WEBVTT - From the Vault: Aphantasia 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:08.200 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:08.240 --> 0:00:10.479 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and this is 0:00:10.520 --> 0:00:13.640 one of our from the Vault selections. Yeah, this particular 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:18.840 episode originally published May two thousand sixteen, and it concerns 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:23.040 a fantasia blindness of the mind's eye, the idea that 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:26.000 if you're reading a description in a book or someone's 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:29.960 explaining something to you, certain individuals will not be able 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:33.839 to form that mental picture. And this is this is 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:36.400 a fascinating topic. When we originally aired this, we heard 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:39.479 from a lot of people, some people who suddenly realized, Hey, 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:41.640 I think this is this is how my mind works. 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:44.599 I think this episode generated some of the most listener 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:47.360 male of anything we ever did. Yeah, we did a 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:51.080 whole additional listener mail episode that came out after this. Yeah, 0:00:51.120 --> 0:00:52.320 and we'll make sure to link to that on the 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:55.360 landing page for this episode. Anyway, we hope you enjoy 0:00:55.600 --> 0:01:03.040 this episode from the old days. Welcome to Stuff to 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:12.480 Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. He 0:01:12.760 --> 0:01:14.640 welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:18.400 Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today's episode concerns 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:23.080 the mind's eye concerns mental imagery, and so we decided 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:25.959 that the best way to kick off this episode is 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:29.600 to take you on a little guided mental journey. Yeah, 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:32.120 so close your eyes unless you're driving or doing something 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:34.160 that requires your eyes to be open, and in that case, 0:01:34.240 --> 0:01:36.360 don't close your eyes if you If you are able 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:39.200 to close your eyes, close your eyes if not. Just 0:01:39.319 --> 0:01:43.080 imagine you're eight years old and you're walking along a 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:47.960 beach with your mother, your barefoot. The tide is coming 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:51.560 in and you see trails of footprints leading back and 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:53.960 forth along the beach where other people have walked the 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:57.000 same path today. But the waves are coming higher and 0:01:57.120 --> 0:02:01.400 higher and slowly smoothing all those footprints way. But then 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:04.160 you look up at your mother and you notice something strange. 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:09.520 She's wearing armor, a steel chest plate and a visored helm, 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:13.799 with chainmail drooping across her arms and legs, rustling lightly 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:17.040 as she walks. Across the front of her chest plate 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:22.240 is a painted figure. It's foghorn, Leghorn. She raises the 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:25.880 visor on her helm and smiles at you. A mosquito 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:29.000 hovers in front of her face, and she flails one 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:32.480 arm to knock it away and you both laugh, but 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:35.600 then you notice something else. Your mother has a piece 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:38.360 of metal dangling from her hip opposite you. It's a 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:41.840 long sword. She puts one hand on the hilt and says, 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:45.560 don't worry, only a bit of insurance in case he 0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:49.840 shows up. A wave of seawater rolls up over your feet, 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:53.919 washing dry sand from between your toes, and you ask who. 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:57.519 Then there's a faint rumbling under your feet. It's not 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:01.639 just the tickling wash of the waves. The ground is shaking, 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:05.800 and about two out in the water, a dark shape 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:08.840 begins to rise up from the waves. At first it's 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:13.720 just a green, black lump, but then the huge glaring eyes, 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:17.840 the cavernous mouth, climbing higher and higher as it approaches. 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:23.200 It's Godzilla. Not the friendly Godzilla who defends Earth against 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:26.520 all the heel monsters. This is the angry Godzilla who 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:30.360 breathes beams of radiation and crushes ten story buildings with 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:33.960 a single swipe. Your mother puts an arm across your chest. 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:37.840 She draws her long sword and says stand back. This 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:41.760 could get serious, And with the flip of a switch, 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:45.720 her hover boots engage, her feet lift off the ground, 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:48.520 and then she's rocketing towards the head of the monster 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:54.080 to defend the realms of humankind. Alright, so uh, we 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:56.839 we tried to draw in a few different types of 0:03:56.840 --> 0:03:59.760 of imagery. They are a few different types of memories memories, right. 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:02.560 We wanted to have sort of generic landscape that would 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:04.320 be easy for a lot of people to picture, like 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:07.040 a beach. Most people have some kind of image, generically 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:09.680 of what a beach looks like. We also wanted something familiar. 