9 ms·

It's a bit odd reading this because I learned just a few months ago, right here, that I am aphantastic (no mental imagery). Shortly after that, while discussing

• cl3misch 3y ago
  > So I wonder if the people that wrote this article are unable to fathom that people without an inner voice exist? I asked myself the same. There was a famous Reddit thread a couple years ago from a person who recently learned they did not have an inner voice, which made myself realize I also don't have one. I don't have the link saved and there seem to be a couple of such posts, but this one was pretty impactful in my bubble.
  • xwolfi 3y ago
    But then, by which mean did you "ask yourself the same" ? Or is it that you cannot imagine a conversation ?
    • cl3misch 3y ago
      I don't have an inner voice myself. So I asked myself whether the authors of the Plato post can't imagine that.
      • drupe 3y ago
        But what is the experience of "asking yourself something" like for you if you don't literally hear a question being asked in your head?
        • Epholys 3y ago
          I don't have an inner voice, it's just completely abstract thoughts. I "feel" the interrogation about a subject, just without words.
          • thinkingemote 3y ago
            So if I ask you to form an image of a song, (or recall it in your mind): the "happy birthday" song. How vivid or clear is it? Do you have no clarity, some, or lots? is it vivid as the actual sound as if you were hearing it in real life? Do you notice the tune as well as the words? Now change this image of happy birthday so that it's now a childrens choir singing it. Now change it so its by a bunch of cynical unix grey beards singing it in a convention. How easy was it to change this image? Did changing it affect the clarity?
            • Epholys 3y ago
              Wow, these questions are really interesting, I've never thought about it! For my favorite songs, I can recall it perfectly... But I don't hear it at all as if I was hearing it in real life. In fact, I don't know how to describe how vivid it is. Maybe I don't hear it at all? But I can sing these songs (out loud) without a problem. However, I seem to be incapable of changing some elements about it. I can't seem to be able to make it faster, slower, change the singer, or the instruments. But, when I sing it out loud, I can of course modify it. For "Happy birthday" (well, in my native language), it's really weird. Because I don't have a specific song in mind, I can follow the words, the tune, but I don't "feel" the voice of a specific singer. And I'm incapable to change this recall to different voices, like children or grown men. But if I listen to a version sung by these people, I can recall it after (until I forget). Thanks again for these questions, I was aware of my lack of inner voice, my difficulties of a "inner sight" (that's a whole other can of worms), but I never applied this interrogations to a "inner hearing".
      • yetihehe 3y ago
        I have inner voice, it's very hard for me to comprehend how can you think, but it's possible. How I understand it: you just write what you think, without rehearsing it before inside your mind. We all do it to some extent when writing, it's not like I actually need to replay everything before I write. "I asked myself" by a person who has no inner voice sounds like a blind person saying "I see..." when he understands something. It's just a figure of speech, not used in some languages (like polish, we say "I see" ONLY when we actually see something).
        • cl3misch 3y ago
          This may be surprising, but I indeed can "ask myself" (aka. think about) things, without explicitely verbalizing the question in my head. "Thinking" is more abstract, but it can be faster that way.
          • yetihehe 3y ago
            I also don't always explicitly verbalize things. The whole problem seems to be more of disagreement about a definition of inner voice and what it means for different people.
            • cl3misch 3y ago
              Maybe not the whole problem, but yeah, I also wonder about what people mean with "inner voice" respectively. I do think though that I verbalize less than other (maybe most) people.
        • bhaak 3y ago
          Thinking doesn't need words. Thinking for me is a process of ideas and concepts coming from different directions, colliding, merging, splitting, transforming, and then going into other directions to interact with other thoughts. The translation between these concepts to words or sentences from my mouth or my fingers is effortless by the way. Which I myself find interesting. I think it should take some effort but it doesn't. If you wonder how one can think without an inner voice then I wonder can you even think without your inner voice? And can your inner voice be faster than your vocal voice and if not, doesn't that slow down your thought process?
