I saw this viral tweet and I hoped that was more scientific information to read, because I'm a little confused. I don't see enough information here to even determine which type of person I am. Of course I've always heard of "internal monologue" and of course I think about things using language. But I also don't "hear" anything, and definitely not something that literally sounds like my voice speaking. But if I were to try to explain my thought process, I likely would describe it as myself expressing thoughts using language as if I were speaking.
Obviously this gets deep into the philosophy of qualia, but do we have evidence that there are two very different modes of thinking? Could this not just be different analogies people have adopted to describe their thinking?
An Instagram poll isn't a great tool to study this. I would like to see a psychological or neurological study about this idea. As of now, I'm pretty skeptical that the dichotomy exists. It sounds like the claim that "some people describe their brains like a computer, while some people describe their brains like a library." Computers and libraries are very different physical objects, yes, but the choice of analogy doesn't really tell me much about how people are experiencing their own thought processes.
Of course, if it's true that the majority of people do actually experience auditory hallucinations of their own voice speaking all of their thoughts, then my criticisms here are invalid, and I'm definitely in the other group of people.
For me it can be "auditory" in the same way that I can "see" pictures of things I'm thinking of inside my head. My understanding is when you're visualizing something in your head -- say, your partner's face -- the visual cortex is activated as if you are actually seeing it. The same goes for my thoughts.
Not every thought is actually.... auralized? auditorialized? ...though. There's some sort of default mode that I operate in most of the day. I don't have to "hear" every single thought I have, I'm able to take in information and perform common actions without hearing thoughts. But, as soon as I go into "conscious" mode, nearly everything becomes sounded out internally. For instance, when programming, I'm constantly having a real internal conversation along the lines of, "Okay, so if this value is Y here, but then this transformation happens, then..." And yes, this occurs in my voice, or at least how my voice sounds to me when I speak. (Sometimes, when I'm really in the flow of it, I'll even start unintentionally voicing it out loud.) I actually like this, because it forces my thoughts to slow down -- when I'm really thinking through a hard problem, I have no choice but to think at the speed of my monologue. It's like built-in rubber-duck debugging.
Having said all of this, we know that thoughts can be expressed differently in different people because deaf individuals (who were born deaf) certainly do not have an ongoing auditory inner monologue.
I mean, at the end of the day, a thought is just a pattern of firing neurons, so what precise neurons are involved is going to impact how you experience that thought.
"of course", no most of my thoughts are not expressible in any language. Why would they? Thoughts are so much richer than any language can possibly express. How to solve this physics problem? If I had to do it via a monologue it would take forever. Same with programming. Instead I just think the thoughts directly and just solve the problem without verbalizing anything.
Of course this makes it harder to tell others what you are doing, but I don't see how you could possibly solve any problems at all while being limited to thoughts you can verbalize.
> Thoughts are so much richer than any language can possibly express.
I'm not sure about that. Couldn't it just be that we sometimes don't understand our own thoughts? If you can't describe one of your thoughts with language, I would say that you must not understand that thought. And of course we sometimes have thoughts which we don't understand.
I think that understanding our own thoughts is something that needs to be worked on, both individually (we certainly should be better at is as adults than as children) and collectively (science and philosophy should allow us to keep improving our understanding of our own thoughts).
> If you can't describe one of your thoughts with language, I would say that you must not understand that thought.
I've heard that before and it is definitely bullshit, thinking like that will just hold you and others back. It is true that if I can't describe it in words then I can't prove to others that I understand it, but it isn't true that I can't prove to myself that I understand it using my own minds language.
If you aren't fluent in your own minds language then you'll have a hard time understanding your own intuition, feelings etc, how can you learn to understand things like math and programming when you don't even understand your own intuition? My guess is that people don't understand themselves, they believe that the words made them understand math when in fact the thoughts they aren't hearing made them understand math. I see that clearly in my mind, but to people who rely so heavily on words it might be hard to see.
I’m not sure how it would hold you back. On the contrary, it should motivate you to seek further understanding of your thoughts.
To me, it just doesn’t make sense definitionally to say you understand anything if you can not describe it in language. It would be like saying you understand an algorithm but you can’t express it as a computer program.
But this isn’t to say that you cannot act in accordance with your thoughts even if you don’t understand them! It can be useful to make decisions based on intuition even if you can’t describe in words what motivated the decision. Surely we all do that quite often. But it’s even better to be able to understand those thoughts and account for them using words!
To me it doesn't make sense to say definitionally that you can't understand without expressing in an external language.