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:13.600 Usually they say to picture a relative or familiar family member, 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:16.400 So hopefully you've got an image of a mother or 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:20.359 family figure there, but then also some pop culture images. Right, 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:23.440 most people hopefully know what Godzilla looks like. If you don't, 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:26.160 you gotta go back and watch the original Godzilla from 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:29.159 the fifties and right, uh and then uh and then 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:32.240 fall horn like horn and personal favorite of mine. You know. 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:35.080 It's one of the interesting things with this exercise is 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:37.320 to think back on it, and think back of the 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:41.440 specifics and ask yourself questions like who did I have 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:45.920 a more vivid memory of what I looked like as 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:50.080 a child, what my mother looked like, what Godzilla looked like? 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:53.400 And in these details are not necessarily telling of your 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:57.800 relationship with your mother versus your relationship with Godzilla. But but, 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:01.160 but it it kind of just raises our awareness of 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:05.839 the vast spectrum of visual stimuli that are informing are 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:09.200 our inner vision of the world. Yeah, and this is 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:12.480 a strange thing because the only person who can experience 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:16.360 your mental imagery is you. You can sort of describe 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:19.159 your mental imagery to other people, but nobody can take 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:21.160 a look at it to see what it is you're 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:24.039 picturing in your mind. So this is something that you 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:27.040 largely have to deal with entirely on your own, and 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:30.000 you don't know how similar or how different your own 0:05:30.080 --> 0:05:32.719 process of mental imagery is to that of other people 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:35.560 unless you really put your heads together and start talking 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:38.440 about your mental images and detail and trying to figure 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:41.080 out if their difference is. It's not a standard thing 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:43.800 that people do, really right, because even to describe it, 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:46.359 if I describe my mental images to you, they become 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:49.000 your mental images. Like it's in a way, I'm kind 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:51.000 of handing off the blueprints and then you build a 0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:54.080 different building. It's the same building, but a different building. 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:57.720 And likewise, maybe you paint, maybe you write um and 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:00.680 some other artistic medium you create music to try and 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:04.760 convey these images in your head. But you're still but 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:07.680 you're still then limited by your artist artistic ability and 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:10.800 then other people's interpretations of those works of art. You know, 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:13.000 I already realized. I didn't think about this when I 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:16.240 was writing this, but I did already see a contradiction 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:20.080 in what I told people to imagine the original angry Godzilla. 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:23.520 But then I also said green black, Right, Well, Godzilla 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:26.800 in color is sort of greenish black, but the original 0:06:26.839 --> 0:06:30.880 anger Godzilla black and white. He's just you know, you 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:33.560 look at him and he just looks like this charred monstery. 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:36.920 So this is a this is already a mental confabulation 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:40.760 on my part. I'm imagining a Godzilla that never existed 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:45.280 anywhere in reality. But anyway, so most of you were 0:06:45.360 --> 0:06:47.320 with us there on that journey. You were, to some 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:49.600 extent able to picture some of the things we were 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:52.680 talking about. You could see in your mind's eye the beach, 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:56.559 the armor, your mother, the sword, the fog horn, leg horn, 0:06:56.760 --> 0:07:01.520 the Godzilla. But there are some people who probably couldn't 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:05.240 see any of that. They were there with us, they 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:08.839 were understanding the concepts. They were able to follow the plot, 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:12.200 whatever plot there was, and they could probably recount a 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:14.640 list of the events that happened in the little scene 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:18.280 we just described, but they couldn't see any of it 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:22.160 in their imagination. And this is the concept we're going 0:07:22.200 --> 0:07:24.520 to be talking about today. One study has found that 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:27.880 this might be about up to one in fifty people 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:31.280 who have this kind of experience where they just don't 0:07:31.400 --> 0:07:35.440 create pictures inside their mind the way most people do. 0:07:36.040 --> 0:07:39.280 Uh And this condition now hasn't come to be known 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:44.600 as a fantasia or the blindness of the mind's I So, 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:48.360 the American biotech leader Craig Venter, you know about him, right. 