With imagination of the visualization kind, a mental image is summoned that might resemble something one has already observed--it could also pertain to something logically possible that one has never seen (including things that will never be visually seen either because of limited experiences or nonexistence, though logical possibility is a prerequisite to imagine something). With memory, one can recall additional factors like the temperature or taste of food that go beyond the scope of a mere mental image. The two can be used in unison. After all, even visualizing what a building or a book seen days ago looked like is a matter of memory.
The imitation conjured up by one's mind, nonetheless, is very likely not as direct or intense on any level as the sensory experience itself, where it seems that the object is physically there separate from and independent of one's consciousness. With imagination and memory, one is just thinking about a once-perceived environment, item, or creature rather than perceiving what appears to be an outward object. Thinking about an article of clothing does not involve feeling its texture on one's skin, even if one visualizes it distinctly, just as merely recalling a person's face does not make it seem that the person is right before you.
Now, no one can prove the idea that what the sense of sight (or others such as hearing) relays is not ultimately an illusion, only existing as a mental construct rather than anything external and physical, because there is nothing logically impossible about this kind of extreme hallucination; it is consistent with logical axioms for almost nothing experienced by the senses to be reflective of external material phenomena, and it does not follow from perceiving something that it is there outside of one's mind, the existence of which, contrarily to external matter, any perception at all metaphysically requires and epistemologically proves (though this is still proven due to logical necessity, not apart from reliance on reason).
One could never tell the difference between a vibrant but hallucinated visual experience of this sort and everyday perception of an external object because they would seem identical. Yet, no one can prove the alternative--that it really is not there physically outside of the mind--because it does not follow from the possibility of most sensory experiences being mental illusions that they actually are. I have senses as well as a mind that can think in the absence of the senses, including in a way that incorporates memories of things I seem to have viewed in the past. Either way, the mental experience of perceiving what appears to be external and material can be known with absolute certainty. It is only whether or not most particular stimuli are purely mental (and therefore not true stimuli) that cannot be demonstrates due to human limitations.
Only the existence of some kind of body my mind resides in and the existence of some kind of material stimuli outside of my physical shell, though the appearance, texture, and so on of this broader external world is unknowable, can be proven as far as the presence of matter goes [1]. How is one to tell the distinction between whether one is just imagining a painting or a location, among other things, through recollection and mental imagery rather than gazing upon it in a given moment? It would be impossible to prove that a sensory experience like this connects or does not connect to actual external stimuli comprised of matter. What we are left with, besides the capacity to discover objective logical possibilities, along with what does or does not follow from them, is the mere probabilistic evidence of basic sensory experiences.
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