[INFJ] What is the difference between thinking and imagining?

Welcome to the forum

Imagine is more commonly used in situations where you empathize with something. For example - when you talk about the holiday I can imagine being there with you, sitting in an arm chair listening to music, and I feel like you did when you spent your holiday with your family and friends. You describe a memory of yours, and as I hear it I can re-live it. It is usually about creating a more vivid image, that you can "see" and relate to.

I hope that didn't make things more confusing.

 

thinking is a general usage of the mind which encompasses all. Can be words, can be facebook likes, can be onions if you like. Imagining is with images or concepts that reflect the physical world.

 

I see imagination as being in a more open creative thing, unencumbered by logical restraints or practicalities in the way that thinking is. I'd say I think about what to do tomorrow, but I imagine how alien life might reach out to earth.

 

both but mostly images. Can't think in impressions. Or maybe I do. (?) Thoughts can stimulate impressions. For example, if you've never experienced something before, you still have an image in your mind of what it may be like before you encounter it. You may imagine what it will be, feel, or look like even if you don't know. As you know more, you refine those images and feelings to reflect reality or a more realistic image. A visual always comes to mind even if it's just an idea, which represents some visualization of that idea. Images are mostly based on actual images seen in reality, which are called to mind when someone describes an experience or concept. Even if someone is explaining how the brain works in terms of mind and connections, I almost immediately tend to think of tree branches or networks.

 

Imagining is a process of thinking.
Think of it as a computer...when you tell your computer what to do...it then runs the program that does a specific activity.
But the program cannot run if the computer is not running (thinking) and has some set of parameters to carry out processes we wish it to have (the program being imagining).
We are constantly using our imagination to either recall events, to process what is taking place currently, and our ability to plan for the future.
When you “remember” an event, current neuroscience thinks we are actually re-imagining the event each time as opposed to playing back some sort of recording.
Certain points of the event are remembered to allow us to fully recreate the memory when we recall it, but we are really reimagining it.
There is also taking into account that all your senses are created in your mind...they don’t exist necessarily how we interpret them.
Our eyesight sees a very small spectrum of light...imagine if we could see x-rays and ultraviolet light, or radio waves, what would that look like?
Your sense of taste is a signal sent by electrical signals from tastebuds on your tongue to that area of your mind that processes how we taste things...but the taste itself is wholly a creation of sensation by your mind, so you could say that such things are part of an unconscious imagination at work.
Hearing is transmitted to our brain after sound waves travel through the air and hit our ear-drum and subsequent parts which have evolved or (if you are a creationist - were created), to interpret and then create the sensation of sound...it’s virtual reality 24/7 going on in our minds.
So you could say that we are in a constant state of imagining...that is is necessary for us to function and interpret the reality around us.
Even the concept of time is imagined...I won’t get too deep into it, but our minds give us a movie that gives us the impression of “moving forward or ahead” in time, we need the continuity to function...we have some proof now that our minds might stretch several seconds into the future, though we are presented with this moment as the actual moment when in fact it may be much more fluid.
This can help account for things like gut feelings, intuition, presentiment, etc.

 

Yeah...I know it’s not the most concrete example....having done shrooms several times in the past for help with anxiety/depression issues (which consequently helped immensely), things you focus your eyes on are moving, morphing, changing...our imagination crosses into, or at least works in conjunction with our normal senses, giving you visual hallucinations.
There was one time though, when I went outside to look at the stars and I could see a huge planetary grid...and it never changed, which is highly unlike the experience of magic mushrooms...this was there in a stable way, I could turn my back and then look back again, and it wouldn’t change...I could literally see lines connecting the stars and over our planet...so even though you could stare at patterns of your ceiling changing and morphing, this “grid” that I saw would not change, no matter what I tried to do.
I even asked Sensiko (who I live with) if she could see it, it was so clear and stable.
She did not.
So either A.) It was only in my head, and was part of a hallucination, which is like having your imagination cross over into real life.
Or B.) It really does open the mind...which some think acts as a reducing valve of information, a filter so we don’t have too much information to process at once.
Either way...there it was, plain as day...or night...so I fully believe that people have huge ranges of how much their mind invents and how much is reality.
And cannot even imagine (key word there) how people who see constant hallucinations or aural hallucinations from schizophrenia can handle it on a constant basis?
It’s okay if you don’t need to function and you set up and prepared yourself for the experience, it’s another I would imagine, to be under constant assault by your imagination, with no clearly defined lines of what is accepted reality.

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Anyhow...I would suggest that people read as much information about taking such things, and know what they are doing, and do it right, under the right circumstances - than to just nonchalantly take them.
For instance, I tapered off an antidepressant I took to help with depression and with sleep, because there could have been possible interactions.
So people should know what they are doing first.
(okay, there is my disclaimer)

Didn’t mean to go off on a tangent, but when you mentioned the universe as “holographic” that grid was the first thing to pop in my head.
What’s even more curious is - other people have seen the same thing...I bet the answer “why” would be quite interesting if we ever find out!
Interesting topic, thanks!