I have no visual experience of a square and it's difficult to imagine that other people do.
It’s difficult to imagine that you don’t, I’m tempted to suggest that you think visual imagination must take over the eyes and appear as if in front of a person, and if it’s not that vivid it must not be visual. But that doesn’t appear to be what you’re saying.
How do you imagine the Nike swoosh or the McDonald’s Golden Arches or the Mona Lisa or the Eiffel Tower or the moon or anything which doesn’t have a nice spatial reference like forks in your kitchen or a clean fact-based shape like a square?
I can picture Tom and Jerry but not in any way where I could follow the lines and draw them or even answer questions like how big their eyes are compared to their noses, but it’s still visual and pictorial in some sense.
A square, I can “see” it as a white outline on a black background, or like a primary coloured filled blob like MS Paint style or Mondrian painting style, and not anything about it being a right angled parallelogram those are uncertain tenuous words that might change one day or be disconnected and reconnected to another shape.
Words are really the best way to describe my inner thoughts. Thinking of the Nike Swoosh - I know it as a bulging white check mark. That's about all the information I have on it available to conscious access. A visual representation of it must be stored somewhere, because I'm confident that I'd notice the difference between a genuine and obviously counterfeit Swoosh if I were confronted with it and could see it.
For all the other things you mention I'd describe them as you might describe them in text. That's just how I think about them too. If I was trying to describe everything I noticed from a visit to McDonald's I might say something like "I noticed the golden arches, which seemed like an M with gentle curves at the top, perhaps twenty feet high" or something like that. Somewhat like recounting memories from a book you've read.
I mentioned in another comment, it seemed to me that books of fiction would be exceptionally boring if I couldn't visualize them. Really good books, I stop seeing words as I read.
I asked someone else this: what are your dreams like?
Books aren't boring. The process of reading is intuitively similar to thought for me, as my thoughts and memories are like words, reading words is also akin to having thoughts and memories.
I'd actually assume that more visual thinkers would like fiction less as it would be a less compatible mode of thought. Another advantage, I'm never bothered by watching film adaptations and having not "pictured" scenes or characters "that way" - having never pictured them any way at all.
The ability to be visually immersed in a book does seem nice. It also strikes me as probably a bit of an exaggeration. I have a hard time believing people wouldn't be spending much more time reading than I observe them to if reading were really capable of such transport into fictional dimensions.
My dreams are as vivid as my waking life. Regarding describing letters, I can describe them as thoroughly as needed. If I couldn't recall a detail about a letter I could trace it in the air with my hand.
In reality, I think there's very little difference in the life of people with aphantasia, which is why most people don't realize it's even a thing until some circumstance in adulthood. The biggest problem it seems to cause me is with directions. People who know me well (girlfriend, brother, parents, etc) will habitually tell me every direction on the way somewhere if I'm driving. If I don't have someone in the car to direct me I always Google regardless of where I'm going. Without directions I get lost quite easily, perhaps attributable to not having a map in my head to look at. Or, perhaps an unrelated directional deficiency.
> The ability to be visually immersed in a book does seem nice. It also strikes me as probably a bit of an exaggeration. I have a hard time believing people wouldn't be spending much more time reading than I observe them to if reading were really capable of such transport into fictional dimensions
It’s a skill and takes effort. My wife visualizes what she reads seemingly without any trouble at all and can read more than one decent sized book per day.
Me it takes much longer. It’s about getting into a state of flow. Sometimes I just can’t get there and all I see are words and I struggle to keep straight what is going on in the book.
Sometimes I am kicked out of flow by the author dropping a descriptive visual detail late enough in the story that it conflicts with what I had imagined. As in, what do you mean so-and-so has blonde hair?
There have been times where this has happened and I just choose to ignore some of those details and carry on with the thing as I had imagined it.
I often like reading a book after having seen the movie or tv show if one exists because it makes the effort of visualization easier. I’m reading Leviathan Wakes, of which the first season of The Expanse is based. So I picture most of the characters the same. Except for Amos for some reason. He’s different in the book, and right now I couldn’t tell you what he looks like when I imagine him. I’ll have to try to make a point of remembering when I pick it up again.
I prefer books that only give hints of how things appear, to let my mind fill in the rest. It works better for me that way.
I get lost very easily, and have a terrible sense of direction. I particularly dislike directions that are landmark based as what people find memorable about a given scene varies quite a bit.
Plus after the first couple instructions I’m just not going to remember anyway, and prefer people just give me an address for mapping software.
It’s difficult to imagine that you don’t, I’m tempted to suggest that you think visual imagination must take over the eyes and appear as if in front of a person, and if it’s not that vivid it must not be visual. But that doesn’t appear to be what you’re saying.
How do you imagine the Nike swoosh or the McDonald’s Golden Arches or the Mona Lisa or the Eiffel Tower or the moon or anything which doesn’t have a nice spatial reference like forks in your kitchen or a clean fact-based shape like a square?
I can picture Tom and Jerry but not in any way where I could follow the lines and draw them or even answer questions like how big their eyes are compared to their noses, but it’s still visual and pictorial in some sense.
A square, I can “see” it as a white outline on a black background, or like a primary coloured filled blob like MS Paint style or Mondrian painting style, and not anything about it being a right angled parallelogram those are uncertain tenuous words that might change one day or be disconnected and reconnected to another shape.