Mymind seye7/6/2023 ![]() Like, I’m standing next to a bunch of people who are cheering, and it’s 2008 and I really like Barack Obama and he’s standing less than ten meters away, and everything about this experience is carefully calculated to get people super intensely excited-and for some reason I’m not feeling a thing. You know the ones, where some major politician goes in front of a big crowd and pours on the charisma, and everybody is cheering and shouting all at once? I used to live in Iowa, so I’ve had the opportunity to be in a bunch of those crowds, and the whole thing always seemed… just completely baffling. I’m hungry because my stomach is empty, or my hands are shaking a little." I’m sad because I’m crying, even if it is because of pain or even just having my head in the wrong position. I’m frustrated because I want to bite down on something. I’m angry because my pulse is raised, my hackles are up, and I can’t think as completely as I’d like. There was a commenter who had trouble conceiving of "emotions as actual things of their own, rather than ways to describe complex biological states. (And I envy them with every cell of my body.) So I think I’ve been the victim of the typical mind fallacy and that the simplest explanation is the correct one and a lot of people actually don’t hate working. I’ve known people who could have retired but happily kept plowing. But it’s been occurring to me that some of those people were really good at keeping the pretense. For almost all of my adult life I assumed that anyone who acts as if they didn’t hate their job must be either in denial or lying. I have recently come to the conclusion that some people actually like their jobs. Shouldn't its brightness depend on when I conjure it? Yet a man without this capacity said, "Dim and not comparable in brightness to the real scene." To what extent, I wonder, was he speaking metaphorically? Indeed, I don't even understand what it is to imagine something with "brightness." My breakfast table is bright when the sun shines in through the windows and dim in the dead of night. Until reading this paper, I'd never imagined that other people have a much higher capacity than I do to form a mental image. I can see my breakfast table or any equally familiar thing with my mind's eye, quite as well in all particulars as I can do if the reality is before me. All clear and bright all the objects seem to me well defined at the same time.ġ2. ![]() I think the illumination of the imaginary image is nearly equal to that of the real one.ġ1. The brightness is perfectly comparable to that of the real scene.ġ0. I think it is as clear as the actual scene.ĩ. The mental image appears to correspond in all respects with reality. Brightness at first quite comparable to actual scene.Ĩ. The image once seen is perfectly clear and bright.ħ. Thinking of the breakfast table this morning, all the objects in my mental picture are as bright as the actual scene.Ħ. In some instances quite as bright as an actual scene.ĥ. I feel as though I was dazzled, e.g., when recalling the sun to my mental vision.ģ. Yet others described a strikingly different capacity:Ģ. I do not see it any more than a man sees the thousand lines of Sophocles which under due pressure he is ready to repeat. "This points to some initial fallacy … It is only by a figure of speech that I can describe my recollection of a scene as a 'mental image' which I can 'see' with my 'mind's eye'. "These questions presuppose assent to a proposition regarding the 'mind's eye' and the 'images' it sees," one subject wrote. ![]() Some protested that they couldn't really see anything. In 1880, Francis Galton published his classic paper " Statistics of Mental Imagery" after asking a series of subjects about images summoned by their minds. Easy, right? But when you summoned the table in your mind's eye, did you really see it? Or did you assume we've been speaking metaphorically?Īs it turns out, how people form mental images seems to vary significantly, a fact that's surprised those who've encountered it for more than a century. Form a mental picture of its size, texture, and color. Imagine the table where you've eaten the most meals. ![]()
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