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nmarinov | 2 years ago

Could you elaborate?

I'm trying to imagine how it relates from your short summary[1] but I'm confused how Aphantasia plays into that. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37995645

discuss

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u32480932048|2 years ago

I think they're saying, somewhat facetiously, that they don't see dead people because they're aphantastic.

Phenomenologically, I'm not sure people typically "see" Jesus (Holy Spirit, et al) as much as perceive their presence or influence.

(I'd say the seeing dead people thing was a simple, bad-faith comment, but I believe it was Thomas Aquinas who made the "if you can't see it, it's because God didn't want you to see it" class of arguments regarding insensible phenomenon, so maybe it's actually a profound theological treatise they're working up.)

explaininjs|2 years ago

> I think they're saying, somewhat facetiously, that they don't see dead people because they're aphantastic.

Yes.

> Phenomenologically, I'm not sure people typically "see" Jesus (Holy Spirit, et al) as much as perceive their presence or influence.

Not quite. Jesus is unique in the Trinity as being the fleshly form of God that can indeed be associated with a clear image, that people (at least at some point in history) were expected to see and hear. Accordingly, I have heard some (but certainly not all) Christians speak of "seeing" Jesus in a phantastic sense (sometimes quite regularly - even constantly), and conversing with Him at length in this same sense. That is beyond my ability to reason about, so I do not.

> if you can't see it, it's because God didn't want you to see it

Indeed. Learning of my own aphantasia left me feeling profoundly broken, and it was in a sense the subject of that original "bad trip". It was unsettling to learn that "everyone else" has some seemingly magical power that I do not, and I had developed a fascination with finding a way to "fix myself".

I've since come to consider my nature to be God's intentional creation, so if there is some way I am different from others there is certainly a good reason for it – even though I might not know what that reason is.