>>16825806
>I think when you recognize an object that's actually in front of you, it causes a symbolic representation in your mind, and when people claim to see something in their mind, they're really just seeing this symbolic representation without anything underlying it (or only something very lo-fi). But most people can't accept their mind works like this.
yeah that's pretty much exactly how I describe it too.
I've made pic related before as a visual to help describe it. The left is the representation of what is happening in the minds eye, the right is an actual image of course.
The minds eye creates mental points in 3d space and each has a "feeling" associated with it that conjures up similar brain activity to what we'd actually see with our eyes if we looked at a real object in front of us. This way we can in fact rotate an object in our minds eye and properly assess new orientations as if we were looking at a real object in space with our eyes, but it isn't actually seeing of course.

Certainly some people are better at that than others: it's just a type of brain activity and not everyone is equal in that regard.