Lelia linked to an interesting article about the ability to visualise objects. I had not much thought about the topic. Just a bit from time to time over the years.
I don't miss body language and visual cues that much, but do find I am much more attuned to tones of voice. I can picture things, especially geometrics - even complicated ones. But I don't picture them all that vividly. The colors are seldom vibrant, and the images dissolve and have to be refreshed frequently. Unsurprisingly, I do not much enjoy description in novels, preferring plot and dialogue. When I finally broke down and watched The Lord of the Rings I was quite grateful to Peter Jackson for providing such wonderful scenery and monsters. I was less pleased with the bodies and faces of the people, which did not entirely match my own. However, neither had the still illustrations of the characters over the years much convinced me either, and his were better than most. I could make the adjustment.
I did not adjust to the voices of the characters no matter how long I watched, except for Sam, who sounded much like my own read-aloud voice for his character. (I have read the entirety aloud three times in my life. Gollum can really damage your voice.)
This may explain why I have found writing fiction difficult, even though dialogue just springs naturally, and seldom needs much rewriting. I do not consistently describe things well. There is a range, and I will occasionally hit it just right, but more often it is pedestrian, lifeless. This weakened visualisation may also explain why I consider film a dangerously powerful medium and tend to avoid it.
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Coincidentally I was wondering the other day, while reading this article, whether trouble visualizing (and forming visual memories) is related to face-blindness. The author is face-blind and also describes trouble with visual memories.
Logically, they seem like they ought to be related. But I'm not sure.
Mayhap you should take a look at madgeniusclub.com, as it is a multi-person blog on writing, AVI.
Interesting. I suspect I fall into the group that has difficulty with this as my apple from the article is more like a series of still shots, and I realized a lot of my visual memories process like that. I also have problems matching names and faces but i can often recall specific books or other places where I've read particular pieces of information. The location often comes up along with the information I'm trying to recall.
Series of still shots - yes, that's it. That's a good description of what happens with me. I read long ago that know where and how you learned something is more common in men. I don't know if that is actually true. Sometimes, I can remember not only the source, but how far into the book and where on the page it was. This is less common as I grow older, likely because on the internet, which is where my newer and more-used information comes from, the place on the page changes.
One reason that Willa Cather is one of my favorite authors is- in addition to her capturing of distinctive vernaculars- her descriptions of landscapes. Having spent a lot of time out in the woods and meadows as a child,landscape means more to me than it might to someone raised in an urban environment. As such, I respond well to authors who can describe landscapes. When Cather describes the prairie, my response is, "YES! That's just what I have seen." Which, come to think of it, is like my response to some of her vernaculars- except that it's just what I've heard.
While I am rather unfamiliar with the New Mexico landscape Cather describes in Death Comes for the Archbishop, I still could visualize it from her word pictures.
While I can visualize a moving apple, I realize that my 3-D visualization isn't the best.
I can't think of a visual description I've much enjoyed in a novel. It's nice if an author can make a surprising observation through the eyes of a character, but I want a meaning attached to the view, whether it's landscape, a building, or a person.
"Mr. Bingley was good-looking and gentlemanlike; he had a pleasant countenance, and easy, unaffected manners. His sisters were fine women, with an air of decided fashion. His brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst, merely looked the gentleman; but his friend Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year. The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud; to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend."
She's not wasting our time with the rippling gold of his locks and so on.
Upon further review, the complex geometrics I can visualise, such as keeping track of where the focus is going to go as one rotates one parabola on another, is mostly 2D. 3D is much, much harder to hold in my head. The questions on the Mega Test which involved 3 interpenetrating cubes or 5 interpenetrating spheres were so difficult for me that I doubt my guesses were even close.
This sort of imagination plays a key role in Aristotle's account of how we gain knowledge of forms, from De Anima. Of course, a great deal of Aristotle's science proved to be wrong; but this creates some problems that are hard to answer. It's pretty plausible that we gain knowledge of universals by imagining things we encounter in different ways, such that we come to know what is essential to a thing (e.g., to be 'a table' means to be able to hold things up off the floor), and what is not (e.g., it is not essential that a table be blue or green; any color change does not affect its status as a table).
Of course, you can learn verbally too -- and then it could be that this process is still at work, but that people who lack the capacity learn their universals by conversing with others who have the capacity. Still, it's an interesting issue.
Completely off-topic: Is this fair? https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/freud-was-a-fraud-a-triumph-of-pseudoscience/
One of the first discussions I can remember in college was an explanation of "human" nature attributed to Freud, which I can't remember in detail, but it had to do with some kind of phallic obsession or Oedipal dilemma of "children" in relation to their mothers. I remember wondering how anyone could take seriously an explanation of homo sapiens that manifestly did not apply to half of the species. On the other hand, I've always been inclined to give Freud some credit for acknowledging unconscious motives. Even today, we talk sometimes as though nothing that is not rational or conscious were really happening at all.
james - The Question of God is a debate between Freud and CS lewis, as constructed by one of Freud's disciples who became a Christian. It's video series as well.
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