Research library
Papers about aphantasia and mental imagery, with summaries in plain words. The summaries are generated by AI and may contain errors.
Gregory · Philosophical Studies
The paper argues that two features of dreams are better explained if dreaming is a kind of imagining than if it is hallucination plus belief. Things can be true in a dream without being shown, as when a dreamer on a beach simply is an accountant, and dreams can skip across long stretches of time the way films do. Both match how people settle what their waking imaginings stand for. The paper calls its arguments supportive but not conclusive and does not claim that dreams never involve hallucinations or beliefs.
Goldwasser · Philosophical Studies
Episodic remembering and active imagining are the same kind of agent-involving process of constructing and using imagery. This suggests that memory is a mental action subject to the same agential constraints and intentions as imagination.
Whiteley · Philosophical Studies
This philosophy paper uses reports that most people with aphantasia still have visual dreams to test the view that dreams are a kind of imagining. The author argues this undercuts the version in which all imagery is something we actively do, but not a version in which dreams involve passive, involuntary imagination. The paper proposes testing whether people with aphantasia can learn lucid dreaming, in which dreamers know they are dreaming and can sometimes control the dream.
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