      • bondarchuk 3y ago
        It's an interesting question, since learning that some people have visualization and internal monologue I've been paying attention to how writers/philosophers describe thought processes and based on that whether they are visualizers (and monologue-havers) or not, and whether they are aware that the other thing is also possible. One really gets the sense that a lot of writers/philosophers[1] are visualizers and monologue-havers and are completely unaware of the other possibilities. An exception was Musil (The Man without Qualities) who goes quite deep into the thought processes of his characters and describes both varieties. Also interesting to read in this respect is Julian Jaynes, who purports (quite controversially) to trace a development from a primitive type of mentality that obeyed something like command hallucinations to the current type of mentality that can think freely. But (even though his theory seemed deeply involved with internal monologue) I couldn't really get a grip on what he actually thinks of how people think these days. [1] it does seem that it is much more common among "humanities-type" people and the general population, and more common to have no visualization among "exact sciences-type" people. This was also the observation of Galton https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm (ctrl-f "men of science")
    • Armisael16 3y ago
      I imagine it’s just an ingrained use of language picked up from other people - no thought behind it, like an atheist who says ‘Christ’ as an expletive.
      • vidarh 3y ago
        It goes beyond that, I think, in that many of us have gone most of our lives believing others used this language metaphorically, and assigning a meaning to these words. I was about 45 by the point I realized most people to varying degrees actually meant that they saw things when imagining them. And so to me it's not that there no thought behind it, because I do something when I "imagine" something, just not the same thing. The word means something different to me, and most of the time you wouldn't notice even when it's staring you in the face. E.g."I imagined her face" has a meaning to me even though I can't literally see a face when imagining it, but I can recall qualities and emotions and sensations of it anyway and to me those things add up to the meaning of that word, because nobody ever thought to assume it needed explaining that it was literal. Opening that line of inquiry quickly makes it apparent that we assume a whole lot about how similar our inner lives are that just doesn't consistently hold up, but that we don't challenge without digging into precisely how people use various words.
        • jvanderbot 3y ago
          This is so earth shattering to me. I'm completely unable to actually "see" anything when I imagine it, but I think I can visualize in the sense of recalling or imagining how it would look. Do people actually close their eyes and hallucinate or am I reading way to far into this?
          • jddj 3y ago
            I think there's some of that over-reading. In these exchanges the language typically gets sloppy and one person's "see" gets translated and reacted to as whoa, with their eyes?. If you can imagine a red car and see it in your mind's eye (fairly ephemeral, especially if you force it, and nothing like as vivid as a hallucination) I think you're pretty normal from having followed a few of these threads over the years.
    • vidarh 3y ago
      I have aphantasia, but I still say I "imagine" things (in the visual sense; I find it funny that this notion of visualising things in our mind is so ingrained that "imagine" has broadened to refer to the other senses) because I still clearly recall or imagine imagery in a way that means I can mentally operate on them. E.g. I can draw things I imagine, or describe them, or "mentally navigate" spaces I remember with ease. I also see images in my dreams, which seems to be pretty normal for people with aphantasia, so clearly a lot of us are not unable to see things in our mind, but something is - usually - preventing it from happening while we're away. Usually rather than always because some people see brief flashes, and I sometimes think I might but I'm not sure (it's surprisingly hard to determine). I've also had exactly one experience that seems to have been in a waking state where I saw clear imagery. I say seems, because while I don't think I fell asleep, I was meditating, and while I was aware and able to manipulate the imagery, it's possible it was lucid dreaming, but it was noticeable in particular because the imagery was far clearer than when I dream.
      • failingslowly 3y ago
        You said you have aphantasia, then you listed a number of ways in which you can mentally process images, so I couldn't really understand what you were missing. Then I went and did the aphantasia test, and apparently I have hypophantasia, so I guess that explains it. I wonder if there's a link between engineering skills and aphantasia, given the prevalence of the "programmer art" meme?
