NO BRAINER: HOW APHANTASIA IS LIKE ATHEISM
Maybe twenty years ago I was writing about the strangeness of finding myself labelled an ‘atheist’. To begin with, I argued that labelling others was a weird practice, and that gifting someone membership in a group that they themselves haven’t or wouldn’t was a mode of conduct we probably wanted to avoid. (No, I couldn't have imagined the era we were about to enter. And you can imagine my consternation.) But, if you still insisted, then it seemed to me like framing things in the negative in this way, as not-something, was unnecessary and a practice we typically refrain from in other areas. Pedestrians, you see, aren’t ‘amotorists’ nor are motorists ‘apedestrians’. Or, indeed, you might hate snowboarding or have never even tried it but, regardless, you’re very unlikely to refer to yourself as a ‘non-snowboarder’ (as opposed to a skier, snowshoer, or ice-climber, or just someone who prefers summer activities…) Right. Too, as in a belief in one particular deity or any of the many pantheons of them, the default position surely must be “lacking” any and all of this. I mean, how could anyone consider non-belief to be a removal or denial of anything — except by the presumptive and demanding language people love using? Belief in anything (continental drift or germ theory or Keynesian economics, but especially a preference for Odin or Quetzalcóatl, Hanuman or Yahweh) must surely be an addition. No? I mean, who comes into the world with knowledge of or intuitions about venial sins or communion rites or of the trickster spider-woman who guards the gates to the underworld? Not I, alas. Sorry, I’m just running in basic human mode, no religion mods or apps installed.
With this experience and bias, the very label of ‘aphantasia’ (for people such as myself who are able to use their minds without visual aid) should have been an early warning sign. It wasn’t, sadly. And now things are getting weird. Though the worlds of psychology and neuroscience have formally documented and accepted it for about a decade now, the research and reporting on ‘aphantasia’ has taken a strange turn, becoming disoriented and disorienting from where I sit. And I think the label is largely responsible.
What do I mean? Well, a new study investigating aphantasia just landed, for example. To my mind, all of it seems pretty far off. And I would submit that it can only be so off as long as it starts with so much curious baggage and framing and what seems like obviously obtuse language. Reporting on the study (because I couldn't access the actual study) shared how a team of researchers used MRI machines to scan the brains of subjects. This, they tell us, showed that “when people with aphantasia try to conjure an image in their mind’s eye...” Did you catch that? Without even getting to what the MRI showed, how does this starting orientation read to you? Haven't they taken 'phantasia' as the default, removed it from some, and then still failed to even accept that the experience (or non-experience) is valid? Seems so.
People have told me that remembering the past or “imagining” the future, or just general thinking, are effectively synonymous with a process involving mental imagery. As such, even the basic premise of this research, to me, sounds too much like “You’re an atheist” or “You obviously have a God-shaped hole in your life.” By the label-pusher's accounting, the atheist is at best a kind of childish contrarian or maybe closer to someone suffering from body dysmorphia and determined to amputate their left leg below the knee. And, like the atheist (without god[s]), the aphantasic (without images) is suffering from a kind of mental illness or brain damage or has just had something taken away. Well, I'm here to tell them I have no idea what they’re talking about and am increasingly convinced they don’t either. I would insist that nearly all of this is an unfounded assumption based on their own (mis)perception; that, in fact, there is no visual component inherent to any mental work and should be considered the default — as the existence of aphantasia surely makes crystal clear.
