Wait, so people can actually see things in their head? Like the author, I was convinced this was a metaphor/figure of speech... Actually, I'm still a bit skeptical about whether any of this is true.
I have a sense of how things are located spatially and can recall features of things I have verbally described to myself, but there is no way I can see anything that's not before my eyes.
Not sure if that's related, but I have a very bad sense of direction, especially when driving. I'll need to take the same route a dozen of times before I can stop relying on my GPS.
Skepticism is healthy, but there is an overwhelming body of evidence that visual imagination is real. Even if you don't take people's testimony as proof, MRI scans demonstrate that areas of the brain associated with visual processing engage when people imagine visually. Disbelieving all of this simply because it doesn't match with your own personal experience of mind is bordering on arrogance.
I do think visual imagination varies greatly, even amongst those who have it. Mine is not particularly strong — everything I imagine is very "shadowy" and ill-defined, but nonetheless it is there. It is hard to describe such an intangible phenomenon, but imagining/remembering visually feels qualitatively different from imagining/remembering facts, sounds, words, etc.
For example, I can imagine the painting The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, and when I do, I "see" the painting in my mind. This imagined image is far from clear or sharp, more like a fuzzy ghost of the original. Also, the imagined image is separate from the sensory input I'm receiving from my eyes. I don't see the van Gogh painting plastered over whatever I'm looking at. Instead, it's as if the two images coexist in my conscious awareness, although it takes a deliberate effort to maintain the imagined one, and the image from my eyes is much stronger and clearer. Closing my eyes can help me focus more easily on the imagined image.
My dreams are similarly lo-fi, visually speaking. The best way I can describe is that everything in my dreams is very poorly lit. It's like being in a darkened room, where you can see objects, but can't make out their details. This tends to frustrate me, and I often spend a lot of my time in dreams trying to address the problem by reaching some more brightly lit environment, and then getting confused as to why I still cannot see properly.
How do artists design fantastical paintings? Often, they can see the entire thing in their minds eye in detail, and then they replicate it on canvas as closely as they can.
I have a sense of how things are located spatially and can recall features of things I have verbally described to myself, but there is no way I can see anything that's not before my eyes.
Not sure if that's related, but I have a very bad sense of direction, especially when driving. I'll need to take the same route a dozen of times before I can stop relying on my GPS.