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I guess i just doubt the complete absence. Maybe people have different expectations of what imaginations would be. When I “see” a pink elephant, it is extremely fragmentary. If it were output directly, it’d be a mess. Also, not all at the same time.

It might also be that there are differences in the amount of attention given to different kinds of imagination.

But the way the brain is structured, everything is firing all the time… or at least, that’s why it is so hard for me to conceive

> If I write “I’ll be back” you don’t hear it now in a thick German accent?

Now you have made me curious. Where would the thick German accent be, when pronouncing those words? I can imagine other sentences (anything with "th", for example) where you would hear a German accent. But with "I'll be back"?

It's a Terminator quote: https://youtu.be/tYc2jQaM8gM?t=34

Maybe "in Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice" would've been more accurate, since I can't detect anything particularly German in the way it's said either.

Arnold is Austrian anyway

I was aware of the origin of the quote, but I was really wondering how one would pronounce it with a thick, German accent.

Not OP, but I'm in the same position, so let me answer.

- I do get visual dreams. That's the only time I have a visual imagination; that, or if I'm on the verge of sleeping.

- If you say "pink elephant", I've got the concepts of elephant, pink and so on in my head. I can 'see' the geometry in a way, but it's totally abstract. Think of it like a pink elephant in a game where the renderer is off, and you won't go far wrong; all the information is there, and I can use it, I just don't see anything. Not as a hallucination, and not 'off to the side' either.

- I absolutely do hear songs in my head. Aphantasia usually only refers to visual imagination.

- If I want to hear it in a German accent, I do. By default, while I read something there's no auditory element at all. If I'm reading a book, I'll usually narrate the spoken sentences to myself and not do so for the other text; it's a matter of choice. Narrating it slows down my reading a lot, to the speed of fast speech.

> By default, while I read something there's no auditory element at all.

I wouldn't characterize how I read -- which as far as I know is normal, but who can tell! -- as narrating to myself. Rather, it involves the sensation of somehow pronouncing words without necessarily hearing them. I can do this much faster than I could narrate the text explicitly.

I can also read without either narrating or pronouncing, but I find that it cuts down comprehension noticeably.

Maybe imagination is poorly understood. I'm confident in my imagination when it comes to technology, but I fail the aphantasia test, because it tests free form artistry and I admittedly lack that one. Maybe it's division between STEM brain and arts brain.

I've gone back and forth on aphantasia. It's true that I generally don't see images in my mind; even when thinking about things that are visual I'll tend to mentally describe them in English. But if I really try I can definitely see things in my mind, after a fashion, although it's very ... blurry, for lack of a better word.

I'm also terrible with faces. I can see someone I've known for years with a different haircut and I'll completely fail to recognize them. If everyone suddenly went bald I'd be helpless to recognize anybody.

Edit: Like, I'm right now trying to conjure up the face of my girlfriend of 23 years (who is on a business trip right now). I just can't do it. It's kind of trippy.