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:50.560 He's famous for being a leader in the quest of 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:53.840 sequence the human genome, and he's famous for creating a 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:58.760 synthetic organisms. Uh So, he has actually described that he 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:01.760 has an unusual way of thinking, a way of thinking 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:06.240 that's essentially purely conceptual, like we've been describing, without any 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:10.840 mental imagery. Venter says, quote, it's like having a computer 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:14.960 store the information, but you don't have a screen attached 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:19.120 to the computer. He's describing his own mind. I don't know. 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:23.320 I I have trouble understanding what that would be like. 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:27.280 But maybe maybe to understand it better. We should first 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:31.120 look at some facts about what the mind's eye itself 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:33.840 is before we get into the blindness of the mind's eye. 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:37.719 What's going on when you create pictures in your head? Well, 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:40.840 of course we're talking about mental imagery here, but also 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:43.440 there's some other sensations thrown in as well. It all 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:47.800 amounts to a quasi perceptional experience that occurs in the 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:53.000 absence of the appropriate external stimuli. Um. So, I can 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:55.760 close my eyes, I can see a deceased loved one's face, 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:58.240 I can hear their voice. I can imagine myself standing 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:00.880 on the shore of a distant ocean, a past ocean, 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:03.600 or even some future sure that I haven't even walked 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:06.160 on yet. I mean this, this is the kind of 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:07.920 thing that I mean, most of us take for granted. 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:11.800 We use it, we employ it every day. Um well, 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:14.360 I mean, as I did with the Angry Godzilla and color, 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:17.240 you can picture things you've never actually seen, right, Yeah 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:19.760 you can. Yeah, there are things if you're like me, 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:22.720 I feel there are things in books. For instance, no 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:25.200 one has ever painted a picture of this character or 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:28.840 this scene. Uh, and yet you have a very like 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:32.840 crystal clear vision like I have a better visual memory 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:35.800 of some things that have occurred in books than things 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:38.240 that have occurred in real life. You know, Oh yeah, yeah, 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:41.400 I know exactly what you're talking about. Uh. Isn't it 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:44.200 so weird to finally see a book you've read but 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:47.319 it's never been illustrated or made into a film, or 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:50.959 anything finally made visual by someone else. It's always people 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:53.080 always have the same reaction. That's not what I thought 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:54.680 so and so looked for. It's not what it looks 0:09:54.720 --> 0:09:58.360 like now. The things we perceive in the mind's eye, 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:01.079 their their products of memory. There can structed from specific 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:04.400 or varied memories. They may be accurate, they may be 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:07.559 amalgams of diverse influences. Really, this runs the gamut from 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:11.400 something you saw yesterday that you near perfectly remember, to 0:10:11.559 --> 0:10:13.760 have you know, vague side from your childhood that you 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:16.880 at least think you remember, to an envisioned future scene 0:10:16.880 --> 0:10:19.559 in your own life, something you dreamt, something you daydreamed, 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:23.080 landscape be viewed from the imagined walls of a fictional world, 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:26.040 or your own creation of a of a an author's creation. 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:30.400 It's just like pretty much any time we are envisioning something, 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:33.360 any time we are closing our eyes or even keep 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:36.559 with our eyes open are imagining something, we are seeing 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:40.720 something in our mind that is of course the mind's eye, uh, 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:43.280 doing its thing. Yeah, And I think this has always 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:49.760 been a very interesting avenue for philosophy to investigate because 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:53.440 it is something that we recognized was sort of strange 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:58.080 about the human experience before we had neuroscience or psychology 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:02.040 or or any of these scientific ways of instigating it. Yeah. Yeah, 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:05.360 I mean because because it obviously plays such a central 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:07.599 role in the way we navigate the world and the 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:12.280 way we think about time and a world of movable objects, right. Um. 