A Curious Question

Imagine. If you are some 97–99% of the population, you can, at least to some degree, summon up a mental image. For instance, if I simply write, “Imagine a sunset...” that, in most readers, summons the actual “image” of a sunset in the mind’s eye so to speak. Now, if you were me, you could not do this to any degree, not even a mere flicker of a sunset. In fact, if you were me, you would have a power of visualization equal to zero, meaning, of course, that absolutely nothing, that is, the actual no–thing, would be in your head, utter darkness to be exact.

I can, however, conceive. Form a conception of a sunset, it being, some complex product of abstract and reflective thinking. Though it is strange, the conception of a sunset, possessing as it were Aristotelian bodies with properties, like: the sun with an orange hue, the earth/sky horizon as a Cartesian line superimposed on the background to demarcate and hence create the idea of a sunset, the impending darkness, etc. but none of these possesses any tangible quality, like; sight, sound, taste, or smell, not even as much as a feeling tone. They are merely facts set against, what one philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, coined a “logical picture,” a kind of internalized model of reality if you will.

And I’ve been this way since birth. My question, if you choose to answer is, how many people here in this society, of the 77 or odd members have congenital aphantasia, that is, the inability to “see” pictures in one’s mind’s eye and present since birth? And as a follow up question, do you think your IQ is affected as such?

Kenneth Myers 

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