        • vidarh 3y ago
          > You said you have aphantasia, then you listed a number of ways in which you can mentally process images, so I couldn't really understand what you were missing. Then I went and did the aphantasia test, and apparently I have hypophantasia, so I guess that explains it. This is similar to how I found out - I assumed what I experienced was what people meant when they talked about visualizing things, and it took a long time before I realised that a lot of them meant it very literally when they said they could "see" things. > I wonder if there's a link between engineering skills and aphantasia, given the prevalence of the "programmer art" meme? Ed Catmull, ex-president of Pixar, has aphantasia, and he found that artists at Pixar where not all that more likely to be able to visualize well [1], so the "programmer art" bit is far more likely to be down to practice and interest (on average, at least). I think it's more likely that the better you are in a field, the less time you're likely to have to devote to getting good in another field. Of course there are always exceptions. But his sample was hardly representative, and so it's hard to tell whether it makes a difference. Maybe it does, and people who work at Pixar, including non-art staff are just more likely to be sufficiently interested in art to overcome extra difficulties. That said, for my part I was decent at art when I was younger, but my drawing style was different when "imagining" things than when drawing something I had in front of me. But I also suspect I'd commit "programmer art" if I tried again now, at least without a lot of practice. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47830256 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47830256
  • HKH2 3y ago
    Do you 'randomly' replay memories?
    • cl3misch 3y ago
      Not more or less than someone who verbalizes their thoughts more. I would think it is orthogonal to inner voice. Do you think otherwise?
      • HKH2 3y ago
        How would you know how frequently others do that? I think people with an inner voice don't notice their 'random' memories as much because they don't fit the narrative. Like confirmation bias, the bits that don't fit get filtered out, yet visual narratives are more flexible than that. When you dream, it's like a montage, right? Do you hear sound at all? The dream still makes sense when you're in it though. How is waking reality any different in that regard?
  • poopoopeepee59 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • deleted 3y ago
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    • cl3misch 3y ago
      The term "Non-Player Characters" for fellow humans is incredibly condescending. Please acknowledge that every human is a player character. Albeit with a different quest and skilltree than you.
      • poopoopeepee59 3y ago
        [flagged]
      • red1reaper 3y ago
        There is also the other point of view, that every other human that is not you IS an NPC, we can only prove that we exist, and even then that is muddy, for all we know everyone else is just a figment of our imagination, we can neither affirm nor deny it, so it is not wrong that since the only one that you can affirm to some extent is a player character is yourself, to call everyone else an NPC, as you have no way to prove they are not an NPC, you can't see what they think, you can only assume that like you, they think and they are. And yes, I am being pedantic with a philosophy I do not even endorse nor fully understand, just wanted to be a contrarian.
• keiferski 3y ago
  Is inner voice the same thing as inner speech? I’m interpreting “inner voice” to be a kind of pseudo-personality similar to what people mean by conscience, while inner speech is simply the mental version of speech. I can understand someone not having an inner voice, but I can’t see how writing is possible without inner speech. Otherwise, how can you have thoughts prior to writing them down? Also note that the article is titled inner speech, not inner voice.
  • ithkuil 3y ago
    Luckily the text editor has been invented giving you the possibility of endlessly editing your sentence until it makes some sense. Only half joking. I'm always impressed by those ancient people who could write long letters by hand in beautiful orthography, composing complex texts and make them just flow linearly. I'm sure here and there there would be a rewriting step involved but that can't have been always the case; there was surely practical pressure to get the output right at first try. Perhaps this skill could be trained but perhaps it also leverages the ability to tap into your inner voice and inner speech
    • mmasu 3y ago
      i think it’s a matter of training/habit. Also, back then (educated) people used memory a lot more efficiently; this might have played a role too… i.e. compose and edit the whole text in your mind before writing it down.
      • ithkuil 3y ago
        > compose and edit the whole text in your mind before writing it down yeah; doesn't that basically mean you have to have "inner speech"?
    • SuperHeavy256 3y ago
      Perhaps only the letters which were 'really good' were preserved by historians, and most of the average human writing was not as preserved .
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• raducu 3y ago
  > I am aphantastic Were you always like this? I clearly remember as a child/teenager I had exquisite inner imagery, but around 17-18 anxiety set in and the imagery slowly faded away to the point that today I can only conjure faint images for fractions of a second
  • vidarh 3y ago
    Not the person above, but I believe I've always been like this. I can vividly remember (but not see) imagery from dreams that I know I see while dreaming, and I think I'd remember if I used to do that in my waking state. I've also had one incidence of seeing things as an adult, during meditation, and never managed to again, so I do have a clear idea of what is possible to compare to.
• drcongo 3y ago
  Weirdly I'm aphantasic but hyperauralic. What I wouldn't give for it to be the other way around.
