would everything that you aren't currently seeing and thinking about just not exist until you started imagining it?" so I even remembered thinking about keeping everything stable, "feeling/believing" my body move instead of physically trying to move it, and "believing" in certain things like the environment/walls/floor, and "imagining" other things, like the woman I made walk into the room who I proceeded to ravish, and then wake up IRL with certain bodily fluids in my bed that needed cleaning. I was a virgin, but I had "sex", and came, simply by how I believed it to be, because I had an active imagination. The kicker: Once I had managed real sex IRL with different women, I realized that dream sex, even during the virgin years, was always better.

I made maps of the dreams I remembered and liked so that I wouldn't forget those cool/comfy moments. The more I thought about dreams and imagination and tried to keep my remembered dreams in my memory, the more I would start to notice little "quirks" of my own imagination that would manifest in dreams and even in my waking imagination/daydreams: Little tendencies of my irrational mind that would sometimes stand out just enough for me to have a moment of "Wait a second, that doesn't belong here!" and trigger lucidity, like certain familiar buildings, or house/store interiors, or even moments of "Wait, this isn't realistic!" like bizarre social situations, or just dull moments in a dream where I suddenly think "Wait, where am I and how did I get here?"

(3/4sorrylol)
It's noticing those little details that unlocks the abilities of imagination and lucid dreaming. The real secret to mastering your imagination and receiving the ultimate reward (lucid dreams) is Mindfulness. "What? That's some dumb holistic buddhist shit!" Well, it is if you're some obtuse hippie who thinks it's some kind of lifestyle/religion or something that has labels and rules and etc. In actuality, mindfulness is just consciously forcing yourself to try being aware of everything you can. EVERYTHING. In this exact moment, notice and think of how every part of your body feels inside and out, notice and think of all the details of the exact task(s) you're doing, no matter how small/mundane (even balance), and why you're doing them, notice and think of what all 5 of your senses are experiencing in the room around you, notice and think of what the surface of every single texture in the room must feel like, notice and think of each of your thoughts on all of this and how your formed those thoughts, notice the passage of time and how long it took to think of all those things. Suddenly 20 seconds feels like a fucking eternity, and now you've burned so many calories from just thinking, that you're getting hungry/exhausted. Physical AND mental exercise keep the body and mind healthy.

When people go on about "when you get old time just feels like it's slipping by faster and faster, and before you know it, time's up", what's actually happening is that without consciously thinking about it, we humans create mental shortcuts for everyday things that we don't need to remember. We skip thinking about the details because "whatever, let's just do this again and move on", and if we took the time to notice EVERY detail of EVERYTHING we experienced ALL the time, even the things we are completely familiar/bored with already, we would feel like children again, like time almost takes too long to pass, but we would never get anything done as efficiently in the world. When we get "old" without ever thinking about how we think, and we have just naturally gone through the typical/expected motions of everyday life for so long, we create so many neural shortcuts that we just don't take notice of any details or form any memories anymore, out of natural efficiency (water, electricity, even thoughts try to flow along the paths of least resistance): Just big blank moments of no real thoughts/imagination/memories that end up feeling like missing time.

Read this if you really want to blow your fucking hair back
sciencealert.com/science-discovers-human-brain-works-up-to-11-dimensions

(4/4)
My grade 10 science teacher once explained to me how you need to keep the electrons flowing through your neural pathways in as many different ways as possible, because neural pathways that go unused for too long eventually get blocked by plaque and permanently die. He told me to always keep thinking, about every different thing I can, even using imagination (especially using imagination), and my mind will stay heathy into old age. The dude was 70-something but had the personality/mind of a 20-something. He inspired me to be the teacher I am today. He inadvertently taught me mindfulness before I had even heard of it, and he led to my familiarity and eventual research into psychology, neurology, and particularly dreams and imagination. I try my best to inspire mindfulness in my students and build up their imaginations as much as I can, so that they too can experience the joys of using their minds to their advantage. At the very least GOD FUCKING KNOWS OUR ART/LITERARY/MEDIA WORLD COULD USE SOME NEW FUCKING TALENT.

At the end of our year, he told our class a joke, because he told every class the joke:
>Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?
>It was dead.

Let me try to express it in a different way. The thought is a wave. As much as the wave can in a very loose way be considered regardless of medium, it only really comes into existence in the medium. So, I'll tentatively agree that the internal vocalizations are not the idea as the idea, but are the substrate of the idea. They are how the idea is formed and recognized, and the quality of that representation affects its interaction with other ideas. So, as much as I understand the ability to think without words, again, I find it very strange to consider that someone can think in something other than words, and then transform that thought into either spoken or written words without it first passing through a phase of inner vocalization, even if that inner vocalization is so subtle as to be missed by the thinker. And certainly, too, with awareness of a thought process comes control of the process, so an awareness of the inner voice allows people to change the way it behaves and how they interact with it. I still insist, based on all this, though, that inner vocalization must on some level be universal to all speakers.

exeter.ac.uk/news/research/title_467790_en.html