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:16.680 And so yeah, we've been as long as we've had philosophers, 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:19.600 as long as we've had people among us with with 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:22.080 time to you know, look up from their labors and 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:25.280 think about the human condition, we've been thinking about the 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:29.800 mind's eye. Um. On the podcast here, we've talked about 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:32.960 the method of Loki before the the ancient Greek technique 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:39.319 in which person utilizes spatial memory to memorize nonspatial information. Uh. Look, 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:41.000 that kind of plays into into some of this. That 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:44.679 involves a certain amount of a reflection on what's on 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:47.520 how we're using the mind's eye, you know, I I've 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:49.800 tried to use the method of Loki, and I have 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:52.920 not been very good at it. Yeah, I wonder if 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:55.880 I'm just not doing it right. Like when I'm able 0:11:56.000 --> 0:11:58.760 to to really get it set in my mind, it 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:00.720 does help me remember the By the way, this is 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:03.000 so a quick version of it is, if you need 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:06.680 to make a list of digits of numbers to remember, 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:08.920 you're not going to remember those digits. So instead you 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:13.760 imagine your house being full of odd characters that each 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:17.680 embody one of the digits in that number sequence, and 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:20.959 then you can remember by picturing the room and where 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:23.839 all of the odd characters were in the room, and 0:12:24.160 --> 0:12:27.120 then you just remember what digit they correspond to or 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:29.800 something like that. Yeah, like a very simplified version of 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:32.400 this that I have employed frequently in the past. It's 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:36.160 kind of like a um uh you know, often called 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:39.720 the memory palace because it's an imagined place that you 0:12:39.800 --> 0:12:43.040 fill with these examples. But oftentimes I only have room 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:45.800 in my mind for one example, and that is, uh, 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:48.400 that's when I am a swimming laps and I want 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:52.040 to remember what number lap I'm on, because if I 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:54.800 forget the lap number, then I'm going to make myself 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:58.720 revert to the to the lower number. So if I 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:00.440 if I don't know for sure I'm and four, I'm 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:02.800 gonna do three. And I don't want to keep doing 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:04.840 one less than I want to do because I'm gonna 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:08.240 wear myself out right. But I'm also busy swimming. I'm 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:12.600 having a hard time necessarily remembering which lap I am 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:15.880 currently on. So instead of trying to remember four, as 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:18.520 easy as that would seem, I find it easier to 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:21.280 just force myself to think of, say, the four Horsemen 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:23.560 of the Apocalypse, like, think of think of that, and 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:25.559 that'll stick in my head just a little better as 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:29.480 I'm you know, vigorously of swimming these laps um, you know. 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:33.000 So it'll just be some sort of visual association with 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:36.080 just a single digit. I don't know. I don't know 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:38.080 if anybody else out there has has done something of 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:40.480 that that that nature, but that is kind of a 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:45.000 simplified um, good crap. What's what's your visual image for eight? 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:47.800 I can't think of anything for eight? Oh for eight, 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:52.640 I think of Alan robe gerlays The Voyeur, where you 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:56.560 have a character who keeps making figure eights out of rope. Yeah, 0:13:56.559 --> 0:14:00.319 so I think of him setting by the shore um 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:03.680 not quite contemplating horrible things and making little figure eights. 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:05.760 That's a good thing to have in your mind here 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:08.720 at the gym or the y m c a guess 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:11.440 wherever you swim laps. So one of the important things 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:14.439 when when thinking about the memory palace and then ultimately 0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:17.560 thinking about memory and the mind's eye, is just to 0:14:17.559 --> 0:14:20.320 to refresh here a little bit about human memory itself. 