I think broadly the same thing, I just think that people who say they don't have aphantasia are sloppy with wording. When you "see" something in your mind's "eye", that's a different type of experience to seeing something with your real eyes.
If it weren't that way then beginner artists would not have such trouble drawing accurate proportions from memory because they would already "see" the correct proportions.
Ugh no. Even if the thing is right in front of me, I might not be able to draw the right proportions. It might be because I am no artist though, but my point is seeing with my own eyes is not strictly better. At some point the image in my head becomes better than what I see, e.g due to distance or lack of light.
It is definitely different from seeing something. I'd guess it activates a subset of the semantic level neurons that activate when you see a thing. There are no actual pixels. I also guess that something similar happens in dreaming.
When I commented earlier that when I visualize an apple it's one with that vertical stripy pattern some varieties have, that means I get the semantic vector of the stripes. It's not a stable image that I can draw - if I draw it, I'm recreating the pixels based on the semantic content. I think.
Right exactly. Now I don’t know if I have aphantasia after reading these comments. I have no problem visualizing things, I just don’t “see them” like I would see a pretzel in front of me. Are you saying when you visualize a pretzel you’re literally seeing a brown pretzel with salt grains or are you just imagining that you see it? If you tell me to visualize a pretzel I can sort of imagine the physical shape and color and texture of a pretzel but I don’t really “see” it.