Brown, a philosopher who works on higher-order theories of consciousness, describing the graduate epistemology seminar where he realized he has aphantasia — no voluntary mental imagery — and that everyone else meant it literally when they said they could picture something. He was in his late twenties and the condition did not yet have a name. He now argues his own case bears on which part of the brain's activity consciousness actually tracks.
Alfredo Spania, and he sort of indicates that there is links towards less activity in the frontal lobe and connectivity with the fusiform imagery node in people with aphantasia. And in my mind, that seems to be really interesting and maybe supportive of a higher order theory in that people with aphantasia seem to have some lower level representation of the image. They actually know that because you can decode an image from the visual cortex of people with aphantasia, which I find super interesting. I think you could decode it with the same reliability and accuracy as people without aphantasia, which again, it's just sort of a strange result. But then it's the activity in the frontal lobe that seems to be a bit different, a little bit weaker. The connectivity is a little bit different. And for me, my interpretation of that, and I'm curious to get your perspective, is that that is the higher order representation that is just not quite getting there. Whatever that higher order representation is that facilitates experience, it's just not integrating in the right way. It's not connecting up. You have all of the underlying lower level representations,
but at that higher level, representation isn't working. That seems to me like a really interesting empirical line of evidence for higher order theories. Do you think I'm thinking about that in the right way? I'm curious in your thoughts.
Yeah. So I like aphantasia. First of all, I think of myself as someone who has aphantasia, self-diagnosed. But I definitely, before it was cool, before I even had a name, I remember the day when I realized that other people were not speaking metaphorically about like mental imagery. And the day was actually in a philosophy seminar. I was in graduate school. So first of all, I didn't start going back to college until I was later in life in my 20s. And so by the time I was in graduate school, I was a bit older. So that's like, I'm not a young person at this point, is what I'm trying to say. And it was not until then that I realized that when people say, like, oh, I can see it or like visualize it or like, you know, it's in my mind that they were not speaking and somehow in a metaphor that they were. But anyway, so we were in this epistemology class and someone, we were reading this paper. I forget by who, but they were talking about the speckled hen and they were talking about, you know, they were saying visualize a chicken with spots and then answer the question, how many spots did it have? And people were answering that question. They were saying six or people were like, I don't know. And I was like, what are you guys talking about? Like, I can specify how many spots or I can just say spots. Like, I don't know. Like, what do you mean? But yeah, so they were like saying, oh, I can see the chicken and count the spots. And I was like, the hell are you saying to me? And it became clear that they were like serious about this. And I was shocked. I was flabbergasted. And they were just as shocked that I was like not able to do this because like they were like, do you enjoy reading? I was like, all I do is read. Like, they're like, what do you do? Happens when you read. I was like, I don't know. I understand the story. What do you mean? But no pictures show up, nothing like that. So now, one thing I would say is that aphantasia is new and not everyone is convinced that it's a real thing. So I work with a neuroscientist, this guy, Tony Rowe, and he's a bit skeptical that aphantasia is a thing because he thinks mental imagery is exaggerated. So like people saying they lack it might be exaggerated. So it's still a debate, the extent to which I don't really know what that
sentence means. I don't really know how someone can deny either the presence of mental imagery or the lack of mental imagery. I'm not really sure how you have a, I understand that maybe claims of sort of vividness or ability to manipulate or rotate scenes in their mind, whatever, might be exaggerated in some way in the way that they tell it back. But, you know, I know that when I close my eyes, I can see a chicken with seven spots. And I know that when my sister does, she sees black on black. She just sees black on black. And she realized only a year ago that she sees black on black while editing a video on aphantasia. So I'm not really sure how there's any doubt of
that. It's a good point. I know, but that some people doubt it. Right. So this is, I mean, this is one of the harken back to the origins of psychology. This is one of the things that people used to worry about is like, well, when you introspect and say X and I introspect and say not that, then what adjudicates between those two? And in fact, that's going to come up here. I'm going to. Of weasel my way back around to this point in the answer that I'm about to give to aphantasia. So, so first of all, I think of myself as someone who has it. And when this guy said that to me, I was like, You can't tell me that I don't know that I'm not having any mental imagery. Right. Because I'm telling you, right? Just kind of what you said, but in reverse. Like, I know that when I'm like, someone says, imagine a chicken, I'm like, chicken, but there's nothing there. Like, there's no picture of a chicken. Although, I have to say, I know I'm getting very distracted, but I will say, just parentheses that once I started meditating and I was just like blown away by having visual experiences during meditation. Oh, very like color. Like, I'm
very interested in this. That's very cool.