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.240 Human memory is not just like a tape real rolling 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:26.600 in the brain that we just, oh, let's go back 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:29.240 and look and see what happened yesterday. Human memory in 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:32.840 multiple ways. It's not multiple, certainly not that accurate, right, 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:36.760 because human memory consists of several different types of memory 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:40.880 that are working in uh kind of an unequal chorus 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:44.000 um to create the human experience of memory that we have. 0:14:44.120 --> 0:14:47.280 So we have sensory memory, um, you know what something 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:50.040 feels like, what it smells, It smells like, that sort 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:52.520 of thing. We have short term memory. We have long 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:56.800 term term memory. We have and then we divide long 0:14:56.920 --> 0:14:59.680 term memory out. We have explicit memories of consciousness, we 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:03.880 have in iplicit memories of unconsciousness. We have declarative memories 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:07.000 of facts and events. We have procedural memories involved that 0:15:07.080 --> 0:15:11.440 involves skills and tasks. We have episodic memory that deals 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:14.160 with events and experiences, and we have semantic memory that 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:17.400 concerns facts and concepts. So we have all these different 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:20.480 types of memories, each one dealing with in a way 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:23.000 certain you know, different types of skills, different types of 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:27.320 ways of utilizing memory when we engage with the world. 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:30.480 And studies have shown in the past that, uh, if 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:32.200 you have a part of the brain associated with the 0:15:32.240 --> 0:15:34.800 one type of memory is injured, sometimes you see those 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:38.600 other types of memory compensating. So it's like a a 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:40.360 in a way, it's like a staff. It's like a 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:44.360 staff of different memory drones and they all have their 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.080 jobs to do. But if somebody is slacking, then it 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:50.520 may fall to another employee to uh to to you know, 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:53.640 to step up and and cover for their shortcomings. Yeah. 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:55.560 I think that's a good metaphor that the brain is 0:15:55.600 --> 0:15:58.320 more like a workforce than a machine. If one part 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:00.960 of a machine breaks, the whole machine gen probably isn't 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:03.560 gonna work. But if one part of a workforce is 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:06.600 slacking or calls in sick today, the others can often 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:09.000 find a way to cover for them, right, and they 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:11.240 might cover you know, everyone does their job a little 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:13.800 bit differently, so their their skill set might allow them 0:16:13.840 --> 0:16:16.680 to cover in a slightly different way. But back to philosophers. 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:21.320 So philosophers have continue to argue about the minds, and 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:23.680 we're certainly not gonna be able to do an exhaustive 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:26.800 journey through all of their their takes. But you go 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:29.600 back as far as Plato, for example, and Plato brought 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:32.160 us one of the most famous examples of this. Uh. 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:36.440 He utilizes mental images in his famous allegory of the Cave. Yeah, 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:38.800 and that's sort of the idea that the world that 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:41.640 we perceive is not the true reality, you know. But 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:44.960 Plato had this whole belief in ideal forms, you know, 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:48.400 things that were the more true version of the thing 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:51.600 than the thing we're familiar with. Right. There's a realm 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:54.360 of forms out there, and in that realm of forms, 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:57.120 there's such thing as a perfect chair. But in this 0:16:57.160 --> 0:17:00.680 world we can only build imperfect chairs that inch maybe 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:03.600 a little closer and closer towards that unobtainable ideal. Yeah. 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:06.320 And so his metaphor for explaining this was that of 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:08.639 the cave, where there are people who are chained up 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:11.639 in a cave and they don't even really realize that 0:17:11.680 --> 0:17:14.320 they're in a cave. And uh, and there's an opening 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:16.760 to the cave through which light comes through, and figures 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:19.320 pass in front of the opening to the cave, casting 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:22.280 shadows on the wall of the cave, and all we 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:24.840 see we're facing the back of the cave, the wall, 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:27.399 and we see the shadows, and we think the shadows 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:30.760 are the real things, but they're not there. They're only 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:34.119 the the sort of like the vague outlines of the 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.679 things that that are the true forms. If anyone out 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:40.480 there is watching The Path on Hulu, there's actually a 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:44.280 scene um in the first episode where they roll out 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:48.800 this this allegory and it's it's pretty entertaining, but but 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:51.040 I mean, certainly it's an it's an allegory. You can 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:55.040 have a lot of fun with either trying to contrast 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:58.320 your worldview to another individual's worldview, to try and win 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:02.640 someone over with your true version of reality versus there 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:06.639 they're you know, their illusion based understanding of reality. But 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:08.960 it also you know, gets down to like what is 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:11.800 our perception of reality itself? These mental images that fill 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:16.399 our mind when we close our eyes those are imperfect. 