To see characters such as Anna Karenina or Captain Ahab as they are, or were, or the places described in books, we are seeing what we imagine, not precisely what the author saw or imagined. But we do see images from the words that the author has provided for us to use to imagine, which often is not so much physical as trait-based. Was Anna a raving dark-eyed beauty? Was Ahab's left or right leg pegged with whalebone? Got me, but these physical incidentals are not as evocative of a person as what they thought and said and did.
"Lauren Silbert uses brain scans to try to zero in on what happens when two people click." (http://www.radiolab.org/2011/apr/18/soul-mates-and-brain-doubles/) Ms. Silbert read a story and had her brain activity mapped (scanned). Then she told the story to others and their brain activities were mapped. One listener's brain activity matched that of the storyteller, exactly. Thesis? The matching points represent the same experiences of the words-images that comprise the story. And if they match entirely, both storyteller and listener have had the same experience that the words create (evoke?). Is this the fundamental phenomenology of writing--the intentionality--to create in your experience that which I intend and had when I wrote what I did?
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