First, my understanding even of English is nuanced and not entirely shared. There are lots of times where I capture something in prose but feel and even explicitly state that the the words don't really completely capture the meaning and I'm relying on a shared understanding of the connotations of the words to convey what they do not. This implies that we have a strong grasp of our intended meaning that supercedes the meaning captured in language.
Also, there have been many times where I'll learn a new word, especially words borrowed from other languages, and think, "Ah! Now I can more exactly express what I'm thinking!" My understanding hasn't changed at all, I'm just better able to express it in language.
Another example: there are a lot of concepts, geo-spatial relationships between dimensional objects for example, that I never consciously verbalize, even internally, yet I can clearly hold in my head.
It does seem plausible that this is another difference in mental models between people.
Perhaps thoughts is the wrong word, since they as a concept often are associated with words, but the things that go through my mind are concepts, and I often have a word label for them, sometimes it's right there, sometimes it's not. Sometimes I have concepts in my head that have no label, and that I can express, but the concept which I can imagine in a few seconds often requires a couple paragraphs to describe directly.
Another argument for OPs view (with the caveat above) is that these concepts must predate speech. We have an imagination before we have speech, and that obviously doesn't require words.
It is indeed an intriguing topic to consider. I hear something like my own voice both when I am thinking throughout the day and when I am writing, such as right now I hear my “imaginary voice” speaking what I’m typing out.
The idea of ones own voice is hard to describe. I perceive it as similar to what my voice sounds like, but from heard from within, almost like you’ve rolled off a bunch of the high-end. Imaginary voice is much more consistent in volume and tone for me too than speaking, much less emotional, almost no variety in pitch.
I wouldn’t say I think in full-sentence monologues all day, but I guess I think in fragments of sentences? It’s one of those things that is hard to look back and remember doing and explain how you did it, kind of like breathing. It’s just automatic.
I wonder if some of the “no monologue” people aren’t much different from the rest of us, but they just didn’t articulate their process the same way. I can kind of identify with the concept map thing, so I could probably answer differently depending on mood or how I felt when I read the survey.
I'm just sitting here overlooking a mountain and was feeling/thinking/interpreting one of the hills while reading this and realized it actually gets cumbersome if you try to describe it with words, first I thought "hilly", then thought "steep" was more of what I was feeling but after further analysis (of the past moment) the feeling/experience also encompased "rugged", "majestic"...
Super interesting topic overall. I wonder whether these people without inner dialogue are unable to recall music (with lyrics)?
I can easily "transform" my inner voice to be in the voice of Darth Vader (like someone here interestingly pointed out). I find it peculiar that there are people who cannot and their inner life must feel different than mine. I wonder how depression fits into this. I'd think you'd certainly be more prone to get depressed if you are able to tell yourself how stupid/worthless you are. I wonder how that manifests non-verbally.
Someone linked to an article by Feynman in this thread which demonstrated two different kinds of counting - using your voice and seeing the numbers visually. Quite interesting read: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf
I would not say that it is auditory hallucinations as in you don't actually hear the voice in your ears. But you thoughts are in a voice in your head that is distinctly your voice or your identity. At least that is my experience and it sounds like what the author is describing to me.
I'm working on a PhD in cognitive science. Something that I think relates to this is the idea of Emboddied Cognition [0], and in particular off-line emboddied cognition, where you use sensorimotor mechanisms in your body while thinking, even if you're not actually interacting with the environment. In this case it would be your brain activating the same audio processing areas you use when sound enters your ear, even though you're generating the sounds inside your head while thinking.
I used to, but I intentionally stopped and cleared my mind every time I did it for half a year, and now I only think in language when I'm trying to compose a speech or write.
So that's a thing you could try if you want to see for yourself, in case I'm a P-zombie.
I would not say that my internal monologue is entirely auditory, but there's an auditory element to it. I sometimes sort of 'see' the words or concept I'm thinking about, and if i focus on it, I think I can switch from one to the other.
Obviously this gets deep into the philosophy of qualia, but do we have evidence that there are two very different modes of thinking? Could this not just be different analogies people have adopted to describe their thinking?
An Instagram poll isn't a great tool to study this. I would like to see a psychological or neurological study about this idea. As of now, I'm pretty skeptical that the dichotomy exists. It sounds like the claim that "some people describe their brains like a computer, while some people describe their brains like a library." Computers and libraries are very different physical objects, yes, but the choice of analogy doesn't really tell me much about how people are experiencing their own thought processes.
Of course, if it's true that the majority of people do actually experience auditory hallucinations of their own voice speaking all of their thoughts, then my criticisms here are invalid, and I'm definitely in the other group of people.