0:18:17.080 --> 0:18:19.280 But also the mental images when we have our eyes open, 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:21.760 we're still just in a sense, we are still just 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:24.680 seeing those shadows on the walls of a cave. Yeah. 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:28.400 So Aristotle also referred to mental imagery and his work 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:32.200 referred to it as a as a fantasia with an 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:35.560 F with a P, not an fright, not the Disney movie. Uh, 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:38.280 And this was central to his theory of memory. Yeah. 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:41.160 Though you know, I can see why the Disney movie 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:44.399 would be called that, I mean, they it evokes the 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:47.200 concept of fantasy, even though he didn't I think directly 0:18:47.240 --> 0:18:50.120 mean fantasy and the way we do, like somebody coming 0:18:50.200 --> 0:18:53.480 up with a with a fantasy to escape from life. Yeah, 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:56.480 it was the idea of being able to to imagine 0:18:56.560 --> 0:19:01.120 things in your mind now. And A. Carts also thought 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:03.040 a lot about mental imagery and how they form in 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:06.879 the mind. Uh, the view that an idea is a 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:11.480 quasi perceptual thing, perhaps even pictorial, formed in the imagination. 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:14.359 And he did distinguish between images formed in the brain 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:17.440 and ideas in the mind because he was a duelist 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:20.320 he saw uh, he saw the mind and the body 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:23.040 as separate. The essence of mind is thought and the 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:26.360 body is an extension of it. Thoughts are not extended 0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:29.720 in space, but the body is now us. Where in 0:19:29.960 --> 0:19:32.879 philosophy you have you have like idealism, which states that 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:36.400 reality is equivalent to mental images, and the mental images 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:38.960 are reality itself. Well, yeah, I mean, if you want 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:41.040 to take this very far, the people who believe in 0:19:41.119 --> 0:19:44.720 hardcore idealism would probably say that there is no like 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:48.080 that reality is merely the mental image of a higher 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:51.680 being or something like that. Yeah. So, as you can see, 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:53.960 you can really go down the deep end, into the 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:57.320 deep end, uh, contemplating mental imagery and what are the 0:19:57.600 --> 0:20:02.240 philosophical ramifications of it? Um, there's you know, there's a lot, 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:04.320 there's a great deal more we can discuss this kind 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:08.119 of the philosophical groundwork. I guess you could say. Um. 0:20:08.240 --> 0:20:10.600 For instance, though in the nineteen eighties, there's a great 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:13.399 deal of debate over the over the connection from between 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:17.840 mental images and language. So one side argued that representations 0:20:17.920 --> 0:20:21.560 underlying the experience of mental imagery are the same type 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:23.280 as those used in the language. And then there was 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:26.080 the other camp, and they held that that these representations 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:29.600 served to depict, not describe objects. Okay, so what does 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:32.080 that mean in practice. Well, my understanding is that basically 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:35.639 comes down to, you know, to what extent is mental 0:20:35.800 --> 0:20:40.479 imagery like the the the groundwork of language itself. Um well, 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:42.560 like I said earlier, at times, it feels like it's 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:47.080 it's very difficult to um to overstate the importance of 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:51.719 mental imagery in our perceptions of reality. Um So, just 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:54.520 how deep does that go? Does it underlie just about 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:58.320 everything in cognition? Does it underlie language? Does it underlie um, 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:02.840 you know, just every free, little detail of our experience. Yeah, well, 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:05.359 this does seem to sort of tie into us stuff 0:21:05.400 --> 0:21:07.240 we talked about in the Tip of the Tongue episode, 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:11.560 where you can you can perhaps you can have the 0:21:11.600 --> 0:21:13.879 face in your mind, you know, oh, I know this 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:17.280 actor's face, and you can picture it, and you can 0:21:17.480 --> 0:21:20.919 know the actor's name well enough that if somebody said it, 0:21:21.000 --> 0:21:24.000 you'd be like, yeah, that's it. You'd immediately recognize that. 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:26.600 But you can't make the connection. But of course, in 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:30.840 recent years, we've seen the study of mental imagery make 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:33.960 a more scientific transition. I think we we've started to 0:21:34.000 --> 0:21:36.280 look at it from a neuroscientific point of view, where 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:40.000 people are saying, okay, well, let's identify what brain regions 0:21:40.040 --> 0:21:43.199 are actually being used and activated when people are in 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:46.880 the process of coming up with mental pictures. And one 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:48.639 of the sources we used for this episode, it was 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:52.000 a paper by Adams Salman and colleagues and and UH, 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:57.800 these authors identify that essentially in the brain voluntary imagery, 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:00.280 that the mental images you come up with have been 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:04.879