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Incorrect comments on Generalizing From One Example - Less Wrong
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I am 100% bereft of mental imagery in a waking state of consciousness (I have fully sensory dreams when I sleep). It is dark and quiet in my mind all the time. Thoughts take the form of silently talking to myself. There are only words. No visual memory, no imagination -- I don't know what these things are, they are only words. Seeing things in the mind, hearing things, re-experiencing, exploring non-physical possibilities via imagination: these all sound like paranormal or supernatural experiences to me, literally, because what is normal and natural for me is the dark and quiet mind.
I find it fascinating how the Typical Mind Fallacy works both ways here: many mentally blind people say that they had no idea that other people could actually see pictures in the mind -- this sounds so preposterous to us that, until some point when we break through our denial, we believe that people are speaking metaphorically about the "mind's eye" or "picturing" something... because obviously it's impossible! And the scientific community is largely unaware of the existence of non-imagers, because whenever they show up as research subjects, their self-reports of mental blindness tend to get discounted or ignored -- again, because the researchers are committing the Typical Mind Fallacy -- that can't be true!
So I am writing a book about mental blindness. The book, tentatively titled "Mental Blindness and the Typical Mind Fallacy" will present the history of the non-study of non-imagery (due to the TMF), and characteristics of non-imagers, including some of the emotional and psychological aspects of living with this kind of cognition.
I’ve created a research survey to collect information from others who are non-imagers, or nearly so. To take the survey, click on this link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RQXHZZQ
You are invited to participate in this survey if you fall into one of the following categories:
Non-Imager: you never experience any visual mental imagery in a waking state of consciousness; your mind is always dark, there is nothing picture-like that happens in your mind, either willed or unwilled. You have no sense of having a “mind’s eye.”
Weak-Imager: if there is any visual imagery, it is so vague or fleeting that you do not make use of it in purposeful, constructive thought processes: you do not use imagery for problem solving, memories are not visual, there is no visual component to imagining or daydreaming or planning. You experience a “mind’s eye,” but yours is more or less “legally blind.”
many thanks Linda
If you will pardon the digression I'd love to ask you a few questions.
Can you still experience sensory information for a moment after the source is no longer present? For example, if you focus on an object and suddenly close your eyes, can you still perceive the object for fractions of a second?
If you don't hear things in your mind does that mean you never have a song stuck in your head?
For me, a really useful purpose for visualization is for triggering related memories. For example, if I am trying to remember what groceries I need to buy, I will picture my refrigerator and mentally scan over the shelves to help myself recall what items usually reside there. What would you do in a situation like this?
Can you visualize spaces with object shapes and positions as distinct from images where you have to worry about color and more precise details of perspective? For me this is much easier than visualizing images.
You say your thoughts take the form of "silently talking to myself. There are only words. " Don't you ever sometimes think with concepts in place of words?
You may be interested that some people dream in black and white.
No, no lingering sensory information after the stimulus is gone. It's like the mental sensory display mechanism is turned off: in the absence of a physical stimulus for physical sensory perception, there is no way to experience anything sensory in the mind.
I can get a song stuck in my mind, kind of, but it is not auditory -- it is silent! And it's not really stuck, I don't think -- it's something that I find so compelling that some part of me wants to continue repeating it. Another part of me can stop it. It is not auditory, it is just words, and it is the same mental mechanism that is used for any other thought processes. And it cannot multitask, so if I start thinking about something other than the song (with my silent word thinking), then I can't be singing the words to a song. Both my normal thinking and thinking a song are like conversations that I am having with myself, and I can't talk about two things at once. They are not using any sensory channel, they only use the silent verbal channel, and that channel can only be occupied by one train of thought at a time.
About visualizing spaces with object shapes and positions: there is no visualization whatsoever, so no. People talk about seeing things on a "screen" in the mind's eye. I have no sense even of there being a screen, much less anything on it. It is like a TV that is turned off.
I don't believe that I have any way of thinking in concepts instead of words. There needs to be some vehicle for the concept, and silent words are the only vehicle that I have. When I am not thinking in words, the mind is empty.
About grocery shopping: I stand in my kitchen, look in the fridge and make a list before I go out. Otherwise I am screwed! If I don't have a list, I'll walk through the aisles looking at everything, wondering, is there anything I need? Or I might try to think about what i would like to eat, and wonder whether I have all the ingredients, and buy something that I'm not sure of. I might wonder if I'm missing anything for my morning smoothie, and remember that I used my last banana, but that is not any kind of an experiential memory -- it is the memory, in words, of saying the words to myself "I need to buy more bananas" ... because words and words alone are the fabric of my memory, as they are the fabric of all of my thought processes.
Have you ever experienced anything from a dream? Remembered words from it, or woken up afraid, so you know you were probably having one, or anything?
Yes, but very infrequently. Usually I wake up and know that I was dreaming, but have no way of latching on to any dream content, because my mind can't re-experience any trace from a dream experience. The only traces that I have from dreams upon waking are either mental notes in the form of words, or emotional reactions in my body, e.g. heart pounding or solar plexus in a knot. Mental notes take the form of words spoken in the dream that were extremely compelling. So, for example, I know that I have visual dreams because once I woke up with these words lingering in my head from a dream: "Look, there's a tornado coming this way!" I have no visual recall of seeing a tornado, because my mind doesn't display visuals.
My favorite dreams were several that I've had in the past couple of years with this theme: in the dream, I have my eyes closed, and I see something in my mind! This is incredibly exciting to me. I wake up thinking the words that I spoke in the dream: I'm seeing something inside my head! It's a picture of a woman! It's in my mind's eye! -- but I don't know anything more than that, because those were the only words that I spoke about the mind picture; I don't know whether it was a still snapshot or a video of a woman, whether she was riding a bike or sitting down, etc. Once or twice I've had a dream in which, with my eyes closed, the mind's eye was seeing what I would have been seeing if my eyes were open -- only I was seeing it with my mind, not with my physical eyes.