I am confused. You can't recollect a friends face? You can't imagine the feeling of sandpaper? You cant bop to a melody in your head?

The "mind's eye" isn't an actual image. It doesn't pop into view like augmented or virtual reality. It is imaginary.

I literally could not tell you what my own wife or children's faces look like from memory. The feeling of sandpaper, I can basically relive it 1:1. Same with music, I can all but hear it. So there does seem to be quite the spectrum, even if it's all imaginary.

How do you know that? Honest question.

It stretches credulity that someone can occlude their vision with their imagination. Like, you are staring at a dog, you can't imagine a brick wall in front of it and not see the dog any more. Similarly you can't not see the back of your eyelids. Your imagination can kick in and your brain does $THINGS. But the back of your eyelid is still what you are seeing when you close your eyes.

Occluding vision seems extreme yes, but what do you mean when you say "it is just imaginary"?

What is an actual image?

I ask because you seem to dismiss the notion that some people have stronger inner images than others.

I don't mean to sound dismissive of differing imaginary intensity. It sounds, to me, like people are confusing _imaginary_ vs _hallucination_. Sure, some people imagine a stop sign as an HDR image with a back story and others as "red octagon."

I think that language is hard and it sounds, again, to me, like there are people who think there are AR/VR like experiences when someone closes their eyes. That makes as much sense to me as not seeing the back of your eyelids. People are not "seeing" things - they are "imagining" things to various fidelities.