I'm really not sure, I identify with people on all sides of this in different ways. If I try to picture an apple, I get something - vague, fleeting, not in my actual field of view - that tells me something what it feels like to look at an apple. It's not a vivid image, but it's not nothing.
But this contrasts sharply to music for example, most of the time if I think about a song I can "hear" it; not like I'm actually hearing it, I hear actual reality around me. But the fidelity of the song can be quite sharp, I can hear all the little details as if I actually had it playing.
But then again people talk about having trouble manipulating images in their mind to solve spatial puzzles and the like, and that's no issue for me; I'm quite good at those. And on the other hand, dreaming for me is not like watching a movie. Sometimes there is rough imagery, like what I get when I try to picture an apple, but mostly they're purely abstract: thoughts, words, ideas, not video.
I suspect it all comes down to quirks of how consciousness works for different people, and how we communicate about them, rather than being a hard binary thing you have or don't have.
I can’t at will persist an image in my mind (to a decent extend), but my mind can slap together related images in quick succession, which can serve well enough to rotate things in my mind.
Once I had a couple of lucid dreams though, it became clear that my mind can absolutely show me very vivid scenes.
The fidelity is sadly not there when I try to recall it.
I also think I’ve maybe gotten better at visualizing over time, but the improvements are rather gradual.
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I'm really not sure, I identify with people on all sides of this in different ways. If I try to picture an apple, I get something - vague, fleeting, not in my actual field of view - that tells me something what it feels like to look at an apple. It's not a vivid image, but it's not nothing.
But this contrasts sharply to music for example, most of the time if I think about a song I can "hear" it; not like I'm actually hearing it, I hear actual reality around me. But the fidelity of the song can be quite sharp, I can hear all the little details as if I actually had it playing.
But then again people talk about having trouble manipulating images in their mind to solve spatial puzzles and the like, and that's no issue for me; I'm quite good at those. And on the other hand, dreaming for me is not like watching a movie. Sometimes there is rough imagery, like what I get when I try to picture an apple, but mostly they're purely abstract: thoughts, words, ideas, not video.
I suspect it all comes down to quirks of how consciousness works for different people, and how we communicate about them, rather than being a hard binary thing you have or don't have.
We are in a similar boat.
I can’t at will persist an image in my mind (to a decent extend), but my mind can slap together related images in quick succession, which can serve well enough to rotate things in my mind.
Once I had a couple of lucid dreams though, it became clear that my mind can absolutely show me very vivid scenes.
The fidelity is sadly not there when I try to recall it.
I also think I’ve maybe gotten better at visualizing over time, but the improvements are rather gradual.