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> but there is one question I keep coming back to: Is it a skill issue? Every time the topic of aphantasia comes up, this question always gets asked. I get tha

> but there is one question I keep coming back to: Is it a skill issue? Every time the topic of aphantasia comes up, this question always gets asked. I get that it's apparently inconceivable that someone who doesn't have aphantasia just assumes that everyone who claims they do is just doing it wrong or misunderstanding what the mind's eye is or that the claimant's own experience is just flat wrong. It's dismissive and annoying. If someone is born without a sense of smell, they don't have people question if they really can't smell anything or if it's a skill issue. They don't insist that the person actually can smell, but they just don't know _what smelling means_ or some other bizarro argument.

jawns 20d ago
In my own personal experience -- which I presented immediately after the sentence you quoted -- I didn't originally understand how to visualize, and then later discovered more about how to actually visualize. So clearly it's not like the case where a person is born without a sense of smell, because in that case nobody's going to present an "at first I didn't know how to smell, but now I do" story. I'm not saying that all people who experience aphantasia are "just doing it wrong." But I can assert that in at least some cases it is a skill issue, because one of those cases was my own case.
- antonvs 20d ago
  Sounds like you have aphantasia but you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t. Here’s a simple question: how close are your waking visualizations to images you see in vivid dreams? From what you’ve said, assuming you do experience vivid dreams sometimes, it sounds like the answer is “not very”. Many people without aphantasia report waking imagery quite close or at least comparable to what they experience in dreams. If that’s not the case for you, that’s consistent with aphantasia. The OP article does a decent job of describing it. I recommend reading it, if you haven’t already. What you’ve described matches how it describes aphantasia very closely.
  - jawns 20d ago
    Right now, while staring at a blank wall, I visualized a red, 3D apple with a cartoonish worm emerging from it and then taking out a cleaver and chopping up the apple. It was similar in detail to what I'd see in a cartoon, but (like I said above) in another mental plane. So no, I don't think I have aphantasia.
    - jaggederest 20d ago
      That's phantasia, but it's not hyperphantasia. It's a spectrum. How does that falsify anything that is under discussion here? Is it so hard to believe that other people have abilities you lack? I don't have perfect pitch but I believe people can have it, because they can demonstrate it.
      - yubblegum 20d ago
        He started by saying he initially couldn't even achieve phantasia (at school) but now can and that validates his experience which is he has made strides on mental imagery department. Why is the notion that some cognitive ability needs to be developed to acheive full potential controversial for you?
        jaggederest 20d ago
        It's not, but you then must admit that there's a variety of experience that you may not experience, and that some people don't need to learn, or vice versa, cannot learn.
        yubblegum 20d ago
        Fair enough but we're not discussing all under the heaven here. The phenomena we are discussing is, to date, mostly defined and categorized based on subjective (self) reports. Given that, until we actually do experiments where we analyze brain patterns over a period of time and clinically prove that it is not true that a developmental methodology can alter brain patterns of subjects when attempting internal image formation, we can not summarily dismiss subjective reports that claim a degree of improvement.
riffraff 20d ago
Fwiw, I can visualize things, I can hear noises in my head but I cannot, for the life of me, smell things in my head. So it's easy for me to imagine people who don't have other "mental senses", maybe that works to explain it to other people.
- satvikpendem 20d ago
  I can smell phantom smells through my nose directly it seems, like I feel the sensation of detecting some smell directly in the neurons connected to my nose. Not sure if that's the same for you or others. It's not in my mind per se, at least not initially.
  - riffraff 19d ago
    Perhaps different from mind's eye then! But alas, I can't do that either.
D-Machine 20d ago
Reducing it to a binary "it is / isn't a skill issue" is surely wrong and unhelpful, but given that practicing visualization can enhance the richness and durability of those images (or that e.g. psychedelics or meditative and spiritual practices also can), there is clearly some skill involved, and so obviously for some people, some aspects of aphantasia can plausibly involve a skill issue.
feoren 20d ago
> If someone is born without a sense of smell, they don't have people question if they really can't smell anything or if it's a skill issue. You're talking about something that affects 1 in 10,000 people and is very easily tested for. Whereas seemingly half of all people claim they have aphantasia, and nobody can agree on the definitions of any of the words we use to evaluate it. The situations are not at all similar. I'd be willing to accept that about 1 in 10,000 people are born without some mental capability that others have that tends to be called "visualizing", but that is well under 1% of the people who say they have aphantasia.
- foobarchu 20d ago
  > Whereas seemingly half of all people claim they have aphantasia Citation needed. People who experience something will be louder when that condition is brought up or relevant. That's a known phenomenon, it's why conservatives think trans people are everywhere. Most statistics I've seen are more like 2-4% of the population, but it's not a very good measure because the vast majority of people do not know aphantasia is a thing. Hell, it's not even in my phones dictionary. That might seem like a nitpick, but most of your comment seems to rely on aphantasia being widespread. https://worldmetrics.org/aphantasia-statistics/ https://worldmetrics.org/aphantasia-statistics/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810021001690 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10538...
  - inigyou 20d ago
    Why do conservatives think trans people are everywhere?
    - julienmartlet 20d ago
      "People who experience something will be louder when that condition is brought up or relevant. That's a known phenomenon, it's why conservatives think trans people are everywhere."
    - jurgenburgen 20d ago
      Because they hear about it all the time in their bubble.
vehemenz 20d ago
No one denies that the congenital blind have aphantasia. The problem is that many people default to thinking that their experience is exceptional, when in reality it's completely typical. Once you get past that, there's no "there" there.
chownie 20d ago
This same behaviour does actually persist in other areas. I'm colourblind, even as an adult I have other people argue that perhaps I just don't know which colours are which rather than have a problem with the mechanism within the eye for detecting them.

