>I so rarely see people just sitting and imagining things for long stretches //
You've heard of daydreaming though, or the mind's eye. I assume they're cross-culturally universal concepts?
For my own part my teachers always told me off for daydreaming. When lying in bed as a child I would watch cartoons in my head (whilst awake, before falling asleep).
I can think of a table without picturing one, choose to picture an actual table (eg the one from my childhood home, perhaps on the day my dad revarnished it), or have a sort of meta-table before my mind's eye (cf Bertrand Russell!). The image of that table from my childhood isn't just a photo, it's like a cubist table, I can simultaneously 'see' different aspects of it despite them not being contiguous - like the top surface, the feet and the underside bolts; I can also feel it like a "mind's touch", and similarly with other senses. Scents tend only to appear fully in the context of memory though, or at least they're much stronger in that context (my mother cooking gingerbread, say; or the smell of my grandparents kitchen [poorly burnt gas!]).
You've heard of daydreaming though, or the mind's eye. I assume they're cross-culturally universal concepts?
For my own part my teachers always told me off for daydreaming. When lying in bed as a child I would watch cartoons in my head (whilst awake, before falling asleep).
I can think of a table without picturing one, choose to picture an actual table (eg the one from my childhood home, perhaps on the day my dad revarnished it), or have a sort of meta-table before my mind's eye (cf Bertrand Russell!). The image of that table from my childhood isn't just a photo, it's like a cubist table, I can simultaneously 'see' different aspects of it despite them not being contiguous - like the top surface, the feet and the underside bolts; I can also feel it like a "mind's touch", and similarly with other senses. Scents tend only to appear fully in the context of memory though, or at least they're much stronger in that context (my mother cooking gingerbread, say; or the smell of my grandparents kitchen [poorly burnt gas!]).