• noduerme 3y ago
  If you're anauralic, what happens when you're reading and you hit a foreign word, or a word you don't know? Do you have to say it out loud, or can you "hear" the pronunciation in your mind by essentially speaking it sublingually? For me, I think my "inner voice" really is just sublingual speech wherein I don't move my lips, tongue or vocal chords. Although I can also "hear" the voices of other people I know if I think about them talking. (This would seem to be a requisite skill if you want to do impressions of people). [edit: Maybe "sublingual" isn't the correct term for what I'm describing. I remember reading about some MRI experiments where they asked people to "talk" without making any sound, and this activated the speech parts of the brain as if they were using motor function to speak. But I can't recall the term used for doing this.]
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  • RichardLake 3y ago
    For myself I can learn a written word without having any idea of how it is pronounced. Growing up there were multiple occasions when I was speaking and mid way through a sentence realize I don't know the pronunciation of the next word I was going to say. Also I can read text and completely miss rhymes unless the formatting draws attention to it like how poetry is often written with lines split. (More likely to miss rhymes like half and graph where the word endings visually are different.)
• prossercj 3y ago
  Okay, I'll bite. Pardon my ignorance, but this is a new concept to me. If you have no inner voice, how are you able to speak? Surely you formed those words in your mind before writing them. Is it that you only do so when speaking to others, and never to yourself?
  • pama 3y ago
    To people who have trouble with this concept I suggest the analogy to reading without voicing out words yet still internalizing the concepts, and often at a much faster rate than when vocalizing during reading (which in turn can be pleasant for some poetry). It is possible to read multiple lines in parallel and the mechanism is similar to sight reading piano music when you have two (or occasionally three) lines of information that immediately translate to actions in your arms, hands, and fingers. In a related sense, sight reading music does not involve any inner voice or chatter yet a lot of conscious decisions are being made and a lot of hard non-verbal thinking goes into optimizing technique. Human language is just too inefficient for most high performance thinking but it is the best tool we currently have for storing and transmitting thoughts.
  • riversflow 3y ago
    > how are you able to speak? How are you able to walk? You don’t think about every muscle contraction. Speaking, writing, drawing and walking are all about the same to me. (I also have no inner voice and aphantasia)
    • jimkleiber 3y ago
      I have a lots of questions, as I find it hard for me to imagine: 1) When you read, do you ever say the words in your head or is it always more like an automatic recognition of the characters without voicing them? 2) Can you force yourself to have an inner voice, aka forcing yourself to say something like "I am thinking to myself right now"? Also, it's ok if you don't want to answer but I'd be curious to learn more about your experience.
      • razerbeans 3y ago
• candlemas 3y ago
  Did thought bubbles in cartoons/comics confuse you?
• tacheiordache 3y ago
  Im aphantastic to some extent and lack inner voice except for certain situations where there is a semblance of inner voice. Im learning for the first time about anauralia and am intrigued, seems I do to some extend have this. I'm just curious, do you present no inner voice whatsoever or do you have the occasional inner voice in some cases, when for example you attempt to collect some information when getting ready to write down something or in a very stressful situation you need to enumerate some steps to get out of it, etc...
• endofreach 3y ago
  Not sure if it applies to me, i do have an inner voice, but it's way too slow for my thoughts. Never know how to explain it, but even though i am quick with finding the right words, it's so much slower than my thoughts. But i guess that's normal, so then, most people that have an inner voice, still don't use it for their thinking. It comes afterwards, at least that's how it seems to me.
  • kypro 3y ago
    That's exactly the same for me. I use my inner voice when I'm reading or trying to construct sentences, but I don't think in sentences. I have to convert my thoughts to words so I'm an extremely slow and clumsy talker. I thought this was normal to be honest, but others have sworn to me that they think in sentences and I wonder if that's why some people are such brilliant speakers since for some thoughts and speech are linked instead of being two separate processes.
    • endofreach 3y ago
      I just can't really believe people with that. But i just asked 3 more people and they sworn the same as yours. Sure, language had an enormous impact on human intelligence and "thinking capability", but structured and complex language has evolved much later than clever and intelligent thinking was important for humans. I feel very often like the need of having the right words to describe thoughts to fellow humans is on one hand crafting reality at the same time it's holding it, and therefore all of us, back. Maybe this way of thinking is more what people understand as intuition?