jawns 20d ago

In my own personal experience -- which I presented immediately after the sentence you quoted -- I didn't originally understand how to visualize, and then later discovered more about how to actually visualize. So clearly it's not like the case where a person is born without a sense of smell, because in that case nobody's going to present an "at first I didn't know how to smell, but now I do" story. I'm not saying that all people who experience aphantasia are "just doing it wrong." But I can assert that in at least some cases it is a skill issue, because one of those cases was my own case.

antonvs 20d ago
Sounds like you have aphantasia but you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t. Here’s a simple question: how close are your waking visualizations to images you see in vivid dreams? From what you’ve said, assuming you do experience vivid dreams sometimes, it sounds like the answer is “not very”. Many people without aphantasia report waking imagery quite close or at least comparable to what they experience in dreams. If that’s not the case for you, that’s consistent with aphantasia. The OP article does a decent job of describing it. I recommend reading it, if you haven’t already. What you’ve described matches how it describes aphantasia very closely.
- jawns 20d ago
  Right now, while staring at a blank wall, I visualized a red, 3D apple with a cartoonish worm emerging from it and then taking out a cleaver and chopping up the apple. It was similar in detail to what I'd see in a cartoon, but (like I said above) in another mental plane. So no, I don't think I have aphantasia.
  - jaggederest 20d ago
    That's phantasia, but it's not hyperphantasia. It's a spectrum. How does that falsify anything that is under discussion here? Is it so hard to believe that other people have abilities you lack? I don't have perfect pitch but I believe people can have it, because they can demonstrate it.
    - yubblegum 20d ago
      He started by saying he initially couldn't even achieve phantasia (at school) but now can and that validates his experience which is he has made strides on mental imagery department. Why is the notion that some cognitive ability needs to be developed to acheive full potential controversial for you?
      - jaggederest 20d ago
        It's not, but you then must admit that there's a variety of experience that you may not experience, and that some people don't need to learn, or vice versa, cannot learn.
        yubblegum 20d ago
        Fair enough but we're not discussing all under the heaven here. The phenomena we are discussing is, to date, mostly defined and categorized based on subjective (self) reports. Given that, until we actually do experiments where we analyze brain patterns over a period of time and clinically prove that it is not true that a developmental methodology can alter brain patterns of subjects when attempting internal image formation, we can not summarily dismiss subjective reports that claim a degree of improvement.

riffraff 20d ago

Fwiw, I can visualize things, I can hear noises in my head but I cannot, for the life of me, smell things in my head. So it's easy for me to imagine people who don't have other "mental senses", maybe that works to explain it to other people.

satvikpendem 20d ago
I can smell phantom smells through my nose directly it seems, like I feel the sensation of detecting some smell directly in the neurons connected to my nose. Not sure if that's the same for you or others. It's not in my mind per se, at least not initially.
- riffraff 19d ago
  Perhaps different from mind's eye then! But alas, I can't do that either.

D-Machine 20d ago

Reducing it to a binary "it is / isn't a skill issue" is surely wrong and unhelpful, but given that practicing visualization can enhance the richness and durability of those images (or that e.g. psychedelics or meditative and spiritual practices also can), there is clearly some skill involved, and so obviously for some people, some aspects of aphantasia can plausibly involve a skill issue.

feoren 20d ago

> If someone is born without a sense of smell, they don't have people question if they really can't smell anything or if it's a skill issue. You're talking about something that affects 1 in 10,000 people and is very easily tested for. Whereas seemingly half of all people claim they have aphantasia, and nobody can agree on the definitions of any of the words we use to evaluate it. The situations are not at all similar. I'd be willing to accept that about 1 in 10,000 people are born without some mental capability that others have that tends to be called "visualizing", but that is well under 1% of the people who say they have aphantasia.

foobarchu 20d ago
> Whereas seemingly half of all people claim they have aphantasia Citation needed. People who experience something will be louder when that condition is brought up or relevant. That's a known phenomenon, it's why conservatives think trans people are everywhere. Most statistics I've seen are more like 2-4% of the population, but it's not a very good measure because the vast majority of people do not know aphantasia is a thing. Hell, it's not even in my phones dictionary. That might seem like a nitpick, but most of your comment seems to rely on aphantasia being widespread. https://worldmetrics.org/aphantasia-statistics/ https://worldmetrics.org/aphantasia-statistics/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810021001690 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10538...
- inigyou 20d ago
  Why do conservatives think trans people are everywhere?
  - julienmartlet 20d ago
    "People who experience something will be louder when that condition is brought up or relevant. That's a known phenomenon, it's why conservatives think trans people are everywhere."
  - jurgenburgen 20d ago
    Because they hear about it all the time in their bubble.

vehemenz 20d ago

No one denies that the congenital blind have aphantasia. The problem is that many people default to thinking that their experience is exceptional, when in reality it's completely typical. Once you get past that, there's no "there" there.

chownie 20d ago

This same behaviour does actually persist in other areas. I'm colourblind, even as an adult I have other people argue that perhaps I just don't know which colours are which rather than have a problem with the mechanism within the eye for detecting them.