I have not tried the square test before, and it’s weird. At my first attempt I just completely failed. I’ve certainly seen enough squares in my life to imagine them, but it just did not happen. Then I imagined drawing that square—not the tactile sensition of it, but just the process of going from A to B to C to A, but that only gets me the 3rd type of square. I can push it to the 4 with additional effort, but I can’t seem to get past that just yet. So it’s far from red. The shape is certainly easier for me to imagine than color, colors tend to be really bleak. It reminds me of another classic example, where they ask you to imagine an apple. At my very first attempt I found that difficult for some reason, but after a while I have no trouble imagining any apples I want—green, red, yellow, mixed color, stem with leaf or without leaf, no stem, partially eaten, cut in half, partially rotten, with a worm inside it, etc etc. But then again I have a lot more experience paying attention to apples then to abstract red squares, even if I do see squares way more often. Maybe it adds to effect. Or maybe all the possible transformations of shape distract me enough from color so that I fail to notice how poor my imagination of it really is.
I have not tried the square test before, and it’s weird. At my first attempt I just completely failed. I’ve certainly seen enough squares in my life to imagine them, but it just did not happen. Then I imagined drawing that square—not the tactile sensition of it, but just the process of going from A to B to C to A, but that only gets me the 3rd type of square. I can push it to the 4 with additional effort, but I can’t seem to get past that just yet. So it’s far from red.
The shape is certainly easier for me to imagine than color, colors tend to be really bleak.
It reminds me of another classic example, where they ask you to imagine an apple.
At my very first attempt I found that difficult for some reason, but after a while I have no trouble imagining any apples I want—green, red, yellow, mixed color, stem with leaf or without leaf, no stem, partially eaten, cut in half, partially rotten, with a worm inside it, etc etc.
But then again I have a lot more experience paying attention to apples then to abstract red squares, even if I do see squares way more often. Maybe it adds to effect. Or maybe all the possible transformations of shape distract me enough from color so that I fail to notice how poor my imagination of it really is.